November 2005 Archives

In the grand cinematic tradition of Son of Kong, Son of the Pinkpanther, and Son of Flubber, comes news from Washington, D.C., that everyone's favorite piece of legislation — Sarbanes-Oxley — may breed an offspring.

Writing over at CIOUpdate, John Webster of the Data Mobility Group, expects more legislation aimed at protecting information and preventing identity theft. What's that, you say? There are too many such proposals in various states of review and passage in almost every state in the union as well as the Federal government?

At last count, there were upwards of twenty different pieces of federal legislation floating around Capitol Hill. While it doesn't appear that anyone of them will reach the floor of either house of Congress in the very near future, I am certain that at least one of them will.

Sarbanes-Oxley targeted information risk, but it had more far-reaching consequences. That's true of most pieces of legislation, in particular the bills that get rushed through in response to a public outcry or panic. There's a list of several such examples in this article from The CPA Journal.

Webster says we should expect more of the same.

Sarbanes-Oxley created a legal obligation to save certain types of electronic records. As such, it set a legal precedent. As similar precedent will likely be set again next year, although this one (call it "Son of Sarbanes" if you wish) will be aimed at making it harder for those who somehow acquire personal data to actually use that data.

Arpan Shah, who works on SharePoint and Content Management Server for Microsoft, is talking about enterprise software adoption.

Once you build or buy and set up an enterprise application, you still have to get your users to start using it. It's a sales job, and it's often difficult because people naturally resist changes.

I strongly feel there are 3 pillars that IT Pros must closely examine when they want a technology to be adopted after it's been implemented. Most people focus on Migration. Others focus on education. There are three pillars: Migration, Education and Policy.

The trick to migration is making sure you move the important stuff, but not everything. You can also phase in the new application so that users aren't focred to deal with an abrupt change.

IT's immediate future will belong to generalists -- at least according to Gartner, Inc.

The technology market research company today unveiled six trends for the next year and beyond. Of greatest relevance to IT workers is this one:

The job market for IT specialists will shrink 40 percent by 2010.

According to Gartner, IT pros must move "from technical specialization to business competence in order to position themselves as tomorrow's business contributors." In other words, goodbye "specialists," hello "versatilists" (Gartner's word, not mine).

Assuming you get to keep your job, Gartner also predicts that it will become more challenging, thanks to compliance requirements:

Through 2008, investigation of new technologies will slow as discretionary dollars are diverted to regulatory compliance.

Here are Gartner's four other forecasts, as outlined in DMReview:

By 2008, one in 10 organizations will require employee-purchased notebooks, possibly offering a "notebook allowance" to offset costs.

By 2010, 30% of American households will use only wireless phone service or Internet telephony.

A 50% increase in healthcare software investment by 2009 might lead to a 50% reduction in preventable deaths by 2013.

Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt will get back together, move to a commune in Hawaii and have twins.

OK, that last prediction was mine, but it's more interesting than the Gartner forecast about BPO service providers and insurance revenue. Snore!

Before the holiday I wrote about Robert X. Cringely and his thoughts on what Google is up to building datacenters all over the place. It's time to re-visit Cringley, as I promised I'd do.

Cringely says Google is planning on little black boxes (as yet unnamed) covered in ports for USB, RJ-45, RJ-11, analog, digital video, S-video... you name it.

Think about the businesses these little gizmos will enable. The trouble with VoIP in the home has been getting the service easily onto your home phone. Then get a box for each phone. The main hurdle of IP TV is getting it from your computer to your big screen TV. Just attach a box to every TV and it is done, with no PC even required. Sounds like Apple's Video Express, eh? On top of entertainment and communication the cubes will support home alarm and automation systems — two businesses that are huge and also not generally on the radar screens of any Google competitors.

He goes on to say the cubes will be the dumbest smart device around, making it easy to set up and keep safe. That's a good thing because he expects to see them floated around like AOL CDs.

