There are close to 1,000 vendors in the collaboration market, according to David Coleman, managing director of Collaborative Strategies LLC in San Francisco. "There are way too many vendors," he says. Coleman projects that sales of collaboration software, services and related hardware will reach $40 billion in 2008, with an average annual growth rate of 13 percent.Thanks to Michael Sampson for the link.
Amidst all this spending, funding for electronic records management (ERM) initiatives has lagged. Even when funding is committed, there are still significant hurdles to overcome that can sometimes cause the entire project to grind to a halt.Among the hurdles Murphy mentions are unforeseen costs, slow adoption, and the lack of a champion within the organization. Writing in CMS Watch, Priscilla Emery tries to sort through the perplexity of ERM certifications and how they relate (or don't relate) to compliance. Enterprises that need to store their records according to a standard such as DoD 5015.2 have it pretty straight forward; not so when it comes to Sarbanes-Oxley.
Just about every vendor will tout its ability to support everything from Sarbanes-Oxley to HIPAA regulations. However, there are no certification specifications or procedures for any of these compliance activities at this point.Sarbanes-Oxley isn't a records management issue. Or maybe more accurately, it isn't just a records management issue.
...although records management can play a significant role in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance most of this activity is associated with financial reporting and monitoring financial processes making workflow activities and process monitoring more important features to focus on than just records retention.
He died at his home in Bedford Hills, N.Y. from esophageal cancer, according to a report in the New York Times.
To say that Mr. Diebold was a man ahead of his time would be a gross understatement. Remember back when computers weighed not pounds, but tons? Well, even back then he tried to tell the world how programmable devices could change the way business was done. He authored the book Automation to evangelize about opportunities that computers would bring.
Mr. Diebold went on to create an international consulting firm and explained technological advances to the likes of Boeing, Xerox and AT&T. The New York Times raves that he ''persuaded major corporations to automate their assembly lines, store their records electronically and install interoffice computer networks''. That's high praise from a cynical industry.
Mr. Diebold saw how computers could change business and society. He saw the benefits that technology could bring to this world. And he worked for decade after decade to educate the rest of us about it.
For that kind of vision and passion, he will be missed.
I'd like to make one thing is absolutely clear right from the outset: Web 3.0 isn't just about shopping, entertainment and search. It's also going to deliver a new generation of business applications that will see business computing converge on the same fundamental on-demand architecture as consumer applications. So this is not something that's of merely passing interest to those who work in enterprise IT. It will radically change the organizations where they work and their own career paths.I don't know if I'm sold on this, but I've heard stranger things. My biggest issue at this point is that most office workers are too comfortable in the world of Windows applications for this to happen right now, but no one is saying this will happen overnight. John Hagel has his own opinions on how Web 2.0 will or will not morph into Web 3.0.
Phil is focusing on two related changes. First, the emergence of the traditional enterprise as a significant new customer set for the technologies that are shaping Web 2.0. Second, and related to the first, an urgent need to define and deploy more sustainable business models. In particular, he has been hammering appropriately on the need to define other revenue models beyond advertising for the enterprise market. But these are not profound technology shifts. These are marketing opportunities and business challenges created by Web 2.0 technology.Whenever Web 2.0 fans talk about their favorite applications getting traction on the enterprise level, they point to Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, which implemented wikis to replace its intranet. As a journalist, one thing I've noticed is that the Dresdner example has been kicked around for some time now. If Web 3.0 is coming, we'd better see some more examples soon.
The researchers tracked three browsers (MSIE, Firefox, Opera) in 2004 and counted which days they were "known unsafe." Their definition of "known unsafe": a remotely exploitable security vulnerability had been publicly announced and no patch was yet available.Microsoft's Internet Explorer was 98 percent unsafe; meaning there were only 7 days in 2004 that didn't have an unpatched publicly known security hole. And that's only publicly known holes. Firefox was 15 percent (56 days); Opera was 17 percent (65 days).
