August 2005 Archives

I saw this earlier in the week on Computerworld, but didn't have a chance to talk about it.

It seems IT consultancy Gartner mentioned in an SEC filing that it is reviewing opportunities to make acquisitions in the $50 to $100 million range. You'll remember that in April Gartner purchased Meta Group, another IT consulting group that (like Gartner) is based in Stamford, Conn.

Mergers in the Internet space are back in the news in general. Everyone is waiting for Skype to be bought, with Google being named most often. Going back to The New York Times purchase of About.com and News Corp.'s acquisition of MySpace parent company Intermix, merges of offline and online organizations are becoming the fad.

Writing in BusinessWeek, Steve Rosenbush has more ideas that focus on combining online resources to offline brands.

All in all, the environment is light-years away from that of the recent past, when Internet deals hinged on a hope and a prayer. The values of Net companies then were based on page views and other assorted metrics. Now the froth has been skimmed. The survivors are generating ad revenue. "Now it's about money."

How does this sound for matchmaking? TheKnot.com and Target; or iVillage and Lifetime.

I have a theory about why terrorists have yet to attack the Internet directly: they need it as much as we do.

Since irony is the basis of life on our planet, if my theory is true, this is one of the ultimate ones: A bunch of nut cases that want to set civilization back a thousand years are succored in their deranged efforts by an infidel technology without which they would need smoke signals and post riders to get their messages through.

Go figure.

I am the editor of Intranet Journal, after all. Paul Miller, one of the founders of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) in the U.K., alerted me to a story about the IBF (PDF version in the link) in the Financial Times this morning.

In addition to explaining how the IBF works, the article talks about some of the innovative ways companies use their intranet.

Sometimes it is the surprisingly small things that make big savings. The BBC, for example, put all its taxi bookings on the intranet, saving about £2.50 in administrative cost per booking. Though the BBC's annual taxi bill is still high, the intranet is helping shave an estimated £1.7m off costs.

The value of the IBF is that it gives intranet teams a chance to see other organizations' intranets and talk to other intranet teams, which is a rarity because intranets by definition just aren't accessible to outsiders. It's also worth noting the IBF will be having its first U.S. meeting in March in New York.

I haven't seen any yet, but greedy, heartless sleazebags soon will try to cash in on the suffering of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims by using the Internet to steal money from people who want to contribute to relief efforts. The same thing happened early this year after a tsunami in south Asia claimed more than 150,000 lives.

Security software vendor ESET has some good, basic advice on how to spot such scams making the email rounds. Among ESET's tips:

If you didn't opt-in, delete. Unsolicited emails appealing for donations are almost always fraudulent.

Don't be fooled by appearance -- emails can appear legitimate by copying the graphics and language of a legitimate organization.

Don't click through to links -- links in emails can lead to "spoofed" Web sites that mirror the look and feel of a genuine organization.

A few years back I organized a series of monthly technology breakfast forums in Boston. One of the sessions was all about nanotechnology. If you're totally unfamiliar with the term, or a bit hazy as to what it's all about, read the definition here. Go on, read it. I'll wait. And then come back.

Pretty dry stuff, right? That's what the breakfast was like. The only reason I didn't fall asleep was because I was moderating a panel and had to honor the minimum requirement of wakefulness.

But even I have to admit that this real-world application of nanotechnology is pretty exciting news.

Apple Computer may as well quit acting coy about its "special event" in San Francisco on Sept. 7. The well-traveled word on the street is that Apple and Motorola will unveil an iTunes-enabled cell phone.

Not only that, but Cingular Wireless reportedly has won the honor of being the first to distribute the much-anticipated device, which will be able to download music over a wireless network using iTunes software.

Motorola announced earlier this summer that an iTunes-enabled cell phone would go on sale in late September, making Apple's efforts at building suspense all-the-more puzzling (and, honestly, a little bit silly).

Attempts at hype aside, it does sound like a cool tech toy. The one remaining mystery concerns pricing. I guess we'll find out soon enough. Or maybe sooner!

A controversial study by some controversial scientists to be published in November's British Journal of Psychology will claim that men, on average, have an IQ five points higher than women. The five-point gain occurs at age 14; until that point, boys and girls have comparable IQs, the study says.

That doesn't explain another British study (Warning: must be fluent in conversational British) that says men are more likely than women to get spam, online viruses, and fall for Internet scams. This is despite the fact that men are apparently more familiar with online threats and have a better understanding of the terminology. This second survey was done by StreamShield, which makes Internet protection software.

Geoff Bennett, Director of Product Marketing at StreamShield insisted that the research proves that there is a clear difference between the male and female experience when online, suggesting that this may be due to the "two sexes may be using the Internet differently."

Men get more spam, spyware, and viruses because of how they use the Internet, even though they know what the threats are. We know what that means.

Give a New York Times reporter a tour of your operations center, but don't allow him publish its location, other than the "central United States."