It will be in Google's interest to provide them in volume to every Google users, which is to say every broadband user everywhere. As a result, Google becomes overnight a major phone company, a major video entertainment provider, a major player in home automation and even medical telemetry.

For now I'm more interested in what people will make out of the boxes once they're ubiquitous.

Tom Espiner from ZDNet UK managed to get a behind-the-scenes tour of Symantec's Security Operations Center in the U.K., which is where Symantec handles its managed security operations for that part of the world.

This was no small feat. Symantec employs a NORAD-style bunker and security plan that seals the center off from the outside world. Visitors to the center have to be announced 24 hours in advance.

Even the atmosphere inside is highly managed. It is pressurized to 1.5 pounds per square inch greater than outside air pressure, so air is constantly being forced out — handy if someone decides to drop an atomic bomb in the vicinity. In the event of a nuclear attack, the air can be filtered through charcoal, and there are still safeguards in place against a gas attack.

I know what you're thinking: If someone decides to drop an atomic bomb in the area, it makes that botnet attack from Eastern Europe seem somewhat insignificant, doesn't it?

Nuclear attack not withstanding, it's a good read for explaining how managed security operations work and how computer security firms in general are dealing with the explosion in bad stuff out there.

Managed security used to be a service targeted by small and medium-sized businesses, but enterprises have been quick to jump on board lately. It's less expensive, in most cases, than monitoring your own network for intrusion detection and prevention, and enterprises are finding it helps with their compliance needs as well.

Yesterday I passed along some good rules from veteran entrepreneur Evan Williams about how to make an Internet start-up succeed.

Today I have access to more entrepreneurial insights, and this time we're going multimedia, courtesy of the Stanford University Technology Ventures Program (STVP).

STVP has compiled on this page an impressive collection of audios and videos featuring some of technology's most successful start-up gurus sharing their experiences and advice.

Among those featured are Larry Page, co-founder of Google, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Guy Kawasaki, founder of Garage Technology Ventures and author of The Art of the Start; and Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm Computing and Handspring.

Here are the types of topics you'll find:

Developing a business plan
Learning to take risks
Five biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make

The videos can either be streamed or downloaded as MPEGs, and audio podcasts also are now available here. In fact, one podcast features the aforementioned Mr. Williams.

Access to the videos requires a quick registration, but it's worth it.

This is the time of year when people make lots of lists and lots of big plans.

And if your big plan for next year is to launch an Internet company, veteran start-up CEO Evan Williams has posted on his personal blog a battle-tested list of "Ten Rules for Web Startups."

The rules Williams lays out are fairly basic, in sort of a Zen way. He asks you to "be" a lot of things, some seemingly contradictory (can you "be casual" and "be picky"? "user-centric" and self-centered?). But it all makes sense. Here's one snippet of wisdom, this one under "be picky":

Startups are often too eager to accept people or ideas into their world. You can almost always afford to wait if something doesn't feel just right, and false negatives are usually better than false positives.

And this, from "be balanced":

What is a startup without bleary-eyed, junk-food-fueled, balls-to-the-wall days and sleepless, caffeine-fueled, relationship-stressing nights? Answer: A lot more enjoyable place to work. Yes, high levels of commitment are crucial. ... But it can't be all the time.

You can find plenty more of Williams' commonsense advice here. I found his list thanks to Margaret Kane over at Blogma.

Computer virus researcher Eugene Kaspersky, the head of the Kaspersky Lab, published an article last week that offers a pretty detailed overview of the antivirus industry and the problems it faces. While no one recommends giving up on antivirus software, the big takeaway is that it's important to remember antivirus software is not infallible.

Kapersky points out five specific problems the industry is facing, two of which deal with the numbers of viruses out there. Where once it was the "script kiddies" doing the isolated damage, things have changed.

