September 2005 Archives

Our friends over at Developer.com published a Q&A with Pat Gibney, IBM Director, Software Group Componentization, which discusses IBM's Community Source development strategy.

Taking a page from the open source community, where developers collaborate to create components of software, IBM's program helps the company develop components in-house that can be used in any number of software applications. Gibney says the program saves valuable time.

Called Community Source, this development model mimics the collaborative style found in the open source model, with one result being that IBM is now able to bring its commercial software to market about 30% faster. With 100 Community Source projects underway, this internal open source model has never been attempted on this scale in a commercial enterprise, for as broad a product portfolio as IBM's.

WebSphere Studio, WebSphere Integrated Runtime, WebSphere Application Servers, Lotus Workplace, Rational Application Developer, and WebSphere Portals have all used or utilize Community Source as part of their development cycles, according to the interview. There are 266 active projects.

Because Community Source leads to increased awareness of reusable assets, we maximize the probability that similar capabilities needed across different product lines will be satisfied by the same shareable component. This improves horizontal integration which then improves overall consumability. It also increases speed of delivery. For any development effort, having access to the right reusable component allows for faster delivery, even if changes need to be made.

If your development team isn't trying something like this, maybe it should.

It seems anything is possible. A new musical comedy about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is taking the Off-Broadway scene by storm.

No, I'm not making this up. Seriously.

Nerds:// A Musical Software Satire is a limited run production, showing through Oct. 2. Hurry. Buy your tickets now! This has got to be funny.

The show follows the story of Gates and Jobs as ''they blaze a path from 'garage inventors' to warring titans of the computer revolution.'

According to the Web site, songs in the show include I am Just a Nerd and Windows Rap. My toes are already tappin'! Of course, I'm trying awfully hard to picture the two 'titans' arm and arm, belting out a tune while doing high kicks.

You're smirking now, aren't you? But come on... if they could make a successful musical about a bunch of cats, couldn't they do the same about a bunch of geeks? The show is playing in the Beckett Theater as part of the NY Musical Theatre Festival.

BusinessWeek's look at Dell this week raises a number of questions about a company that was once a darling of consumers looking for inexpensive PCs backed up with customer suport.

The story focuses on the launch of Dell's XPS line of computers for tech-savvy types like gamers, or people who have money to burn and want a new PC. XPS computers, you see, start at over $1,000.

As a backdrop to all of this, however, are some numbers that Dell is not too proud of: complaints to the Better Business Bureau about Dell were up 23 percent from 2003 to 2004, and BusinessWeek says they're up another 5 percent this year. Dell's customer satisfaction rating fell 6.3 percent to 74 in a University of Michigan survey.

While those numbers aren't good, what's scarier for Dell customers who won't be buying an XPS model is that paying more will get you better service, creating a have and have-not atmosphere among Dell's customers.

In an added appeal to the high-end market, Dell is offering a buffed-up service package for the XPS machines. Their standard warranty is one year, compared with just 90 days for Dell's other PCs. Plus, Dell gives XPS customers a special phone number to call for service and support, which is supposed to put them in short phone queues and help them avoid the long hold times that irk many existing Dell customers.

In his blog, BusinessWeek's Rob Hoff questions the wisdom of cutting corners with support

Whether it's providing adequate support or building better products that just work, technology providers need to step up to the plate. Sell stuff that people are delighted with, instead of stuff that they merely endure, and maybe they might be willing to pay a few bucks more.

Those with Dell horror stories certainly found a forum to vent in the comments attached to the BusinessWeek story. I guess this weekend I'll have to hug my Dell.

Sure, their salaries are paltry relative to other tech titans, but don't expect to see Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer serving up fries at the local McDonald's any time soon.

Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission show that Microsoft co-founder Gates and CEO Ballmer each drew salaries of $600,000 in the fiscal year ended June 30.

Not too shabby, but you don't get to be the richest and 11th-richest Americans simply by squirreling away those paychecks. For that you need serious equity, and between them Gates and Ballmer own 14 percent of Microsoft shares.

A guy who keeps track of how large corporations compensate top executives is mightily impressed, according to this story.

"There (are) so many other founders — the main one being down the coast, with [Oracle founder] Larry Ellison — who have a great deal of money as well, but still pay themselves massive amounts by options every year," said Patrick McGurn, special counsel at Institutional Shareholder Services. "These guys have been on the side of angels with this particular issue."

McGurn might be going a little overboard with the angel stuff, but let's give props where they are due.

Brian Jones, the program manager for Microsoft Office, blogs about XML and what Microsoft calls its Office Open XML file formats on a regular basis. Today, Brian has a very lengthy explanation for why XML is the default format for the upcoming Office 12.

Brian says he wrote the explanation because there is a lack of trust in Microsoft's motivations (you don't say?).