The FTC cited two studies in its report. One, by e-mail filtering company MX Logic, said spam accounted for 67 percent of the e-mail passing through its system in the first eight months of this year. That's down 9 percentage points from the same period a year earlier. The second report by MessageLabs, another e-mail filtering company, said spam rates rose for much of last year but have since declined and hover near the levels they were at in December 2003 — when Congress passed the anti-spam legislation.There are several problems with CAN SPAM, the most obvious being that it's a law for an online activity that only applies in the United States. Let's just say those Nigerians aren't shaking in their boots. As with most pieces of superficial legislation, the law was more about politicians backing a bill that everyone supports in theory. But this morning I realized another reason spam rates may be dropping. I have been deleting spam comments from this blog all morning. (Why do people even bother? We delete them before they see the light of day.) This makes me think that while e-mail spam may be down, it's likely spammers are just spamming blogs, because that's what superficial legislation does, it makes the bad guys change tactics. It's not just comment and trackback spam that's threatening to do to blogs what spam did to e-mail. AdWeek quotes research saying one in five new blogs is pure spam.
If you're an IT manager and your users employ instant messaging as part of their jobs, you need to ensure their screen names present an appropriate image of your company.There's a good idea in the comments to that post too. Not the one that tries to sell IBM software, but the one that suggests your employees use their company e-mail address as their IM screen name. Thanks to the Computerworld IT Management Blog for the link.
The Secretary of State's office is asking Diebold to submit the machine's source code for review by the federal Independent Testing Authorities before resubmitting the company's application for certification in California.Diebold, which has a history of refusing to share source code and then providing lame reasons for not doing so, says it will review the state's request. Why do I get the feeling the state's "request" will be rejected?
Keep your big mouth shut. Even if one of your co-workers is your bestest friend in the whole world, if you tell just one person in your office that you're looking for a job, you may as well distribute a podcast announcing your employment plans. Don't leave tracks. You have to assume your employer (or these days, your government) is monitoring what you do on the job. So avoid using the office fax, telephone, computer and email account. Dress up more. If you normally dress as if you're headed to a techno-rave, and then show up looking like a Brooks Brothers mannequin, it may (rightfully) arouse suspicion that you have a job interview elsewhere.Observe these basic rules and you should be able to fly safely under the radar. Happy job hunting. Not that I think you're looking or anything.
Conditions at home can be more dungeon than castle, and in contrast to turf wars at the office, you can't escape the enemy at night. Contract manager Bill Hall started working from home in mid-August, setting up shop in his basement, which has two small casement windows stingy with light. His son, a high-school senior, gets frustrated that he can't blast his music or the enemies in his videogames the way he used to. And while Mr. Hall squeezes in tasks like doing the laundry, loading the dishwasher and reorganizing the refrigerator, that 110% effort isn't always appreciated.There's other tales too, of nosy neighbors and family members, annoying pets, and co-workers and supervisors who don't give people who work from home credit for the work they do. Like a lot of things, telecommuting depends quite a bit on corporate culture. If it's going to lead to suspicions you aren't pulling your weight, then maybe you work for an organization that should keep people in cozy little cubes. If you aren't pulling your weight because... I don't know... your cat slept on your laptop and hit a bunch of buttons while dreaming about the Manx next door (as did one cat in the article; Manx excluded) then perhaps you're not cut out for working from home. That's all from this cozy little cube.
"We might just be at the point where the utility of the Internet stalls -- and perhaps turns downward."I like this description of the contemporary 'Net experience by article author David Talbot:
[F]or the average user, the Internet these days all too often resembles New York's Times Square in the 1980s. It was exciting and vibrant, but you made sure to keep your head down, lest you be offered drugs, robbed, or harangued by the insane.All of that happened to me when I visited Times Square in the '80s. And the same thing is happening on the Internet today, only now the insane are called bloggers. According to the article, "Clark argues that it's time to rethink the Internet's basic architecture, to potentially start over with a fresh design," rather than trying to make do with the current flawed architecture cobbled together over many years. It's pretty fascinating, high-level stuff. And while the notion of rebuilding the Internet from scratch to make it less vulnerable to spam, viruses and other cyber-scum seems daunting, the alternative is to let this Times Square get worse. Put me down as in favor of a do-over.
What you really need to focus on is leverage how to get the most out of your time rather than how many things you can get done within a specified time.Accomplishing that, Setty says, requires thoughtful planning and utilizing the resources at your disposal, not getting all frenetic and list-happy. He also offers this insight:
The genesis of time management problems is the commitments you make to others.So the reason you never have time to get everything done is those damned other people! I knew it! Actually, what this really means is you have a hard time saying "no" and, like a sap, are prone to overcommitting. All is not lost, though. You can learn to negotiate and re-prioritize in order to get the important things done. Now go do that.