It's ironic, actually, because as the story in the Times points out, virtually every step in the credit card processing chain, from transaction to statement, is outsourced. No one has put Visa's operations center under siege by dropping forces into the central U.S., but as we saw in June, data from 40 million credit cards was exposed through a processor.

If you're not familiar with the details of the credit card industry, which is interesting in that the big brands are more associations than companies, the article talks a lot about how security compliance between banks, processors, and large retailers seems to fall into a gray area. Much has been talked about, but real action seems to be lacking.

In 2003, Visa led a series of discussions with MasterCard, American Express and other major card brands to establish a set of security standards and a timetable for complying with them. Yet only one-third of the 400 small and midsize processors, which together handle about 10 percent of all domestic transactions, can say they currently meet the industry's requirements, even though the standards took effect in September 2004. Less than 0.3 percent of the country's roughly five million merchants are known to have taken any compliance steps at all.

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the link.

--Mike Pastore

You know how sometimes researchers release the results of a study and your immediate reaction is, "They had to conduct a study to prove this?"

I mean stuff like "Using Cell Phones Distracts Drivers" or "Beautiful Women Make Men Stupid."

To the Canon of the Painfully Obvious we now can add this stunning revelation on why companies outsource.

Gartner last week released its Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle, which sounds like something that would put into perspective a lot of the technology predictions we hear in the mainstream press. But instead it's just one of 68 "Hype Cycles" Gartner will release this year.

...the Hype Cycle highlights the progression of an emerging technology from conception, to market over-enthusiasm, through a period of disillusionment, to an eventual understanding of the technology's relevance and role in a market or domain.

There are three key technology themes for business in this year's Hype Cycle: Collaboration, Next Generation Architecture, and Real World Web. Among the technologies listed in the categories are applications that have already been hyped, and in some cases over-hyped. It's nice to see some of the themes we've been covering at Intranet Journal getting some recognition, such as podcasting, RSS, and corporate blogging. Gartner seems pretty bullish on wikis:

Gartner predicts that Wikis will impact ad hoc collaboration, group authoring, content management, web site management, innovation, project execution and research and development.

--Mike Pastore

It's been almost a year since I've been able to log on to a certain (not to be named but I'd sure like to) online music distribution company. I've emailed their customer service department about 12 times (no lie) asking for help.

All I get back is a "We've received your email and will handle your request as quickly as possible" message. Well, I think my cry for help goes directly from that auto-reply server to the trash bin. I can't even find a phone number for these guys and I'm a journalist!

I guess my point is, if you are going to use technology as the linchpin of you customer service, then you should make sure it works for the people that actually use it: your customers.

Technology solutions are only good if they solve a problem, otherwise the millions you "saved" by implementing ___________ (enter name of technology here) could have been better spent on a phone line and a live person who could actually help solve a problem instead of causing one.

— Allen Bernard, Managing Editor, CIO Update.com

PS - I put "saved" in quotes because to get me (and the other thousands of people probably having similar problems) back as customers is going to cost you a lot more.

Here are some more details on the arrests of two suspects in the Zotob and Mytob computer worm cases.

The Techworld piece gives a lot of credit to Microsoft for its cooperation with law enforcement:

The software vendor, through a division it created two years ago to investigate cybercrime, provided the FBI with technical information and analytical support that was then shared with Turkish and Moroccan police.

As it stands now, it looks like the suspects -- two males, 18 and 21 years old -- will be prosecuted in their own countries rather than being extradited to the U.S.

Did you get your piece of cake?

Funny... I missed mine. Shouldn't there be cake all around? We saw this week the tenth anniversary of Windows 95. Do you remember the hooplah that accompanied the release? The glitzy commercials? The promises? People waiting in long lines to get their copy? It was craziness.

It was excitement.

Are you seeing any of that for the promised release of Longhorn? I haven't yet. I think we've all gotten over that kind of excitement. We probably can thank the Internet boom and bust for that. Maybe we all lost too many stock options to rah rah much over new software releases. A cheaper iPod... now then I'd be excited.

But I have to give it up to Microsoft anyway. Ten years old and people are still using Windows 95. Are they just avoiding the bugs in newer releases? Could be. But Win 95 is still working for a whole lot of people. And these days, that's saying something.

...I mean, let's hope justice prevails in the Mytob and Zotob computer worm cases, in which arrests have been made by law enforcement officials in Morocco and Turkey.

And then string 'em up.

I wrote on Wednesday about an article in the New York Times reporting on how Google’s runaway growth and ambitions are making the digital search king the new technology company to hate.

The old one, of course, is Microsoft and its incredibly wealthy founder, Bill Gates. Redmond-bashing long has been a major activity in the tech industry, and I myself have been a frequent and gleeful participant. Who knows, I might even bash Microsoft or Gates again before this post ends.

But it won’t be over an issue raised today at Salon (registration required; sorry). According to the story, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is being vilified in some circles for pledging more than $10 million to a Seattle think tank that promotes the teaching of "Intelligent Design" in schools.