More than 75% of malicious programs — i.e. the overwhelming majority — are created by the criminal computer underground, with the aim of infecting a defined number of computers on the Internet. The number of new viruses and Trojans is now increasing every day by a few hundred — the Kaspersky Virus Lab receives between 200 and 300 new samples a day.

The other three problems are the inability, many times, to delete malicious code and restore data; resource usage; and incompatibility between antivirus programs.

The resource issue I touched on earlier in the month when we talked about viruses that can potentially take advantage of the shortcuts antivirus software uses when scanning files.

I'm going to be all about security this week because I'm preparing for our Enterprise Security Challenges for 2006 Webcasts that are coming up in December. Thanks to Brian Krebs for the link.

I call it that not only because that's the weather over two-thirds of the country today, but because today is the busiest online shopping day of the year. It hasn't quite reached the mania of Black Friday, but it's getting close.

If you're like me, you avoided the stores on Friday. You probably also used the Thanksgiving holiday to gauge what family members want for Christmas. You're probably also going to be filling at least some of those orders online today. (Not me, however, I have too much work to do. Did you hear that, Chris? Too much work to do.)

A story in today's Washington Post puts into perspective how important today is for online retailers.

The online retail industry has taken to calling today Cyber Monday or Black Monday, named after Black Friday, when many retailers traditionally have started to make a profit — or go into the black — for the year. In a recent survey by Shop.org and BizRate Research, 77 percent of retailers reported that their sales last year increased substantially on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

I used to cover online shopping pretty extensively when I was the editor of CyberAtlas in the late 90s. Back then, the workplace shopping phenomena was attributed to people being more likely to have high-speed connections at work. Nielsen-NetRatings attributes the rise in online shoppers from home on Friday to gas prices. I think it's the convenience factor that rules the day.

As for how this impacts productivity at work, here's one reasonable take:

"We actually think it's productive if they do it that way instead of running out to a suburban mall and stretching the one-hour lunch into two," said Bob Dobkin, a spokesman for Pepco, which has 2,500 employees in the area. "We do think it promotes a better employee relationship."

There's a column over at The Register that makes a good case for measuring the ROI of wireless and remote access technology, something far too many companies apparently aren't doing.

But the piece also raises another important, larger point, about the most effective way to introduce technology changes in the enterprise.

The bottom line is to get user buy-in. The IT guy can't just show up one day and say, "Here. You're going to use this from now on." Enterprises need to include employees in the decision-making process when considering new technology. After all, you want to give them a tool they can use, and the best way to determine that is to ask them.

Users are looking to cut out tedious paperwork, reduce unnecessary commuting, and get some more control over their own time. ...Something that supports them along this path will encourage them to be more productive. If it is a solution they buy into, so much the better.

So much the better for their attitude and performance, and for your bottom line.

I'm hard at work on my presentation for next month's enterprise security Webcasts, but my mind has been wandering to holiday shopping thoughts. So goes Getaway Day.

XBox 360 launched yesterday, as I'm sure you know. There has been much talk about whether or not the shortage of gaming consoles was a stunt to drive demand and create buzz. I don't see the common sense of having a shortage of the hot holiday product. It doesn't seem Microsoft would benefit. Then again, if people were able to place pre-orders months ago, how does something like this happen?

In short, the Saugus Best Buy north of Boston looks like a bomb went off. You can see where the chaos went down last night. There's accessory racks that look like they were hit by one of those "grab as much as you can in 60 seconds" shopping cart gimmicks. The Xbox 360s were, of course, long gone. There were plenty of parents at Best Buy, a notable contrast to Circuit City, which was younger in orientation. The parents were leaving the store with sad looks on their faces. This is because one employee actually said that they do not expect to receive another major shipment of Xbox 360s until February of 2006.

That's from Ken "Caesar" Fisher's first-person account. The shortage does seem to be driving up prices on eBay, where one enterprising eBay seller (and aren't they all, really?) included a copy of USA Today to prove the console was in hand. Does that say $1,625? Looks like someone was going to be the only member of their World of Warcraft guild without one.

comScore says online shopping will hit $19 billion during the November through December holiday season, representing 24 percent growth over the 2004 season. So much for fraud concerns turning people off to Internet shopping. comScore credits in-store pick-up, free shipping, and easy returns for enticing consumers.