One of the survey's questions asked respondents to imagine themselves being transported to 2015 and then looking back at 2005 and what they thought in retrospect would prove to be either an ineffective or wasteful use of their IT time. Twenty-eight percent of those polled cited Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, followed by deployment of unproven technologies (23 percent), purchase of unneeded technologies (19 percent), and continuing support for outdated technologies (17 percent). The fifth-rated bugbear cited by 10 percent of respondents was external consultants, with software upgrades only distressing one percent of those polled.And there's this from Robert Rosen, president of Share:
"[Sarbanes-Oxley compliance] is occupying a lot of people's time and they can't figure out what the return on investment is there..."There's avoiding fines and staying out of the pokey, just to name a couple off the top of my head. Thanks to Paul Chin, a regular contributor to Intranet Journal, for bringing the survey to my attention.
If there has been any major difference for spam this year, it's been that in 2005 the anger toward spam has been replaced by a kind of grudging acceptance that it's just one of those annoyances that isn't going to change anytime soon.And that leads to spam becoming a back-of-mind issue.
We didn't hear too much this year about spam. Aside from a few successful lawsuits against a handful of spammers, and a handful more being sent to jail under various federal and state anti-spam laws, there has been precious little groundbreaking news in the world of spam.Maybe our software leader became obsessed with a certain search engine in the past two years and lost his spam focus. That's what drives me nuts; that, and the 169 spams I had waiting for me this morning.
The newest ransom caper in real life involves hackers taking over an individual's or company's computer, scrambling or encrypting documents, videos, spreadsheets, databases, and other crucial files, and then demanding a ransom to unlock the files and make them usable again. Called "ransom-ware," this new malicious code combines the worst of spyware and Trojan horses.Not exactly script kiddies testing their chops. The article cites a Carnegie Mellon study which "found that 17% of businesses had been the target of cyber-extortion." And the stakes could get higher:
Professional criminals can command legions of vulnerable computers to send denial of service attacks. Adding ransom-ware to their arsenal would pose a formidable threat that could have serious security and economic ramifications.Just what IT security pros -- and the rest of us -- need.
"It's funny because there's been some talk about this happening for the last three or four years," says Phil Bloodworth, a partner in Advisory Services at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. "Now we're finding that it's being put into practice. It's actually happening. Companies put someone over technology who isn't necessarily a technologist. They're more of a strategist or a business person."This is one way to align IT with business. I think in the future you'll see more people who are adept at both; technologists with MBAs, for example. As for how the geeks are handling this change in CIO background:
"It's going over pretty well," he says. "Let me tell you why. If you get an IT organization that's not viewed as just driving the bus, but it's viewed as someone who's tactical and strategic, then technology is elevated. IT is becoming elevated. There will be the crusties who don't like that. But the enlightened IT professional, who wants a broader perspective, will like this move. It's elevating their status in the company and it's allowing them to help the company achieve its strategic goals."
Chief financial officers are so swamped with earnings reports and compliance work that they are not able to focus on expanding their companies and driving shareholder value, according to a global study released Friday.I wonder what the CEO is doing while the CFO is buried in compliance hell...
CFOs who are bogged down with operational and financial details may have trouble focusing on strategy, but a CFO who focuses only on strategy may not have enough operational information to make the best decisionsBetter get him some IBM software.
"You don't have to expose your trade secrets to open your organization to potential harm. For instance, what we call Outlook Properties is a great example of information that you probably don't want to expose to the world. This includes a user's email display name, the subject line of the email that contained the file attachment, and the sender's email address. As an executive, I don't want my employee's display names and email addresses made available to competitors, recruiters, social engineers, hackers or anyone else that we don't explicitly want to share this information with."If buying software isn't your thing, Microsoft does have instructions for removing meta data if you know where to look. Not to pick on Microsoft, the meta data in Adobe's PDF files has been an issue too.
...remember the first generation of internet providers? Compuserve, Prodigy, Genie, GNN, and AOL all worked hard to provide unique content and enhance the user experience. They lost out to a second generation of internet providers that were just high-speed data pipes, while content moved to carrier-independent entities like Google and the user experience was engineered by software application providers like Netsape, Microsoft, and eventually the Mozilla project.PHP's problems, Perens says, have to do with multiprocessing and security. Thanks to Stephen O'Grady for the link.