While the Discovery Institute does indeed advocate for Intelligent Design -– which challenges the theory of evolution -- that’s just one of its areas of focus. Others include spreading broadband to more U.S. homes, chiefly by removing regulations, and reducing tax and regulatory barriers to spark economic growth. Taken together, these are politically charged issues argued from a traditionally conservative view.

But the money donated by the Gates Foundation is going toward another Discovery project called Cascadia, whose goal is to improve transportation in the Pacific Northwest. Cascadia appears to be a bipartisan, non-political effort, and Gates Foundation spokespeople have made it clear that the grant money is for Cascadia only. The Foundation contributes zero to Discovery’s Intelligent Design efforts, and is not abandoning its support of sound science.

Say what you will about Microsoft, but Bill and Melinda Gates have been incredibly generous to a number of good causes through their foundation. Let’s hope they're not tarnished unfairly because of these contributions to Discovery.

It only makes sense to wait until Vonage discloses financial documents before assessing the VoIP player's rumored initial public offering.

But my quick take is that while Vonage is the current U.S. market leader in voice over IP -- it has 800,000 households using its services to make phone calls over the Internet -- its list of powerful competitors is long and sobering.

Among the companies fighting for VoIP market share are telecoms such as AT&T and Verizon and cable firms such as Comcast and Time Warner.
Internet gorillas such as Google, Microsoft and AOL also are adding voice functionality to IM and online games.

Meanwhile, Skype, an Internet telephony company based in Luxembourg, has 50 million global subscribers to its free service. (Full disclosure: I use Skype and have had great success with it.)

Vonage reportedly hopes to raise $600 million with its IPO. It'll need a deep war chest to win this battle.

It was Abraham Lincoln who said (or so they say) "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."

Honest Abe apparently didn't say anything about those who keep their mouths shut but get quotes attributed to them anyway. It's happened to some of the most famous and intelligent minds in the tech industry, like IBM's Thomas Watson, who is often quoted as saying "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." And Bill Gates, who supposedly said "640K ought to be enough for anybody."

USA Today's Kevin Maney, who wrote a book about the aforementioned Watson, devoted a column this summer to debunking these and other famous quotes from the technology world that never happened.

In addition to exposing fictitious quotes, Maney devotes some space to clarifying and adding context to quotes by William Orton, president of Western Union, who professed no faith in this thing called the telephone; and Harry Warner, of the Warner Brothers, who didn't understand why people would pay to hear actors talk.

In our efforts to attribute such quotes to famous people, we overlook some of the most veracious things ever said about technology. Like my favorite by Saturday Night Live's Jack Handey:

One thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse.

You'll find me on the golf course tomorrow. Have a nice weekend. Thanks to Ed Bott for the link.

-- Mike Pastore

To Mike Pastore's post below about outsourcing demand outpacing India's supply of IT talent, I would add China to the list of countries that could become the new IT outsourcing capital of the world. This article on ebusinessforum.com explains why.

Two recent articles have shed light on a quiet storm –- the boom in high-tech jobs.

Datamation’s James Maguire filed a thorough report recently on the good news in the IT job market:

“The job market for tech workers has rebounded considerably since the dark days of 2000 and 2001, according to a recent report by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

John Challenger, the firm’s CEO, tells Datamation that he’s bullish on tech hiring. ‘It’s a strong job market for IT,’ he says. ‘It’s picked up in the last two to three years -- quite heavily.’

… Between the first and second quarters of this year, job hiring announcements spiked 184 percent, according to Challenger figures.”

Another writer has also chimed in on the boom. Well-known technology journalist Michael Malone explores the subject in his Silicon Insider column. A recent drive from Silicon Valley up to AT&T Park to watch the Giants got him thinking about the boom and why it hasn’t been reported:

“One (reason) is the media, everyone's favorite whipping boy these days. Let's face it (and I've been a journalist long enough to know), the press is hesitant to ever credit a Republican president for a strong economy — for fear it might help the GOP win the next election and prove correct all of those absurd ideas like tax cuts.

A second reason, I believe, is superstition. Not just economically, but psychically, we took a devastating double whammy from the one-two punches of the tech crash of 2000 and September 11, 2001. One of the greatest economic miracles of modern times is how the U.S. managed to come all of the way back from that multi-trillion-dollar loss in only a half decade. But no one seems to want to talk about that — because, psychologically, I think we are still shell-shocked."

I recently embarked on a similar trip to San Francisco and I also noticed another boom that Malone writes about: the boom in luxury cars.

BMWs in particular are fresh in my mind, because of the shenanigans of some jerk. We'd stopped at the Father Junipero Serra rest stop on Interstate 280. The rest stop features a big statue of a pointing Father Serra (a statue that Stanford students like to dress up for the Big Game with Cal).

I was walking with my son to the rest stop's bathroom, when a shiny new black BMW with tinted windows came racing through the parking lot like he was still on the freeway. He was throttling it hard. I wanted to throttle him. Reminded me of the stressed out tech execs and venture capitalists of the late 90s.

Let’s hope this latest boom will produce many great products, lots of jobs, more media coverage … but fewer out-of-control venture capitalists and lame-brained entrepreneurs.