Have a safe and happy holiday, and for our international readers, enjoy your weekend.

If you haven't seen it already, Jack Shafer's piece in Slate that chronicles the downfall of Google is the kind of read that makes you think twice about a $400 stock.

Sure, it hasn't happened yet. But a couple of weeks ago I told you about Stephen Walli's theory on the downfall of Microsoft, and I'm an equally opportunity doomsayer.

I didn't agree with Walli on Microsoft, and what really frightens me about Shafer's Google prognostication isn't the potential for Google to die. Companies die all the time. Shafer lists some bygone tech companies right atop his piece. It's the thought of big media companies gaining so much control over certain aspects of the Internet that they shut out the other players.

In this scenario, Rupert Murdoch builds an empire of classifieds (both online and offline) so large that it can bar search engines like Google from playing the game. It's basically his own version of the Web open to whomever he invites. Fair and balanced, of course.

I want to return to the Pew Internet survey I posted about yesterday. Buried in the "Further Analysis" section of the nine-page report is some interesting demographic data about search engine use:

On a typical day these are the percentages of internet users in each generation who use search engines:

GenY (ages 18-28) -- 42%
GenX (ages 29-40) -- 51%
Younger Baby Boomers (ages 41-50) -- 37%
Older Baby Boomers (ages 51-59) -- 39%
Matures (ages 60-69) -- 31%
After work (ages 70+) -- 25%

While it's no shock that GenXers lead all other generations in daily search engine use, I am somewhat surprised their percentage is that low. Then again, I'm in the information business and use search constantly (my personal home page is Google News), so in that regard I'm probably an atypical user.

It's also intriguing that Older Baby Boomers edge out Younger Baby Boomers in terms of daily search engine use. It's the only exception to a downhill pattern as you move from GenX through the older generations. And it can't be explained by income (older Boomers have more money) because Pew's survey sample comes from people who already are connected, not both the haves and have-nots.

I'm not one one of those guys that really gets into cars, so you're not going to find me hanging around blogs that cover the automotive industry. I was, however, fully aware of yesterday's news out of General Motors of plant closings and 30,000 layoffs. It seems the only reason the automobile business isn't the worst sector in the United States is because there's an airline business.

We've touched on corporate blogging in this forum before, and like many well-known brands, GM has blogs. One GM blog in particular has been the center of discussion today. It's called FastLane and it has always focused squarely on GM's vehicles.

So what's a corporate blogger to do? Can one realistically expect not to mention the news of tens of thousands of layoffs that made headlines everywhere and captured even my interest?

Dave Taylor addresses the issue on his Intuitive Life Business Blog:

The basic dilemma that faces Bob Lutz and the rest of the blogging team at General Motors: is their target audience investors and business people interested in General Motors the company, or is their audience car afficionados, enthusiasts who want to talk about torque, engine block design and tire traction?

I'm not sure that a company, GM in this case, can blog about its products and ignore the ongoing chaos within the company. Listening to the radio yesterday on my way home I heard a sound bite from an automotive industry analyst. He said that GM's biggest problem is that its cars got boring (or at least were perceived as such by consumers, not that there's a big difference).

GM was doing fine selling trucks and SUVs, but then gas prices went up and suddenly those weren't so popular. If FastLane is about the vehicles, then how they are going to improve the vehicles, and why they have to do it, should be fair game.

The big takeaway is that before you launch a corporate blog you need a plan for dealing with bad news.

Thanks to Shel Holtz for shedding light on this.

Smithsonian Magazine is getting in on the innovation discussion this month. Don Dodge and I have been talking about the difference between inventors and innovators over the past few weeks, prompted as such by our interest in Fortune's Business Innovation blog.