That really concerns me so I wanted to get back to a discussion around our motivations. I think that after you see clearly why we are doing this work, you'll probably have a better time understanding where it's going and you'll see why we aren't going to "pull the rug out from under anyone."

To be honest, far more interesting to me than the argument over how open Microsoft's XML formats are, is the history Brian includes in his post. In the early 90s, the Office developers were developing for people who mostly printed their documents instead of sharing them.

For Office 2000, the internet wave had hit strong. We all thought that web pages were the documents of the future and we wanted Office applications to have the ability to save and edit those documents. So, we spent a ton of time (almost 25% of the overall dev budget) making it possible to save any Office document in HTML.

But the use of the Web as a document format didn't happen to the extent they predicted, and Brian says that's when the conspiracy theories about why Microsoft was so invested in HTML within Office got started. Now they've moved to XML (both Microsoft and the conspiracy theorists).

I'm sure Brian knows he can't explain Microsoft's motivations to the biggest conspiracy theorists. But if you have the time, I found the read very interesting in its discussion of trying to predict trends in how people use their documents and trying to develop software accordingly.

It's ours, so keep your grubby international hands off it.

That's the basic response of the United States to a European Union proposal to create an intergovernmental forum, possibly under the United Nations, that would control the main servers that rout Internet traffic and also would determine who gets specific Internet addresses.

Right now that considerable authority rests with the U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICAAN) and the U.S. Commerce Department. Many countries, especially developing nations, contend the U.S. has too much (read: total) control over the Internet, which is emerging as a key component of the global economy.

The EU proposal, made in Geneva at a meeting prior to November's U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, was roundly rejected by the U.S. official in attendance.

"We've been very, very clear throughout the process that there are certain things we can agree to and certain things we can't agree to," Gross told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva. "It's not a negotiating issue. This is a matter of national policy."

I too would be leery of having the dysfunctional U.N. run the Internet -- oil for 'Net access, anyone? -- but take the U.N. out of the equation, and the "national policy" cited by Gross won't change. You can take that to the World Bank.

What if the impasse continues? It could affect international cooperation regarding spam, cybercrime and identity theft, for starters. Or, as this story mentions, the outcome could be more dramatic:

Without consensus, some experts say countries may move ahead with setting up their own domain name system, or DNS, as a way of bypassing Icann.

In other words, goodbye World Wide Web.

Ask your local pharmaceutical executive how much money there is to be made off the aging U.S. baby boomer population. It seems IBM already has. Or maybe the company just realized it offered its employees the opportunity to leave the company to become teachers and will need software to process all those who do it.

IBM announced yesterday a new practice to help organizations prepare for the upcoming retirement boom.

The firm will supply software programs, consulting services and technological fixes intended to help businesses understand how vulnerable they are to boomer exodus and how to manage it.

Boomer exodus is a real problem. IBM says it has software that can analyze personnel records to help predict how many retirements are coming up; software that can identify where an organization risks losing important knowledge; and software that can help companies track the subtle nuances of business relationships that can be lost when someone retires — like what type of wine a client likes to drink.

But since the mere act of paying for gas to drive to work these days can delay retirement, you can expect an aging workforce in the future. IBM is prepared for that too. The company says it's ready with what it calls "workplace modifications" for older workers who can't hear or see like they used to, including a mouse that compensates for motor tremors.

It's not about being able to tear apart a balance sheet, or being the smartest person in the room, or even good ol' nepotism.

No, to make the successful transition to CEO or COO, an ambitious chief information officer must act the part, according to a new white paper by executive search firm Korn/Ferry International.

The eight-page paper, Aspiring CIOs Should Focus on Critical Behavior Skills, suggests that behavior styles thwart many CIOs' chances to become CEOs or COOs.

Korn/Ferry concluded that to be promoted, CIOs need to be, well, less geeky. They must be more action-oriented than analytical. In other words, more Kirk, less Spock.

The good news, according to Korn/Ferry, is that action-oriented behaviors can be learned, including how to make quick decisions under pressure and how to effectively communicate these decisions to their staff.

And if your new acting skills fail to pay off in the workplace, there's always dinner theater.

Larger software development teams aren't as efficient as smaller ones. You may have been able to guess that, since as teams and organizations grow they tend to become less efficient. But now research proves this to be the case.

The study was done by QSM, software development consultants.

For a typical project of 40,000 source lines of code, QSM found that a 29-person team on average would take 191 staff months of effort and cost $2.3 million (at $12,000 per person month); for a project of the same nature, the 2.5-person team would have used 40 staff months, and cost $480,000.

Obviously the smaller teams takes longer to get the job done, but even then the difference is only 12 calendar days. And why is that?

Large teams created significantly more defects, more than six times as many, in fact. The increased volume of defects creates more rework cycles, more than giving back the schedule benefits of the additional people.