I try not to get too much news from CNN, and I'll give you an example why. This past Sunday, while eating breakfast, I flipped between CNN and ESPN to catch up on what I missed while I was out and about all day Saturday. CNN aired a very timely segment on improving the fuel efficiency in your car. Recommendation No. 1: Don't drive with the windows open, it increases drag. Recommendation No. 2: Don't use the air conditioning. Click.

But I digress. CNN did cover a Gartner report that says India, outsourcing capital of the world, will have trouble holding that title in the near future. India has problems with its infrastructure and keeping up with the demand for skilled workers, according to the report.

There are also basic economics at play:

Given that India's been doubling its outsourcing operations every year for the past four years, Chohan said he's not too surprised by the current imbalance in the labor demand-supply equation as well as the onset of wage inflation and high levels of attrition.

Outsourcing is going to follow the cheap labor. The Gartner report mentions the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hungary and Poland, as those who can challenge India as the outsourcing capital of the world.

--Mike Pastore

I note for three reasons the news that Playboy next month will launch a Web version of its print magazine:

1. It’s a cheap way to get page views.
2. It could mean more workplace porn hassles for IT managers.
3. Did I mention the cheap page views?

Regarding No. 2, a good piece in Computerworld two months ago reported that more than half of Fortune 500 companies have had at least one computer porn-related incident in the past 12 months.

And it’s no laughing matter. In 44 percent of the cases the culprits were fired, according to a survey cited in the article, while another 41 percent of incidents resulted in disciplinary action. That kind of thing costs an organization money, disrupts business and affects morale.

In addition to Playboy’s cyber plans, it appears the monthslong lull in pornographic spam (I didn’t know there was one) has ended. So IT managers can expect an even larger flow of objectionable images into their networks.

While we’re on the topic, in every story I read about the hazards of porn in the workplace, there’s always some expert warning about the possibility of sexual harassment lawsuits. Has there ever been one? If so, I can’t find it. Anyone who knows, please drop me a note.

Ed Bott, a Windows and Office guru, is tracking reviews of the Windows Vista Beta 1 release on his blog.

We know that Beta 1 is geared toward developers and those who are very technically inclined. So it should come as no surprise that Ed found issues with reviews published in both the Boston Globe and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I think it's safe to say that the reviewers in the mainstream press were in over their heads, focusing mainly on cosmetic changes and simply installing the far-from-finished product. Of course, being savvy enough to install the software is a good first step.

From the AJC review, after the writer had trouble installing the beta on three PCs:

When I finally tried it on a fourth computer at work, I realized that the disc was a DVD, not a CD. Have I mentioned I can be a bit dim-witted? None of the machines I used had a DVD drive.

And he felt compelled to include this in his review because...

Ed did find a review he liked, and not only because it took a favorable view of Vista Beta 1, but because it had substance. It's in Government Computing News (you can find it here), and it talks quite a bit about the new security features in Vista. And since security is the most popular topic when Microsoft comes up, that seems like a good place to start.

--Mike Pastore

There's an interesting article in today's New York Times about how many in the technology world -- particularly in northern California's Silicon Valley -- are turning against Google, the corporation.

Here's the nut paragraph in Gary Rivlin's piece:

It was not that long ago that Google reigned here as the upstart computer company that could do no wrong. Now some working in the technology field are starting to draw comparisons between Google and Microsoft, the company in Redmond, Wash., that Silicon Valley loves most to hate.

And here's one of the article's money quotes:

"In the day, you'd hear that Microsoft was the evil empire, especially in Silicon Valley," said Brian Lent, president of Medio Systems, a start-up in Seattle working on mobile-phone-based search. "Google is the new evil empire, because they're in such a powerful position in terms of control. They have potential monopolistic control over access to information."

That last sentence, if true, is pretty scary. It'll be interesting to see how things continue to evolve. But for many people in the tech industry who root for the underdog, it seems Google has jumped the shark.

With Google letting everyone in on its rather poorly kept IM secret, today is a good day to discuss the state of collaboration. It's one of the areas we cover on our Intranet Journal site.

An Oracle exec writing over at Line56.com this week echoes something I've heard for years from those in the collaboration and usability areas: e-mail as a collaborative platform is just awful. (Thanks to the Shared Spaces blog for the link.)

While very powerful, e-mail is not inherently secure across organizational boundaries and provides very little structure for teams to work together. As the volume of e-mail increases, important items are increasingly lost in a sea of information. Keeping track of approvals or the latest version of documents is difficult if not impossible. The bottom line is that e-mail is an ineffective tool for team collaboration.

The result, according to the author, is an increase in collaborative team spaces, including the new one Oracle (surprise!) unveiled this week. All of the familiar names are involved in the space. In addition to Oracle, IBM has its Lotus Workspace product and Microsoft has both its Groove and SharePoint products. There are some other names that have been doing the workspace thing for some time: SiteScape's Forum and WebWorkZone and Documentum's eRoom come to mind.