This means that security administrators may be using flawed assumptions to prevent attacks. Many IT administrators try first to detect scans and then take preventive measures to secure their networks. The research shows they may be acting too late to prevent the bulk of hacking attempts.The researchers also measured the time separating scans from attacks, conducted a longitudinal study of malicious activity recorded over one year, as well as a comparison between malicious activity from inside the university with malicious activity from outside. There's a PDF of the findings available. Enjoy.
If you're reading this blog via an RSS feed, know that you're one of the elite. Most studies seem to put the number of people using RSS at about 5 percent of Internet users. This, of course, means that mainstream users have yet to catch on. RSS remains a toy of the tech world. But all of that could change with the upcoming versions of Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.0, we can presume. Once Windows starts integrating things, the masses tend to catch on. One problem, however, has been finding an icon to alert users an RSS feed is available in the upcoming version of IE. Those of us who do this for a living know the orange XML icon and blue RSS icon, as well as any number of icons (or chiclets as some like to call them) from Bloglines, FeedBurner, and My Yahoo, let us know we can subscribe to the content. Casual Internet users click on the links, see a page of XML code, and hit the Back button. The people at Microsoft have put a lot of time into how they will communicate the availability of a feed. Microsoft's RSS blog has been publishing example icons and looking for comments for quite sometime. And the winner is... 
The same icon that Mozilla uses for RSS feeds in the Firefox browser. Microsoft will be using the icon, with the permission, agreement, and cooperation of Mozilla of course, in the IE 7.0 command bar whenever a page has a feed associated with it, and in other places in the browser when it needs a visual to represent RSS.
It seems that a lot of IT professionals won't be home opening presents on Christmas morning or celebrating Hanukkah with their families. And plans for ringing in the New Year? Don't mark that down in your PDA just yet.
Nearly 50 percent of email administrators will be working this Christmas and New Year's because of email problems, according to a new Osterman Survey, which was sponsored by Zenprise. And 42 percent of IT managers and email administrators said they worked on Christmas at least once in the last two years because of an email problem. Forty-four percent said they worked on New Year's Day because of email problems.
Maybe letters to Santa should have included a request for the holiday at home... or trouble-free email.
Heavy computer use -- up to seven hours a day -- does not increase risk for carpal tunnel syndrome. However, improper computer use and other workplace conditions can contribute to a type of disorder known as repetitive stress injury.OK, I'll buy that. Now here's my unscientific, anecdotal 2 cents: I've been sitting in front of computers, typing words for a living, for more than 20 years. The only time I've ever experienced pain in my wrists was in 1996, when one of my jobs was to help create links for my publication's new web page. It involved an intensive amount of mousework -- I was clicking, dragging and dropping up a storm. Whatever the official affliction, it was killing my right wrist, and soon I felt sharp pains shooting from my little finger toward my elbow. I tried alternating hands as I moused away, with the predictable result that both wrists hurt. Fortunately that gig lasted only about six months or so. Once I stopped the crazy mousework, the pain slowly went away. Ever since then I've been pretty convinced that excessive mouse use -- yes, along with poor posture, etc. -- is bad for you. And while I can't dismiss the Harvard study merely based on my own experiences, it's drawing fire elsewhere on the Internet. I think this guy may be onto something, though.
The new laws will require financial firms in the country to compensate customers for virtually all financial losses resulting from online identity theft and account hacking, even if the banks are not directly responsible.We'll see how well it works. In the meantime, I've had my fill of online fraud and will put the topic to bed for the remainder of 2005 after tomorrow's Webcast.
"We believe that in order to be competitive in the online news and information space, growth of both audience and page impressions will be the cornerstone of our success. Further, we believe that the key to that growth is through the removal of all barriers, including registration," said Michael Goldbloom, Publisher, Toronto Star. "Our online readers have told us that registration is an inconvenience. We listened to our readers, and we've removed mandatory registration from our site."It seems the Star has realized that even if you are the largest daily newspaper in Canada, the way to make money in online publishing is to get eyeballs to your ads. Standard & Poor's latest look at the media industry panned pretty much every sub-sector (especially those God-awful movies they keep releasing and the disaster called radio) with the exception of online advertising.
Even assuming that growth decelerates somewhat, Internet advertising is likely to exceed magazine advertising in 2006. Spending on Internet ads could potentially surpass spending on radio in 2008, assuming 1% to 2% growth in radio ad spending and a minimal contribution from satellite radio.Even with the Winter Olympics coming up in 2006 and what figures to be a pretty eventful midterm election next November, advertising is going to have problems because it seems slow to move where the consumers are.