Smithsonian lists 35 top innovators of our time. Being an IT Management blog, readers will be interested in Bill Gates (profiled by Jimmy Carter of all people) and Tim Berners-Lee ("First he wrote the code for the World Wide Web. Then he gave it away.").

Beyond the geeks, however, Smithsonian lists familiar names you might not have considered, such as Steven Speilberg, architect Frank Gehry, and jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, as well as several names you probably didn't know.

They are a varied lot, reflecting the diversity of America and the wide-ranging interests of Smithsonian. They come to us from Civil War battlefields and the African bush, from the ravaged streets of New Orleans and the mountain observatories of California, from the Broadway stage and the Amazonian forest, from the corporate boardroom and the forensic laboratory. They sing arias. They scrutinize ants. They create memorable movies and singular buildings. They work magic with the instruments of their choosing—trumpets, cellos, cameras, paintbrushes, laptops and imagination. One sits awake writing poetry in the wee hours; another sorts through old bones to shed light on the advent of humans in North America; another has spent his professional life deep in the ocean, pursuing an elusive monster he has yet to find alive.

I haven't done an official study, but I would estimate that 95 percent of the email I get is useless.

I'm not an anti-email crank. I know it's an essential communications tool, and I conduct important business with it. But checking my email now is like having to weed my garden every time I step out the front door. It's my least enjoyable online activity.

My favorite is using search engines, because it's productive, proactive and provides a high success rate. Millions of other people feel the same way, and that's why search soon will challenge email as the top online activity among Americans.

According to the latest Pew Internet & American Life tracking survey:

...the number of (Americans) using search engines on an average day jumped from roughly 38 million in June 2004 to about 59 million in September 2005 – an increase of about 55%.

Which means that on a typical day, 63 percent of the 94 million American adults who use the Internet will put a search engine to work. That trails only using email (77 percent) as a daily Internet activity.

Other popular online activities include:

Getting news -- 46 percent
Job-related research -- 29 percent
Instant messaging -- 18 percent
Online banking -- 18 percent
Chat rooms -- 8 percent
Reading blogs -- 3 percent (seems low to me)
Online auctions -- 3 percent

There has been a resurgence of interest in "business continuity" since Hurricane Katrina. But a new survey shows that, in too many cases, that interest isn't being translated into action in the enterprise.

The survey, by Beacon Technology Partners, reveals that one of three Fortune 1000 C-level executives "don't expect their companies to increase IT spending on business continuity measures," as this IT World Canada story explains. And yet:

...an overwhelming majority – 88 percent – claims business continuity is a big concern.

Why the disconnect? Money. Nearly three-quarters of the execs surveyed were leery of the extra costs associated with a back-up data center.

Which I guess makes sense, since the vast majority of companies never have a network disruption -- oops, actually the survey reports that 61.5 percent of respondents said their company did sustain a service disruption in the past year.

Too many of you C-level types are rolling the dice.

Can a serial entrepreneur take freely available open source software, put it in a box, and sell it for less than proprietary software? We're about to find out.

CompareSoft is another idea from Michael Robertson, who brought us MP3.com back in the day. Michael tells the story on his site, including the details of an unscientific study that found that if you approach the average people in a shopping mall and ask them, they don't know what open source software is.

To enlighten these deprived souls, CompareSoft is going to take its own version of Open Office, the GIMP photo editing program, and other open source applications, and put them on CDs and in nice boxes.

What the mall shoppers weren't asked, as far as I can tell, is if they were looking for alternatives to the proprietary software they use. If they were, they probably know Open Office could be had for free. If they're happy with Microsoft Office, it's because it does the job, it's easy to use, and (while it is kind of pricey if you buy it alone) it most likely came on their sub-$1,000 PC when they bought it.