I do hear one major concern about these workspace products, and that's the fine line they have to tread between letting the users have control and making sure the sites and forums don't proliferate out of control. As we've increased our coverage of SharePoint on Intranet Journal I've heard from several people with horror stories about Windows SharePoint Services sites getting out of control.

Those who turn to collaborative workspaces have to ensure they don't repeat the problems of e-mail. Otherwise they have to go back to using the telephone.

--Mike Pastore

A recent column by one of CIO Update's guest columnists, Andy Hayler of Kalido, got me thinking about IT and its struggles to provide services in the way its users want to consume them.

It's the word "users." In Andy's column he points out that the only other "industry" that refers to its customers as "users" is the narcotics business. To better meet the demands of the people that consume what IT produces maybe it's time to stop referring to these people as "users" and call them what they are: customers.

I know that changing one word in a lexicon isn't going to instantly solve all IT's problems, but it can't hurt. By referring to users as customers, IT folks will start to see them for what they really are and, in the long run, this may help IT folks rethink how they relate to the people that are consuming what they produce and, therefore, provide better services.

This is not a new idea, I realize, but if history is any sort of guide, then changing the way one group refers to another often means the difference between stigmatizing and understanding. And, if you can understand a group as diverse as the "user community" then maybe it will be easier to solve their problems because you are starting with your own.

— Allen Bernard, Managing Editor, CIO Update.com

What would you guess is the percentage of households in the U.S. using dial-up connections to access the Internet? Thirty-five percent? Forty-five percent?

If I went by people I know, I'd ballpark the answer below 20 percent. But the real figure is an amazing (to me, anyway) 56 percent, according to a new report from JupiterResearch.

I say “amazing” because it's hard for me to fathom how people can tolerate dial-up. I have a dial-up account that I keep as a back-up to my DSL at home, where I work. The few times a year I'm forced to use dial-up, not only does it make me not want to be online, it makes me not want to have electricity. It's slow torture.

But there are good reasons why more than half of the Internet-enabled households in the U.S. have stayed in the slow lane. Not everyone spends vast chunks of their time glued to a Web browser, the way many of us in the tech and publishing industries do. Therefore, they don’t want or need to spend a lot of money for a high-speed connection. And sometimes, notably in rural areas, it’s simply a matter of availability.

But JupiterResearch concludes that “critical mass of broadband has arrived” and forecasts that 80 percent of online U.S. households will have broadband by 2010. That’s why you’ll see more of this kind of price war to lure dial-up customers to broadband.

I saw this on Bruce Schneier's blog. Bruce is one of the most level-headed folks in the security industry.

There is a report out of the U.K. that thieves are using Bluetooth-enabled phones to find Bluetooth-enabled laptops in cars. Once they've located a laptop, they can break into the car and take it. Or, you know, steal the car and get a bonus in the laptop. According to Bruce, laptop owners need to make sure the Bluetooth technology is turned off when they aren't using the computer.

And if you need another reason to disable your Bluetooth connection, six London rail stations recently did trials of Bluetooth billboards.

As people walk past the posters they receive a message on their phone asking them if they wish to accept the advert. If they do, they can receive movies, animations, music, or still images further promoting the advertised product.

This is all part of the cycle of technology where something fills an important purpose, then it gets abused and a backlash is created. It happened with the telephone, where marketers get much of the blame. It happened with cell phones, where rude people ruined it. It happened with e-mail, when it became a conduit for spam.

Before you know it, you're perfectly willing to live without something you needed not all that long ago.

--Mike Pastore

According to a report in today's LA Times, Google is planning to launch an IM service as early as this Wednesday.

Looking to compete with major Internet portals, like AOL and Yahoo, the search engine giant is reportedly coming out with the new service, coined Google Talk, to get them into that arena. This will help put Google on the offensive, since its competitors have recently been moving into its search engine space.

The LA Times also reports that Google Talk is designed to let users chat using more than their keyboards. Users with headsets plugged into their computers reportedly will be able to have conversations with other users on headsets.

While a Google spokesperson told the Times that they would be releasing a new product this week, that person declined to say if it would be Google Talk. Sources say Google has been testing the service for the past month.

-- Sharon Gaudin

A survey of 100 CIOs in the United Kingdom shows that a whopping 80 percent have no confidence that their email systems comply with regulations. To make matters worse, only 18 percent say their current investment in the systems is sufficient.

And 99 percent of those surveyed say email could have a negative impact on their company's reputation, according to Cryoserver Ltd., the London-based email management company that performed the survey.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put this together. A fairly impressive percentage of CIOs are biting their nails down to bloody stumps because they're not able to meet regulations when it comes to their email systems. And yet they're not spending any money to fix the situation -- most likely because their budgets are tight and other critical matters are screaming for attention.

But when it comes to matters of compliance, CIOs, CFOs and CEOs need to realize how high the stakes are. Maybe it's time to rethink IT budgets and figure out how to meet regulations.

And the survey may have been conducted in the U.K., but how different is the situation here in the U.S.?