Thanks to Michael Sampson of Shared Spaces for the link.

There are a number of Web sites I visit every day whose design I find confusing, bland or just plain ugly.

One example is Slate, which to me looks unfinished, as if they ran out of money to pay a Web designer and just went with what they had. Ironically, it was on Slate where I found a good article about software that allows users to personalize any Web page to suit their own needs.

The software is a Firefox plug-in called Greasemonkey, which enables you to deploy Javascript code that can modify Web pages after your computer has loaded them (and, I should point out, only on your own machine). In other words:

Greasemonkey resurrects the Web's original spec: Page layouts are just suggestions, people. Everything is remixable.

You don't have to be a geek to use Greasemonkey, either:

Gung-ho Greasemonkey acolytes have already written a few thousand mini-applications that, for example, add competitors' prices to Amazon's book pages, install extra buttons on Google, and increase the security of Yahoo!

You can find hundreds of these Greasemonkey scripts here. Just type in Greasemonkey in the Search Scripts box on the right. Now go play God.

Back in October of 1871, a massive fire destroyed most of the city of Chicago. That's why October is recognized as Fire Prevention Month around the United States. October is also National Cyber Security Awareness Month. I'm not sure what the backstory is on that one.

With October just days away, a couple of announcements along the computer security lines from the Department of Homeland Security caught my eye this week. First, US-CERT will begin issuing uniform names for computer viruses, worms, and other online bad things next month. The program is called the Common Malware Enumeration initiative. You can read all about it at eWeek.

The program is voluntary, and most of the great minds in security say this is a good idea, but they don't really say why. A Bank of America VP says in the article it will help them coordinate their response to attacks because they use security products from multiple vendors. I guess I buy that. But, and I'm trying not to be jaded here, it sounds like the adding of bureaucracy from a bunch that just sent ice for hurricane victims to Maine.

I feel much better about the second announcement. Microsoft, eBay and some non-profits and federal agencies are launching an Internet security awareness campaign across print, television, and online media. I've often wondered why we don't see more of this.

The campaign centers around a Web site at OnGuardOnline.gov with plenty of resources and information, as well as a Stop, Think, Click catchphrase that sounds a lot like its October cousin Stop, Drop & Roll. It might be wise to point the site out to end users in your organization and your family and friends at home. You can read more about it from the Washington Post's Security Fix blog.

Thanks to Bruce Schneier and Brian Krebs for the links.

The tech world loves real conflict and drama, whether it's Linux vs. Windows, Microsoft vs. Google or hackers vs. the civilized Internet.

Those battles, however, pale in comparison to the epochal struggle that has landed in a Pennsylvania courtroom. I know it's OT for a blog about the Internet and enterprises, but it's hard to ignore the challenge to evolution mounted by advocates of a theory called "intelligent design."

The court case involves some parents suing a school board in Pennsylvania for voting last fall to force students to be taught intelligent design, which basically is creationism with a new user interface.

There's an excellent Knight-Ridder article that lays out the arguments on both sides.

This is a serious topic, and how the courts treat it will determine how (or perhaps whether) science will be taught in our public schools. Still, there was one thing in the article that struck me funny:

To buttress its case, the Discovery Institute (which is spearheading the intelligent design campaign) has collected about 400 signatures on a statement labeled "Scientific Dissent from Darwinism." About 80 of the signers are biologists; the rest are mostly philosophers, mathematicians, chemists, computer scientists, historians and lawyers.

Lawyers? Maybe they plan to depose God.

More than once since Windows Vista was given its name have I brought up the issue of hardware requirements.

Some have suggested that the hardware requirements to run Vista will give a viable Linux desktop one last shot a gaining a foothold. I disagree. A 32-bit starter version is going to be available for emerging markets with hardware concerns (much as it was for Windows XP).

Writing over at CIO Update, Steven Warren says he has the lowdown on what exactly you're going to need in the hardware department to get the most out of Vistsa, as well as to get enough out of Vista.

How does this sound? At least a 128 megabyte display card for the full graphical user experience; 256 megabyte for ideal performance. It's also recommended that you run a serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) drive with a 8 MB cache and native command queuing (NCQ).

The bottom line:

It is like building a house. You can have the bones of the house for a certain price but if you add crown molding, natural stone, etc. the price goes up. Of course all of these things are pleasing to eye but if you just want the newer construction with better efficiency it provides, the extras do not matter.

Will the house work for you without the bells and whistles? Yes, just as Vista will work for you without all of the major upgrades to hardware. Certainly, you will benefit from more memory and bigger and faster hard drives, but it really isn't necessary unless you decide it is.

Most important, Warren says, is that you get the security and performance enhancements Vista will provide.