The broad shift of viewers and advertising dollars to the Internet is deeply troubling to many media companies, TV networks are grappling with the implications of ad-skipping technologies, and key advertisers like automakers and retailers are rethinking their ad budgets.
AT&T and other telecoms want to charge consumers a premium fee to connect to the higher-speed Internet. The companies could also charge websites a premium to offer their video to consumers on the higher-speed Internet. That could mean that a company like Yahoo might have to pay AT&T to send high-quality video to AT&T subscribers.Needless to say, online content providers such as Yahoo, Google and Time Warner are adamently against the proposal. This story reports that Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and now a vice president at Google, argued against the plan in a letter to a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee:
"This bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online."Admittedly I'm biased as a consumer, but I favor the status quo, and thus hope the content providers' lobbyists are more effective than the telco lobbyists.
Here's another controversial but true statement; most security folks aren't big picture guys. They may kick butt at managing a Check Point firewall but do they really have the technical or business skills to protect a critical business process? Nope. Security outsourcers certainly can match your folks on basic security skills and since they work with 100s of customers, they simply gain more worldly experience than you can. This is a big plus when you change the discussion from firewall settings to securing your e-commerce applications.What Oltsik doesn't mention is that many large organizations are starting to outsource their security as part of their moves to outsource compliance. Security alone didn't seem to warrant outsourcing, but according to the IT Compliance Institute, combining it with compliance was apparently getting too far away from the core business for many enterprises.
Corporate customers, however, aren't out shopping for new computing platforms. They need business solutions that actually help them compete and succeed in the real world. They also want something that no platform-obsessed vendor seems able to provide: a technology partner that can actually be held accountable for promised business results — such as increased revenue, reduced expenses, faster time-to-market, or improved customer satisfaction.As an alternative, Gianforte suggests an on-demand delivery model, which eliminates the need to create a proprietary technology platform as a competitive differentiator. He also suggests open source, which commoditizes the software stack.
The general perception of Apple as an exceptional entity rather than a profit-making enterprise is no accident. Apple's leaders have assiduously cultivated the image of a corporation that is hip, stylish, humane...This, Collingwood argues, has led to a double-standard:
Despite some hooting and hollering on weblogs, the majority of the business press and the buying public don't seem to object when Apple, say, takes legal action against some of the biggest fans of its products. ... It's as if the entire company has ingested some magical elixir that immunises it against bad publicity.So what's Apple's secret? According to Collingwood, it "can be boiled down to five simple rules that apply not just to Apple but to other companies as well." They are:
1. Excellence trumps everythingI know some of the above items seem vague out of context, so I urge you to read Collingwood's entire article, which also includes this all-important caveat: "Of course, your products had better be as good as Apple's too." Fire away.
2. Decide on your story, then stick to it
3. Choose your friends well
4. Choose your enemies better
5. Let your allies play bad cop
He pointed to the supposed loss of 3.9-million banking records stored on computer backup tapes that were being shipped by UPS from New York-based Citigroup to an Experian credit bureau in Texas. "These tapes were not lost — they were stolen," Spoonamore said. "Not only were they stolen, the theft occurred by altering the electronic manifest in transit so it would be delivered right to the thieves." He added that UPS, Citigroup, and Experian spent four days blaming each other for losing the shipment before realizing it had actually been stolen.This isn't an easy thing to do. Spoonamore said upwards of 15 to 20 people were needed to hack five different computer systems simultaneously to breach the electronic safeguards on the electronic manifest. Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the link.
...ultimate responsibility for information security moved up the management hierarchy, with more respondents (than last year) identifying the board of directors and CEO, or a CISO/CSO, as being accountable for their company's information security.Specifically, nearly 21 percent of survey respondents said their CEO ultimately is responsible for security, up from 12 percent last year. Those saying the board of directors bears ultimate responsibility for enterprise security neared 6 percent, more than double last year's 2.5 percent. For IT pros, that's good news. It means more high-level executives are paying attention to security and taking it seriously. IDC says this trend is fueled by the need for effective risk management and IT governance strategies. Sounds about right. Further, nearly three-quarters of respondents expect "their influence with executives and the board of directors to increase in the coming 12 months." It's a lovefest, I'm telling you.