-- Sharon Gaudin

IBM is partnering with an independent user group to entice more young people to consider a career in mainframe computing.

Big Blue and the user group SHARE say they will provide contacts and resources to IT students to steer them toward jobs riding the big iron.

Encouragement and a spirited mainframe blog are fine and dandy, but I think the partnership needs to ratchet up the marketing sizzle considerably if it hopes to attract today's youth to what many would consider their grandfather's computer.

So to help out, here are a few surefire mainframe-career marketing ideas:

-- Cartoon superhero called "Mainframe Man" (optional sideckick: "Batch Boy")
-- Honorary DB2 certification to rapper 50 Cent
-- Product placement (perhaps the super-sexy IBM z9!) in next Tom Cruise movie
-- A mainframe blog! (Sorry, they have that covered.)

I have plenty more, but that should get them started.

There's an interesting concept put forth in this article from Technology Review.

The cost of computer hardware keeps falling, thanks to commoditization. Open source makes software more affordable. The end result, the article says, is start-ups with low overhead and lots of new ideas.

Since you don't have to put out a lot of capital to start, you're going to see a real creative wave of products.

Low capital costs are, of course, a radical departure from the days when software start-ups spent like wild on technology using funds from venture capitalists. This is all possible, according to those in the article, because the quality of open source software has improved.

In the past, one had to have plenty of technical know-how and patience to use open-source software. Although tech know-how is still required, the programs have gotten much easier to use and the support much better.

The anecdotes in the article seem to prove that using open source software and keeping hardware costs down can speed time to market. And I would assume the creativity increase comes from the low capital opening doors for just about everyone. We've been through this before, I think, back when anyone's good idea could become a stock market darling.

But these entrepreneurs don't have to deal with VCs that think they know everything. We'll see if they do any better without them.

--Mike Pastore

I'm not even close to being a "gamer" -- the only video game I ever play is Madden. But a lot of ITers are, so I'm posting a second consecutive item on video games because this one is about a more important topic than the exorbitant price of Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360.

Two university professors who conducted an empirical review of 20 years of research into the effects of video games have concluded that children who play violent video games are more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior.

The researchers said players "tend to imitate the moves they just 'acted out' in the game they played." I know from personal experience that this is true. Once, after a particularly high-scoring game of Madden, I absolutely toasted my wife on a fly pattern to our living room.

Seriously, as reflexively defensive as many gamers are about purported links between violent video games and aggressive behavior, it's hard to dismiss a growing and consistent body of research supporting this thesis. And with politicians realizing they can score points and even raise campaign money with this issue, look for more media noise and legislative proposals to control/censor/ban certain video games as the midyear national elections approach in November 2006.

An interesting opinion piece from Computerworld last week talked about how IT workers spend their time at work.

My company's research shows that roughly two-thirds of most IT staffers' time is spent on the installation, migration, patching, security and compliance work that, while clearly necessary, contributes little or no direct business value. In some organizations, the figure is closer to 90%.

That's frightening. It's no wonder people are trying to place blame for viruses and patches.

Many organization may turn to Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) to help solve complexity and redundancy issues, but that won't be a quick or easy fix.

In the short run, SOA actually increases system complexity and requires conceptual and architectural skills that many IT departments sorely lack. Most enterprises are still experimenting, and even the leading vendors talk about a relatively slow transition, with the real momentum for SOA not building until 2007 or so.

Any organization spending 90 percent of its time patching systems and doing installations and migrations has deeper issues. And, as the article points out, reducing those issues is what's needed. Not more software thrown at the problem.

--Mike Pastore

A Web poll of 1,000 business users shows that 35 percent blame Microsoft for the recent worm attacks that have laid many companies low.

The poll came just as three major viruses took advantage of a Microsoft plug-and-play vulnerability -- even though a patch had been issued for that flaw. Zotob has been wreaking a lot of havoc, as have Rbot and Tilebot-F. Analysts at Sophos, Inc., the anti-virus and anti-spam company that ran the survey mentioned above, say they're not sure which of the three viruses disrupted the networks at The New York Times, CNN, ABC and The Financial Times... but be sure that one of them is to blame for some downtime at these lofty news outlets, as well as at countless other companies.

The Sophos survey goes on to show that 20 percent blame system administrators for not getting networks patched fast enough. And 45 percent hold the virus writers responsible for the estimated 19 worms that all take advantage of the same flaw.

So who is to blame? Microsoft for having the flaw in the first place, even though they issued a patch before the malware hit? IT managers for not getting their systems patched quickly enough, despite the fact that they're commonly swamped with a flood of patches to deploy?

The obvious answer is that the virus writers are to blame, but I doubt that our scorn is going to dissuade them at all. The industry simply has to come up with a better mouse trap when it comes to dealing with patches. Money, businesses and jobs are at stake.

-- Sharon Gaudin

Earlier in the week I wrote about how fears surrounding data security are pushing online consumers away from personalization.

Yesterday I spoke to Andrew Dunning, director of product marketing at portal vendor Plumtree, and asked him about something I read in Plumtree's State of the Portal Market 2005 report.