The newspaper industry appears to be in big trouble. And the kryptonite doesn't appear to be online content, but specifically free content — especially free online content. Some headlines to consider:

• Bye, Bye, Broadsheet (Vanity Fair)
  
• The End of an Era: Good Night, News (Richard Reeves via Yahoo! News)
  
• Newspapers in Turmoil! (Rake Magazine)
  
• Paper Loss (National Journal)
  

That last article, written by William Powers, includes this observation:

Watch the behavior of the newspaper industry, and you have to conclude it has some kind of sick death wish. How else to explain its unflagging determination to do whatever it takes to bore and alienate readers?

Powers goes on to call the debut of the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition "one of the more spectacular bellyflops of modern media history."

I haven't seen anyone truly excited about the New York Times' new paid content offerings, but I admit it's rare that people get excited about having to pay for something that was free 10 days ago. My executive editor here is boycotting the paper (so he claims); David Card over at JupiterResearch expects the Times to give up at some point; and our CEO, Alan Meckler, calls the Times move "a big mistake."

Three more headlines to mull over:

• Yahoo Enlists Finance Writers for Native Content (Wall Street Journal)
  
• Print Media's Hot New Star: Celebrity Mags (Washington Post)
  
• From the Times, oddly enough: Why Time Warner Has Fallen in Love With AOL, Again (Hint: because the content is now free)
  

There's a million conclusions you can draw from this. People want their content online. People want their content free. People want their content stupid. Or some combination thereof.

As you probably know by now, China has toughened restrictions on the kind of information it will allow on the Internet. Basically, pro-government news and soccer scores are OK; anything else is not.

But thinking about what the average Chinese citizen can view on the Internet made me wonder what I could see if I – from my computer in America -- visited China’s official mouthpiece, Xinhua News Agency.

In its story announcing the new government rules, Xinhua said Web sites must be “directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests." (Which I figured ruled out any Paris Hilton coverage.)

So what does Xinhua let outsiders see? Well, the front page is filled with the kinds of headlines you’d see anywhere: “Egypt’s Mubarek Sworn in for Fifth Term,” “Al-Qaeda Leader Sentenced to 27 Years in Jail,” etc.

There also was blatant propaganda, such as the package of stories on Tibet. “Smiling faces were everywhere as people celebrated the 40th birthday of the Tibet Autonomous Region,” we are told. Admittedly, I’ve never been to Tibet, but I hear that nation's subjugation to China offers scant pleasure to its long-suffering people.

The features sections were surprising, and made me reconsider my Paris Hilton theory. The top story in Entertainment was about the Playboy fashion show in Taipei. Another prominent piece was “Stars Pose Naked for Breast Cancer.” And in the Life/Health section, there was a handy guide to recognizing phony beggars in Shanghai.

These are articles I can read online in America. Can the average ‘Net user in China also read about the naked stars, or are they force-fed only news about the country’s 15-year road construction plan? If someone could reveal this information without being imprisoned for divulging a state secret, please fill me in.

The Joker sat glumly, watching the fawning television coverage of his arch-nemesis and primary threat.

"I have given a name to my pain, and it is Batman," The Joker says. Then he shoots the TV.

In the 1989 movie, The Joker was played by Jack Nicholson. In today's real-life technology industry, that role belongs to Microsoft. And the name Redmond has given its pain is Google.

That's the basic thrust of this excellent article about the realization of Microsoft's decade-old fear that the World Wide Web somehow would jeopardize its powerful, Windows-based business model.

Here's one excerpt:

More than a few analysts believe that Google, with its massive array of networked computers and Web-based software, is rapidly expanding beyond its traditional search business and is about to collide with Gates & Co.

And here's a quote in the article from an internal Microsoft memo (first reported in the Wall Street Journal):

"Google threatens Microsoft's position on the Internet, and could potentially lock Microsoft out of its existing distribution channels and reduce the value of Windows."

The stakes are high, citizens of Gotham City.

Computer People, an aptly named British IT recruitment firm, did a survey that found that techno-speak confuses office workers.

Over half (56%) of those surveyed said that IT professionals "speak another language" with two fifths (40%) saying that they feel IT staff are unaware of the confusion that tech jargon causes.

The survey found that the terms bandwidth, HTML, hostname, alias, and IP address are the most commonly used bits of jargon.

How to bridge this communications gap? Almost 70 percent want their computer-related issues compared to more easily understood problems, like those in a car. Computer People suggests using analogies. ("Do you know how your catalytic converter uses platinum and rhodium as catalysts? Microsoft Excel tables are just like that.")

Another 20 percent, ever considerate of the value of the IT department's time, would like visual aids like flow charts to aid in their understanding of IT problems. Ten percent think IT staff should provide jargon-free literature.