As for GIMP... If you really want to know why GIMP isn't a household name, let me tell you about my aunt with nine grandchildren who lives to take pictures of these kids. She's computer literate to the level of most people who don't work in tech, but put a user manual like the one on the GIMP site in front of her, and it might as well be in Swahili. Somehow she makes do with the software that ships with digital cameras, photo printers, and every other technology device these days now that I think about it.

Open source doesn't play outside the tech world because no one cares. It's that simple.

I wonder what percentage of Apple's iPod sales are in the New York area. As I was telling a friend this weekend, the messages and placards on the metro New York public transportation system (which I take to work most days) ask riders to be alert for, among other things, wires coming from clothes. As winter approaches, at least half of the people on the average train have wires protruding from their jackets. They're from the iPods in their pockets.

Pauline Millard wrote last week how New Yorkers can turn a simple piece of technology into a fetish, and the iPod is the latest example.

These little plastic cases that cost hundreds of dollars have become a necessary accessory. Nowadays almost everyone has one slung around his or her neck. Apple has found a way to make people not just want their products, but need their products. Sure, you could listen to your tunes on a CD player, but then you won't have the little white player, nestled in your coat pocket, giving even the most grizzled old man instant street cred.

Clearly, Apple's iPod has become a cultural icon in a way that marketers only dream about, and have very little control over in my opinion. iPod mania has taken on a life of its own. Rags Gupta says The Sharper Image holiday catalog had 17 pages of iPod accessories this season, and more than a dozen car companies will be integrating iPods in the near future.

Two things make New York, in particular, the perfect place for the iPod to achieve cult status.

1. Radio in the New York area (I'm betting this is true of most places) is beyond terrible. It has a long to way to go before it can improve to being unlistenable. New York, the largest radio market in the nation, will be without a rock station after Howard Stern leaves K-Rock and the format changes in the coming months.

2. Almost no one has car. Being a dweller of the suburbs, I would never have bought a portable music player if I didn't take public transportation because you can't drive and use headphones.
   

If Apple's marketing people turned these observations into an extra effort in places like New York, then they know what they're doing.

Thanks to Dominic at the Corante New York blog for the link.

Earlier this week I wrote about how difficult it is for IT pros to get their enterprise users to employ basic computer security measures.

A couple of researchers at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business think you could use some more support from software providers. Assistant professor Tunay Tunca and Ph.D. candidate Terrence August tried out several mathematical models to determine the best ways for software vendors to persuade users to apply patches. As described here:

...what does not work is mandating patching as a part of a user contract agreement or having the government apply special taxes to software likely to experience vulnerabilities. Both options turn off users — and turn them away from a vendor’s software.

While the researchers found that rebate offers on future purchases provide some incentive for customers to use patches:

...the best and most practical approach...is simply for the company to spend the resources necessary to make their patches more easy to use and reliable.

So, software vendors, go do that.

No, alliteration is not among them. However, CIO Update guest columnist Dan Gingras fills us in here on the half-dozen attributes a CEO should look for in hiring a new chief information officer.

First, though, Dan says CEOs "need to decide whether the person who heads (their) IT department is truly strategic to the organization."

If, in the final analysis, you don’t think it’s strategic, then stop reading and pass this to the CFO or the head of HR to find a really good VP of IT or director of IT.

(My 2 cents: If you're recruited for a CIO gig by an HR person or a CFO, don't take the job because the CEO will never listen to you.)

Assuming you do consider the CIO's role strategic, here's what Dan says to look for:

Passion
Appetite for Change
Business Knowledge vs. Domain Knowledge
Exceptional Communications Skills
Thirst for Knowledge
Leadership

Regarding that last one, Dan says, "If there is a single trait that defines the role of the CIO, this is it. It’s also one of the hardest to recognize and to find."

Hey, I didn't say it would be easy.

You can't do what I do for a living without paying attention to trends in the advertising and media markets. These are interesting times indeed.

There's talk of advertising-supported software applications again; an idea that went over like a rootkit on a music CD back in the late 90s. Microsoft is chasing Google all over the place for advertising dollars to accompany search results.