It seems personalization has lost its luster among enterprise users as well. There was a time when end-user personalization was a big selling point for portal vendors like Plumtree.

There are several possible reasons for this. I think the way Internet users receive information from sources like Google and RSS feeds has opened their eyes to content similar to or related to the content they are looking for. Personalization did make certain information easier to find, but it also put users in a box. It also had the potential to make life difficult for those moments that inevitably pop up when someone is sick or on vacation and we need our roles to adapt.

There's also the possibility that personalization was just one of those early Internet ideas that seemed like a good idea at the time.

--Mike Pastore

The stakes -- or at least the prices -- are getting higher for buyers of video game consoles.

Microsoft has announced that its new Xbox 360, tentatively due out in November, will sell for up to $399 in the U.S. market, making it the most expensive game console yet.

Maybe that price tag should include legal fees for your Grand Theft Auto character.

I found this article from Digital Web Magazine fascinating. Think for a minute about every conference call, meeting, and e-mail thread you've been involved in about home page design. You know the ones. They usually go for days about the minutiae of where to place a certain icon or logo, or how big it should be.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but you've been wasting time. Well, OK, maybe not. But the gist of the article is that in a world increasingly full of content aggregators like search engines and RSS feeds, the home page has lost much of its importance.

Despite our long hours and good intentions, content aggregators throw this site-centric idea out the window. They allow users to bypass a large portion of the design, whose sole purpose is to get them to target content. In this way the information architecture the designer envisioned may go unused, with users never clicking on the carefully crafted navigation links, never using the location-specific breadcrumbs, and in some cases never even seeing the much-fretted-over home page.

The writer recommends that as part of their re-thinking designers follow a few steps: embrace Web standards, focus on the page level, design for different aggregator types, and move toward user-driven aggregation systems.

Thanks to the daily headlines at Shore Communications for the link. If your role in your organization is at all related to content, it's a must read.

--Mike Pastore

It's one thing for the Zotob worm to cause slowdowns and other technical problems that impact the daily course of business. It's another thing altogether when some punk's idea of a prank interferes with the ability of wired workers everywhere to goof off efficiently on company time.

Curse you, Zotob!

Google is offering 14.8 million shares of common stock to raise funds for a number of reasons, including working capital and possible acquisitions.

While the online search leader’s stock dipped on the news, Google has been a huge success story on Wall Street, with shares these days trading around $280, more than triple the $85 per share IPO from last Aug. 19.

So as Google approaches its one-year anniversary as a public company, what’s it worth?

Based on today’s stock price of $279.28 (at 11:30 a.m.), Google’s overall value as a company – its market capitalization -- is $77.66 billion. Let’s put that market cap in perspective:

Billions

$366.33 – Exxon Mobil
$290.75 - Microsoft
$129.29 – IBM
$113.89 – Cisco Systems
$87.12 – Home Depot
$77.66 – Google
$53.81 – eBay
$53.38 - Disney
$48.45 – Yahoo
$28.28 – Halliburton (yes, that Halliburton)

Clearly Google is a playa, worth more today than Internet venerables such as eBay and Yahoo, but still well below more mature technology companies such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco.

From an analyst's perspective, I believe that if Google can develop a line of quality, reasonably priced power tools, then leverage its existing partnerships, it can make a run at Home Depot.

-- Chris Nerney

With sky-high gas prices hurting the average Joe more than anyone else, maybe it's time to take the wraps off an idea whose time is nigh: teleworking.

Today, more and more companies are saving money on office space, electricity and general overhead while boosting morale by allowing some employees to work from home. Sun, for example, has up to 25% of its workforce off-site at least part of the time, saving the company millions.

Studies have shown that employees allowed to work at least one day a week from a home office are happier, more productive, require less sick leave, etc.

Not everyone in a company is able to work from home, but as the economy shifts from manufacturing to information as its base, more and more employees are able to do their jobs from just about anywhere. And, on top of everything else, this could mean you don't have to lay off employees to cut your operating budget. AT&T, for example, is said to save up to $150 million per year through teleworking.

So maybe it's time to release that Kung-Fu grip on your staff and at least explore the idea. Who knows, maybe you could even get yourself out of the office before 8 P.M. and lower your own stress levels at the same time … wouldn't that be a nice change?

— Allen Bernard, Managing Editor, CIO Update.com.

I know you're all loyal EarthWeb readers and read our CIO Update site religiously, so I'll take it upon myself to point out interesting CIO content from another site.

James Champy, chairman of Perot Systems Corp.'s consulting practice and the company's head of strategy, has opined on how to be a good CIO. Champy has written several books on management and corporate strategy, so his ideas carry some weight.

If you've been following this blog, you know my feelings about most meetings and I was happy to see Champy agrees with me. Part of his advice for CIOs: Stop going to meetings unless they are with customers.

The most productive meetings are always with customers -- internal or external. Too many internal meetings are spent arguing about resources or the allocation of costs. The worst meetings are those that try to solve the conundrum of transfer pricing between internal organizations, like IT and manufacturing. Just remember that no company becomes great doing business with itself.