Meanwhile, back in the cubicles, 85 percent of the office workers in the survey said they use their own jargon in their roles at work. The IT staff wants them to develop a first-person shooter console game to help them learn it.

Thanks to ChiefTech for the link.

Whenever I come across a column that lists the problems with IT management, I can probably guess at least three of them off the top of my head. Martin Brown's Computerworld blog pointed out one such list that puts an open source spin on things.

The list comes from Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier, who wrote the "Five common mistakes that Linux IT managers make" over at IT Manager's Journal. But Brockmeier's approach isn't just "All Linux all the time." In fact, he encourages patience and thorough research before moving to open source applications.

Brockmeier also harps on the lack of communication that seems rampant in IT management.

In my experience, most IT departments have very poor practices for disseminating information between members of the IT department and the users who depend on them. Vital information, like passwords and setup information for home-grown applications, often lives with the systems administrators rather than being stored in a central and permanent location.

Last month I mentioned the same issues as a problem for organizations with IT staff nearing retirement.

While most coverage of Forbes magazine's annual list of richest Americans has focused on the rapid ascension of Google's co-founders, I think this headline from the U.K.'s Inquirer offers the best perspective:

Four out of five top billionaires are IT bosses

You must ask yourself why

I'll ponder that rather droll question another day, For now, here's who tops the Forbes list of the fantastically wealthy:

1. Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman ($51 billion)
2. Warren Buffett, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway ($41 billion)
3. Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder ($22.5 billion)
4. Michael Dell, CEO, Dell Computer ($18 billion)
5. Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO, philanthropist, ($17 billion)

With the exception of Buffett (and quite honestly, I've never cared for all that Parrothead silliness), the top five is comprised of technology entrepreneurs.

And there are more in the top 20. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is No. 11 (with $14 billion), Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are tied at No. 16 ($11 billion each) -- up from No. 43 last year -- and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar checks in at No. 18 ($10.2 billion).

The Forbes list includes a few other techies, but once you get below, say, $5 billion, can you really take them seriously?

While blogging generally is a safe endeavor, there are hazards. Criticize Apple or open source, for example, and you will be tarred, feathered and dragged through the blogosphere by a mob of incensed and indignant geeks brandishing iPods in lieu of pitchforks, your techno-ignorance sadistically exposed for the cyberworld to see.

(Fortunately, I've only heard of this happening because I stand behind no blogger in my rapt awe of all Apple and open source products.)

Sometimes, however, one's online musings court a different kind of danger, especially in countries such as China, Iran and others where the Internet is heavily monitored and controlled.

Reporters Without Borders (RWB), a Paris-based organization that advocates free-speech, on Thursday released The Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents to help people avoid government censorship and worse.

The 87-page pub is free and available online. It includes tips on blogging anonymously and techniques for dodging censors.

The handbook also contains personal stories to underscore the real-world consequences of angering a repressive government. One of the handbook's contributors, Arash Sigarchi, was sentenced in Iran to 14 years in prison for posting messages online criticizing his government. Sigarchi is free pending appeal.

RWB says at least 70 people have been jailed worldwide for violating censorship laws, with most (62) occurring in China.

In the most recent case, RWB accused Yahoo! of collaborating with the Chinese government by providing electronic information to identify a journalist subsequently sentenced to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets to outside media.

This is funny in a sad sort of way.

It seems that ardent fans of the Manchester United Football Club in England -- that's a soccer team to you Yanks -- took umbrage earlier this year at American millionaire Malcolm Glazer's attempt to take over their beloved Red Devils.

Finding Mr. Glazer unavailable for a personal meeting and thumping, our loyal lager louts decided to wreak vengeance the new-fashioned way: Launching a DoS attack on Allen & Overy, the London-based law firm representing the American tycoon.

According to the linked story:

Infuriated fans of the club attempted to overload the firm's servers "by sending a large quantity of large emails" over the months that Allen & Overy were representing Glazer, according to Mark Andrews, infrastructure developer with the firm.

So did the sassy soccer sods succeed? Here's how Andrews characterized their attempts:

..."a fairly crude attack"

"It was an annoyance"...

..."so unsophisticated"

Not only was the DoS bombing easily thwarted, Glazer won control of the Manchester club in May, no doubt leaving many longtime fans gobsmacked.

And as for our hooligan-cum-hackers, it's off to a pub near Old Trafford for you, lads.

Thanks to TechDirt for the tipoff.

If the recent Forbes and BusinessWeek articles about Microsoft had you feeling down pre-Professional Developers Conference (PDC), then maybe some post-PDC reports will make you feel better.

No, not Gartner's warning to approach Office 12 like a downed wire after a blizzard, but the blog of venture capitalist Rick Segal, who ended up with an employee badge at the L.A. gathering for everything Microsoft. The badge got Rick into some rooms he probably shouldn't have been.