According to a statement issued by NTP, the ruling allows the company to continue moving forward in the case, including re-confirmation of an injunction that "prohibits RIM from selling, using or importing into the United States infringing BlackBerry hardware and software until the last of the litigated patents expires in 2012."You can see why Gartner recommends putting the brakes on. While Gartner thinks it's possible the legal issues will be settled within a month, the firm is advising clients to halt all Blackberry deployments until it's settled. Gartner also wants clients to pressure RIM into making information about a workaround plan publicly available. Up to now, RIM says it has a plan, but hasn't shared. Finally, Gartner thinks clients can look for alternatives to the Blackberry, with the warning that similar devices may also have legal issues with NTP. A laptop with a wireless card might be the best solution.
A November report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), published Wednesday, shows 5 percent of all domain names ending in .com, .net and .org have "patently false" data in the fields where contact information is stored, such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, names and mailing addresses.You don't say? Last month in a post about marketing, I commended the people behind Lost for the Web site for the show's fictional airline. It's a nice guerilla marketing touch. Clearly the people behind that idea knew the WHOIS database wasn't an issue, because the site isn't registered to ABC or the producers of the show. It's registered to Oceanic Airlines, an airline that exists solely to be used in fictional television shows and movies (Executive Decision is a movie that used the same airline), at a fictional address in Los Angeles, with telephone numbers that use the 555 exchange used for movies and TV. Is there no better way to get a handle on this?
With the Trusted Sites zone in IE6, we find that many users don't understand how powerful a site becomes when they make it a Trusted Site. For example, a Trusted Site in IE6 can automatically install signed ActiveX controls on the user's machine. As a safety precaution in IE7, we have set the default for the Trusted Sites zone to Medium, the same level as the Internet zone in IE6. Customers who depend on the IE6 level of the Trusted Sites zone will be able lower settings back to IE6 levels with the slider on the "Security" tab of "Internet Options" or through policy settings.It's been clear to me that IE 6.0 gave too much control to home Internet users who didn't understand how the zones worked. This time, Microsoft wants to err on the side of caution. There will be a beta version of IE 7.0 that will run on XP available in the first quarter of 2006.
Like it or not, by setting up your parent's new system you may have also volunteered to be their technical support staff. Do yourself a favor and set up the system in a familiar fashion to yours. For example, make sure your software is the same version. This way you won't have to guess how to work with a desktop screen you can't see over the phone. If you can, set them up with the same Internet Service Provider (ISP) that you have.And of course, let's not forget: security, security, security. Thanks to Ed Bott, who's quoted in the story giving security advice, for the link.
Nearly a third (32%) of the messages submitted are scheduled to be delivered just one year from now. But many of our readers hope to communicate over much longer time frames: 15% chose three years, 18% chose five years, 16% chose ten years, and 19% will wait two decades to get their message.The really interesting part is that Forbes had to come up with a way to store the messages for an extended period of time. It had to choose partners to handle the storage and delivery. It had to choose a storage medium. It needed software that could work in 20 years. It need partners that would be around in 20 years, or enough partners to cover the bases if one partner wasn't. In short, Forbes had to deal with all of the things that IT managers need to think about when it comes to finding a home for and delivering critical data. Thanks to A.J. for the link.
I know many people that work at both Google and Microsoft, and I'm sure this will be upsetting to all of them: the spirit of nearly all these rules are shared by both companies.Of course, everyone is familiar with Google, and it's a media and Wall Street darling, so it rates a story in Newsweek about how the company works. People in the tech industry, of course, will notice a comment in the article that takes a subtle dig at Microsoft.
Much has been written about Google's slogan, but we really try to live by it, particularly in the ranks of management. As in every organization, people are passionate about their views. But nobody throws chairs at Google, unlike management practices used at some other well-known technology companies. We foster to create an atmosphere of tolerance and respect, not a company full of yes men.Hmmmm. What could he be referring to there...? Berkun's other good point is that practically everything enumerated in the orginal piece is common sense.
The $31 billion computer and video gaming business is the fastest-growing entertainment medium in the world, with the potential to surpass both the movie and recorded music businesses. More than 200 million computer and video games are sold to the 140 million gamers in America every year. U.S. gamers spent $7.3 billion in 2004.Security, RFID, and verticals make up the rest of the list. If you are looking for a job this season, there's advice from Challenger, Gray and Christmas (appropriately enough) over on EarthWebNews about being persistent over the holidays.
Around 20 percent of job seekers take a break during the holidays, Challenger said, figuring that they'll begin another full-court press on Jan. 2. Those who do will miss out on what the company estimates at 300,000 managerial and professional jobs that may be added in the closing months of the year.And don't forget — there's networking to be done in those holiday parties and Christmas cards.
Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.BellSouth denies the version of events in the story. Am I the only one who sees a lesson here about adapting your business with things change?
I figure with enough time and effort, anyone could be a System Administrator. Really, it's not hard, it just takes practice, methodology, and trial and error. A lot of trial and error. These truths will certainly get you on your way.One of Evan's truths (No. 10 to be exact) is that the good old reboot is the Holy Grail of Tech Support.
Rebooting can cure ailments of all sorts, can stop network troubles, crashing computers, find missing documents, and rescue cats in trees. System admins all over the world have, by en large, trained their users to reboot before even calling support. I mean, when's the last time you didn't reboot to see if it cured a problem? If you're not, then youre either stubborn or you're an admin who knows better. Rebooting doesn't cure all ailments, but it cures so many of them it's hard to not throw out a "Can you reboot for me?" to the end user when they call with some off-the-wall issue. Use and abuse as necessary.I don't think anyone can argue with that, but Ed Bott wrote about a new feature in Windows Vista may make the trusty reboot a thing of the past.
This goes double for anyone listing "Vandalay Industries" in their job history.When asking for references, actually perform a check.
While speeding tickets are OK, I would look askance at embezzlement convictions and armed robberies. But maybe that's just me.Perform the appropriate background checks, but don't expect absolute perfection.
Admittedly, this can be tricky if the candidate doesn't want their current employer to know they're job-hunting. A good HR person can help with this.Verify where they have worked and that the position they worked is as they described.
These definitely are doable. Have the candidate present his certificates and confirm with the certifying body. And checking for academic degrees is easy; it's just that few organizations do it.Verify certification standings as well as ensure that degrees are valid.
This does not mean that IT should stop working to understand the business and revert to being a reactive department responding to directives from above. Rather, by better understanding the strategy of the organization, IT should be in a better position to proactively identify initiatives that solve business problems.The other idea I liked was the CEO as the person who could kill a project that wasn't working. We all know tech people can become very attached to a project, and it takes an outside observer to "call it" as they say on television hospital dramas. It's going to be interesting to see how the next generation of CEOs, who we'll assume will be more technically inclined, will handle their relationship with IT. Get ready for articles on Getting the CEO to Back Off.
Q: The engraving on the back of the iPod Zepto I ordered was supposed to say "We love you, Cody," but instead it says "We love Cod!" A: Due to the incredibly small size of the iPod Zepto, personalized engravings had to be condensed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
According to Paul Kim, director of product marketing for Mozilla, the first elements of the promotional campaign will kick off over the next several weeks and rely heavily on existing users of Firefox to help convince other people to try out the browser. The first stage of the initiative will consist of a program known as the Firefox Flicks campaign, which will consist of 30-second video testimonials from existing users of the browser about why they prefer the technology.While the Flicks campaign is creative, the fundamental challenge remains: Getting people to alter their online habits. That's hard to do, especially when a person isn't particularly motivated to change (i.e., they don't hate Microsoft as much as you do). Which is the main reason Firefox has struggled to reach 10 percent market share, despite strong word-of-mouth marketing.
What can others learn from Grove's odyssey? As we face a future where change is not only constant but accelerating, reality will transform itself more swiftly than most humansor most companiesare hard-wired to handle. Even startups that overturn one reality are easily overturned by the next big change. Grove has escaped natural selection by doing the evolving himself. Forcibly adapting himself to a succession of new realities, he has left a trail of discarded assumptions in his wake. When reality has changed, he has found the will to let go and embrace the new.Natural selection isn't all he's avoided. He dodged the Nazis, Communists, and cancer too. Fascinating story. And it's nine pages long, so bring lunch.
"The continued migration of Internet users from dial-up to broadband bodes extremely well for Yahoo's content oriented sites," said Clayton Moran, an analyst at the Stanford Group, in a November 16 report. "As opposed to Google, which is still essentially a search site and is known as such, Yahoo provides information and entertainment content, including interactive content. Yahoo is positioned to benefit from the proliferation of high speed Internet services like interactive gaming, streaming video, video and music downloads, and real-time media events."Yahoo! seems to be investing in news, which is something consumers already look for online. NBC News says that making its Nightly News broadcast available on the Internet every night at 10 p.m. Eastern has been well-received. You can bet Yahoo! took notice. Thanks to John Blossom at Shore Communications for the link.