He also advocates new ways to measure production:

Too many companies measure productivity on intermediate results, such as lines of code produced per day. What does that matter if the code is never implemented or accomplishes no real improvement in how the business runs?

--Mike Pastore

Well, at least it's a renewable energy source...

If your organization is investing in content personalization for Web site visitors, it would behoove you to examine the results of the Second Annual Personalization Survey.

Almost two-thirds of respondents are concerned their personal data they provide in return for personalization might not be secure. The result of this, as you might expect, is fewer online visitors are using personalization features.

Based on the fear of losing personal information, fewer consumers than last year are willing to provide personal preference and demographic information in exchange for personalized content, according to the survey. In 2005, 59% of respondents indicated a willingness to provide preference information, down six percent from 2004. Additionally, 46% of respondents are willing to provide demographic data in 2005, down 11% from 2004.

Personalization makes it easier for online visitors to find things, and should, in turn, make them happier customers. At least, that's what happens when it's done properly.

One thing is clear from the survey: Not only do organizations have to make visitors aware of their policies regarding personal information, they have to make sure the information is secure.

--Mike Pastore

In its rush to clean up the mess after Enron and Worldcom fell apart, the government turned to legislation and stricter regulation from the SEC. The most famous of these efforts would be Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), which in addition to practically spawning a software market overnight, will ensure that people remember (and probably curse) the name of Maryland Senator Paul Sarbanes, who is retiring next year.

While public companies must deal with SOX regulations, SEC-regulated brokers and dealers have their own rules to follow. The best known, at least I thought it was the best known, of these regulations says that brokers must maintain a secure, non-alterable, and searchable archive of all their e-mail for as long, in some cases, as long as seven years.

But lo and behold, it seems that while I knew brokers have to maintain an e-mail archive, many of the brokers didn't. Or don't care. Or haven't gotten around to it yet.

According to a study from Intradyn, one in three small-to-mid-sized securities firms are still not archiving e-mail to meet SEC regulations. While Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and the rest of the Wall Street old guard have had the most prominent roles in the ups and downs of the last few years, firms of less than 100 employees make up 94 percent of the NASD's membership.

Key findings indicate that 36 percent of the firms surveyed were not yet archiving e-mail. More surprising, 20 percent said they were not even aware of the requirements. However, 80 percent of the firms that were not currently archiving have plans to do so.

Then there is another group:

Even though their privacy was assured, more than half of the broker-dealers contacted refused to participate in the survey. These firms were not counted in the study results.

Is there any wonder people don't trust Wall Street?

--Mike Pastore

New CEO Mark Hurd got a good report card for his first full quarter at the helm of HP. The company reported Tuesday that third-quarter revenue rose 10 percent, topping Wall Street forecasts.

Hurd took over as CEO in late March after HP’s board of directors fired his ill-fated predecessor, Carly Fiorina, who has gone on to a career as a Republican political appointee-in-waiting.

HP’s revenue for Q3 was $20.8 billion, compared to $18.9 billion in last year’s third quarter. Net income (excluding one-time items) was $1.2 billion, or 36 cents per share. Analysts had predicted an average net income of 31 cents per share.

While I don’t have the earnings statement line items in front of me, I’m certain that eliminating Fiorina’s traveling coterie of hairdressers and security professionals was worth 3 cents per share in savings alone. Plus it freed up all that money for HP to hire former Dell CIO Randy Mott, whose compensation package tops $15 million. (A move which no doubt helped cushion the blow for the 14,500 employees HP announced last month it was shedding.)

Speaking of Mott, another one of his former employers – Wal-Mart, also known as the distribution arm of Chinese trinket manufacturers – showed its smallest quarterly profit gain in four years and warned that Q3 earnings would not meet street estimates. At last, a genuinely positive economic trend!

Those of you who enjoy rooting for a plucky upstart against a certain large, monopolistic company just received some sobering news.

The latest numbers from Web monitoring firm Net Applications show that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser finally may be turning back the challenge of Mozilla’s Firefox open-source browser.

Microsoft saw an increase in users of IE in July to 87.2 percent from 86.56 in June. Meanwhile, Firefox’s market share dipped to 8.71 percent in July from 8.07 percent the month before.

These might seem like miniscule changes, but they are significant because they reverse a monthslong trend that began when Firefox was released last November and had been fueling hopeful talk that Microsoft’s oft-criticized browser -- which boasted 96 percent market share in June 2004 -- may have met its match.

Further, they increase the chance that the Mozilla Foundation’s stated goal of 10 percent market share by the end of this year will prove to be a pipe dream. As I wrote in May, "just as any public company can be punished on Wall Street for missing financial targets, it's possible that a flurry of 'Firefox Misses Market Share Goal' headlines could create a deadly psychological barrier in the browser market."

My gut feeling is that Firefox needs at least 20 percent market share to be a viable alternative to IE for the average Internet user. It was headed in the right direction. Now it’s not.