They say Dude a lot. I think that's some new code word. On a more serious note, they get it. You could wander all over and pulse check the place. Having done these events before and lived to tell the tale, it is a different place and, well, the line folks get it. Lots of biz cards were handed out and lots of MS people said, check out my blog for this or that to the customers.

Rick also has an anecdote about how one Microsoft employee fixed a minor problem because he knew if he didn't, the customer who called it to his attention would blog about it. Once fixed, the customer could write a favorable blog. Customer service from the rank and file...

We've published a few articles about using wikis as a collaboration platform in Intranet Journal over the last few months, covering SocialText, Central Desktop, and JotSpot. As we've seen from the traffic to those articles, there is a lot of interest in using wikis to exchange ideas on projects. Wikis are much easier and less expensive to implement for a small project than most types of workgroup software.

Rob Hoff over at BusinessWeek used a wiki so the writers and editors involved in BusinessWeek's Best of the Web feature could collaborate without the mess of e-mail. Rob blogged about the experience this week, pointing out what worked well and what didn't. To his credit, he points out where human decisions may have impacted the software's effectiveness.

Although wiki software lets you revert to previous versions easily, I still felt that too many cooks might overflow the broth, so we limited the number of people who could edit the list. That was probably my main mistake. I think it ended up limiting the effectiveness of the wiki, since we didn't get a lot of participation. To be most effective, you really need all the people, from writers to production folks, to be able to work inside the wiki.

Overall, Rob thought the wiki worked great (they used SocialText, by the way). But as with all collaboration technology, the hard part was getting people to adjust their habits. They haven't made software for that yet.

High-speed Internet access providers are having a harder time luring dial-up users to the fast track.

A new study by The Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals that the adoption rate for high-speed 'Net access is slowing. The organization's survey shows that 53 percent of Internet users had broadband hook-ups at home in May, compared to 50 percent last December.

That's a much slower adoption rate from the comparable year-ago period, when the percentage of high-speed users increased to 42 percent in May 2004 from 35 percent in November 2003.

Not only that, the survey shows nearly one in three American adults (32 percent) do not use the Internet at all, a number that has held steady through the first half of the year.

Oddly enough, 61 percent of these people rate spam as "very annoying" and a paltry 23 percent believe blogs should be eligible for the EPA Superfund.

OK, I made up those last two data points. See what fun they're missing?

Overall, technology really has done some great things for everyone. Its benefits far outweigh its evils by a long, long shot. But, in reading about Google's plan to put a bunch of books online, it seems to me that information and ideas — the cornerstones of our economy — are being commoditized in a way that eventually may lead to a complete devaluation.

Look at the music industry and its fight with P2P networks. I'm no prude and I like getting free stuff just like everybody else, but when you download an artist's material from you "friend's" computer and don't compensate the artist, it's stealing plain and simple.

Pretty soon those artists who have worked like dogs (most of them anyway — I used to be in that business) will find another way to make a buck and we will all lose out.

The same goes for information. Just because you can't carry it away in your car, that doesn't mean taking the thoughts and inspirations of others without due compensation isn't stealing. It is. That's why we have copy write laws and patent laws.

Information, in all its forms, is valuable; perhaps the most valuable commodity of all. Without it, we might as well be finding some flint pretty fast to make some tools because we're all going to have to head for the forest for dinner.

Jack Vinson has an interesting post on sharing ideas and how knowledge travels in organizations. Knowledge management and knowledge sharing are important foundations for intranets, and as the managing editor of our Intranet Journal site, I'm always interested in how people communicate and disseminate information within an organization.

I've been reading Christensen's The Innovator's Solution, and he talks about the struggles that people have for sharing good ideas (innovations) within organizations. His argument goes that "middle managers" are set up to be the gatekeepers and that they have conflicting needs for passing along ideas for the good of the corporation but also managing their own careers. The career-minded manager, who tends to change positions frequently, tends to promote ideas that will show results within their tenure. Similarly, on the bad news side of things, people don't want to be the ones passing along bad news, either upwards or downwards.

The list of 16 reasons why we don't share information is interesting. Jack got it from Dave Pollards' blog. I think anyone who looks at the list can find an example of each one within their organization or at a previous job.

You don't have to have a corporate intranet or be responsible for an intranet to understand the problem. There are good ideas in your organization just dying to get out.

I wrote a column last week about how Wall Street appears primed for another technology investment bubble. Of course, to have a bubble, you need a lot of companies on which to place bets.

Well, here they come. An article in the New York Times (yes, it's true I'm boycotting the Times, but only on a personal basis, and excluding their pro football coverage):

After several years of caution and hesitation, if not outright fear, the venture capitalists are again opening their wallets to the start-ups.

Technology companies are primarily the benefactors of the current venture boom...

Here, though, is the really important part:

Most will fizzle, ...

Let's roll back the tape and play that one more time:

Most will fizzle, ...

Still, that reality isn't a deterrent to everyone because another crucial element for any investing bubble is fear, as in:

...fear of missing out on the next Google or Skype, the two-year-old Internet phone company that eBay plans to buy for as much as $4.1 billion, is causing something rarely seen since 2000: fighting among venture capitalists to own a piece of the hottest properties.

Remember, just because the VCs are getting all in a lather doesn't mean we have to. After all, VCs get in on the ground floor, plus they investing in potential. But by the time a company goes public, it's not about how cool an idea is, it's about a viable business plan and market strategy, demonstrable revenue streams and earnings.

Don't let them tell you otherwise.

I made some changes this morning that will make it easier to leave comments on this blog, if you're so inclined. Our goal was to allow readers to comment with a low barrier to entry, and also protect them (and ourselves) from spam.

Your e-mail address will no longer appear with your name when you comment. The Moveable Type software we use to power this blog has a feature called Spam Protect that allowed us to publish your e-mail address with your comment and still protect it from spam harvesting. But this wasn't readily apparent to visitors. So instead, we won't display your e-mail.

Your e-mail is still required, but will not be sold or published. I added a note to the comment page that tells you we will not publish or sell your e-mail address.

If you use a URL, it will link your name and the URL. This way, if you want people to see who you are, they can click on your name to see your site.

Comments must be approved by the author or an editor. So we can prevent spam in the comments.

You do not have to register to post a comment. You do have to give us a name and e-mail address, but we chose to pass on the full-featured registration process we could have enabled. You can also set a cookie when you comment by choosing "Remember Me" to make the process even faster in the future.

Thank you for reading. And if you like what you're reading, be sure to tell a friend.

Just kidding with the headline. Really. But a study by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business suggests that "CEOs receive more compensation when the board (of directors) has more females."

This fascinating nugget was buried about halfway down a 56-page academic paper (see what I go through for you people?) titled, "Setting the CEO's Pay: Economic and Psychological Perspectives."

The bottom-line conclusion of the research is that CEO pay is determined by many things other than how well the corporation performs, such as size of firm, reciprocity (trading favors) and social influence. Who would have known?

As to why CEOs fare better financially with a board that includes more women, the researchers offer three possible theories:

"Women directors are simply more generous."

"Female directors are less expert such that CEOs are able to convince them to award more compensation" (which the researchers think unlikely).

"Boards of highly paid CEOs appoint more women" to appear more progressive (thus negating any suggested cause-effect).

I think this is pretty interesting stuff and hope to see more studies in the area. But a tip to all you researchers: Don't bury the lead!

Gartner is advising clients to approach Microsoft's Office 12 with caution, according to an article in Information Week and a post in Ed Brill's blog.

Ed is an IBM guy, so he was happy to see that Gartner recommends IT managers take a look at Office alternatives like IBM Workplace.

Despite many potentially powerful enhancements, most enterprises will find it hard to justify upgrading during 2007 and 2008. Pay close attention to Microsoft's Office 12 plans, test and pilot technology as it becomes available and take a look at the broad range of options including: using alternatives to Windows and Office. IBM Workplace is far more "real" today than Office 12, as IBM is shipping Workplace Services Express and other Workplace products.

Among Gartner's other concerns:

The new user interface might make it more difficult to have multiple versions of Office running in an enterprise, like during a rolling upgrade.

There are a number of other upgrades from Microsoft alone, specifically Vista and SQL Server, due out in the same timeframe. So the budget might be tight and time even tighter

Above all, Gartner wants clients to think of their businesses first. If business will suffer waiting for an Office upgrade, then consider an alternative. If business won't suffer, then why upgrade at all? You wouldn't be the first to continue running a Microsoft product long after Redmond has moved on.

Both Gartner and Ed want to know whatever happened to Groove, the collaboration tool that Microsoft invested in and then purchased, presumably to integrate its features into Office. So do I, for that matter.

If you're as ruthlessly pursued by paparazzi as I am, here's some good news, courtesy of computer science graduate students at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

According to GIT student Shwetak Patel, he and a team of fellow researchers have invented a device capable of detecting nearby digital cameras and camcorders and blurring any unwanted images by shooting a beam of light directly at the offending lens.

The device itself is a modified digital video camera hotwired to a computer. Unfortunately, it has limitations. The device can detect digital imaging devices only within 33 feet, so the secret shooters with zoom lenses can still stalk you from afar. It also has a 45 degree range of detection and only works indoors.

Still, it should only be a matter of time before they or some other clever grad students work out these bugs.

That expert analysis comes after about an hour of reading what I could find on Google's Secure Access wireless software, which mysteriously appeared online and was noticed by... everyone who notices such things.

Last month, I noted the Business 2.0 column that suggested Google was building a WiFi network. This morning, Danny Sullivan over at SearchEngineWatch had plenty to say on what Google is doing.

Google wants everyone online. Get everyone online, and you can more easily ensure you're routing them to Google information for searching the web, searching video, whatever. And along the way, you'll show them ads -- targeted to what they're viewing, to where they are actually located...

Google says the Secure Access software was developed by an engineer using his 20 percent personal time. The company, as you may know, requires its engineers to spend 20 percent of their time working on personal technology projects unrelated to their primary Google projects. Regardless of what the people at Google are up to with WiFi, this 20 percent rule is what should get the attention of IT managers. It pays to foster innovation in the workplace.

Not to be outdone by Apple and Motorola, Sprint and RealNetworks are debuting a wireless service that streams radio broadcasts to cell phones.

The new streaming service for Sprint Nextel wireless customers is based on RealNetworks' Rhapsody subscription radio and costs $6.95 a month. Users will be able to listen to several stations as well as podcasts.

And if you're into creating your own raps -- and who isn't? -- the service also includes something called "Beats N Breaks," instrumental hip hop beats over which users can rap.

Not all Sprint phones will be able to access the service, which comes shortly after Apple and Motorola's unveiling of a cell phone that downloads songs via iTunes.

No word yet on celebrity endorsements, but we can only wait with bated breath.

Trains can go faster on straight tracks. This explains (in part) why countries like Japan, Germany, and France have such nifty high-speed railroads while Amtrak's Acela service in the Northeast U.S. continues to struggle. Much of the rail infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor was put down early in the 19th century and had to make its way around existing communities and geography. Japan, Germany, and France were largely rebuilt in the late 1940s after World War II.

Because Americans have been fortunate with regards to invasion and aerial bombardment, the chance to rebuild something after utter devastation hasn't really presented itself — until now. A story in the Washington Post (free registration may be required) last week talked about the possibility of rebuilding the telecommunications infrastructure of New Orleans to make it the envy of 21st century America.

With many poles and wires reduced to sticks and spaghetti, cell towers down, miles of streets still flooded, and parts of the region uninhabitable for the near future, these experts see the perfect opportunity to deploy new systems that otherwise might be too expensive or disruptive to build.

Not only would New Orleans get a new telecom infrastructure, but the city could be wired in a way that the poor could be given a ramp to the Information Superhighway. New businesses can also help bring back and diversify the economy by taking advantage of the improvements.

EarthLink founder Sky Dayton says in the article to forget about the downed lines and instead rely on cellular, WiFi, and WiMax networks. Jeffrey Citron of Vonage says he'd come up with a trenching plan for the major streets in New Orleans while there is no traffic (I don't know how this works in a city that buries people above ground). A satellite executive says he'd go (surprise!) with satellite, adding it would work much better in a disaster.

Good ideas all; though certainly self-serving and hardly perfect. But the plan that really matters is that of BellSouth, the primary phone carrier in the region. When put on the spot, BellSouth's CTO had very little to add to the story, other than the company hopes to let people set their home video recorders from their cell phones one of these days.

So says a report by European IT consultancy Butler Group. In many organizations, just 8 percent of the IT budget is actually spent on initiatives that bring value to the enterprise, their research found.

"An inordinate amount of IT executive time seems to be expended on measuring and controlling costs rather than focusing resources on initiatives that will add value to the organisation," says Mark Blowers, Butler Group Senior Research Analyst and co-author of the study. "Those IT departments capable of measuring performance are in the minority. Small wonder then that IT remains isolated, misunderstood, and treated simply as a cost centre by senior management. This absence of measurement means that most organisations have no idea whether investments in IT are providing increased efficiency, added value, or competitive advantage."

The study found that IT management is not focused on understanding the main value drivers of their organization and coming up with ways IT can help. Butler Group recommends devices like balanced scorecards and business cases to help communicate what is working and what isn't.

Count me among those online New York Times readers who are shocked, disappointed and dumbfounded about the paper's absurd decision to charge readers for the privilege of reading most of its op-ed content.

Starting today, readers must fork over $49.95 per year to read the excellent, insightful commentary of Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. They even have to pay for David Brooks; that's like making the WB a premium cable channel.

All this new policy will do is turn off loyal readers of the Times' op-ed page. This strategy will backfire. For starters, if the Times thinks this content won't make its way beyond the firewall to blogs, discussion groups and emails, it's dreaming. How is the paper going to police that, and what will it cost?

Further, many readers not willing to go underground to read this content will simply forego their regular fixes of NYT op-eds. They'll go cold turkey. Some will pay, but they'll do so grudgingly.

I will not be surprised if the Times eventually reverses course and tears down that subscription firewall.