Advertising, of course, existed long before the Internet. And the news from the "old media" is ugly. David Card today told of a 21 percent decline in advertising revenue among ABC, CBS, and NBC in the third quarter.

There's a good Q&A today in the Hartford Courant (free registration may be required) on what's wrong with the newspaper industry.

More companies are increasingly looking to the Internet to spend their money, and advertisers are concerned that overall newspaper circulation has been declining steadily since 1988.

More than 1,900 newspaper jobs were lost this year, and Editor & Publisher says that's a conservative estimate.

Meanwhile, back on the Internet, advertising is making its way into RSS.

Questions on all of this that relate to tech:

• How many of those out-of-work journalists would be willing to take a job at a company like Yahoo! that's adding more original content to its pages?
  
• If Microsoft Office is installed on nearly every PC out of the box, what would the point of an online ad-supported version be?
  
• I keep hearing that Google will be placing some of its clients' ads in newspapers. Will there be enough to impact newspaper ad revenue?
  
• To echo a question Henry Blodget asked earlier in the week: Who clicks on search ads? (He got answers.)
  
• Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC, says TV ratings for NBC Nightly News improved after NBC started offering the daily newscasts on its Web site. What's the correlation there?
  

Robert X. Cringely seems to think he knows what Google is doing buying up fiber like it's scotch on the eve of Prohibition.

Cringely says ISPs are lousy businesses, and that's not what Google is after.

Two years ago Google had one data center. Today they are reported to have 64. Two years from now, they will have 300-plus. The advantage to having so many data centers goes beyond simple redundancy and fault tolerance. They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. They offer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using that no-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offer super-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or no incremental cost to Google.

There's plenty more in the article about Google building an Internet on top of the Internet. Cringely says he'll have more next week. Can't wait.

Thanks to Don Dodge (a Microsoft guy) for the link.

I've been paying attention to the evolving world of collaboration for much of the year, and there's plenty to read about this week.

BusinessWeek informs us this week that E-Mail is So Five Minutes Ago. Included in the story is a look at the implementation of wikis by European-based investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Though the story doesn't make a mention, they use SocialText wikis. Dresdner is the oft-cited example of companies leading the charge toward wikis to replace everything from e-mail to intranets.

Gartner Group predicts that wikis will become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50 percent of companies by 2009, BusinessWeek says. The lead of the BW story also seems to be testing out a new matchmaking service for the busy, unattached professional. Not sure what that's about.

Ross Mayfield, who leads the aforementioned SocialText, has a link today to Dave Pollard's post about wikis as tools for democratization of business.

The biggest cultural barrier to wikis is also their greatest potential value and power — they engender shared trust and shared responsibility by offering participants unrestricted collective ownership of all content; the space and the collective knowledge in it belongs to 'us' (the participants, jointly) not to 'them' (the company).

Last but not least, in his review of Google's new Google Base database application, John Blossom of Shore Communications looks at who should be concerned down the road:

Consider this a shot not only at eBay, Craigslist and other more traditional databases but as well a poke at wikis and other simple database tools which do not have the ease of use, sorting and and data formation offered by Google Base.

Say this about Google: once they get involved, things always get interesting.

I've seen pointless political grandstanding in my day, but this one approaches art.

One day after the United Nations reluctantly, but clearly, agreed to let the United States retain control over the Internet, the U.S. Congress has boldly proclaimed that the U.S. intends to retain control over the Internet!

I'm glad we got that straightened out.

If there's one truth that journalists, security vendors and politicians have learned, it's that fear sells. Scare people enough and they just might read your publication, buy your product or re-elect you.

(Having said that, I can state unequivocally that cheap fear-mongering has no place on the IT Management blog. That's what eSecurity Planet is for.)

The latest scare campaign involved Internet telephony, or Voice over IP (VoIP). Many vendors and analysts are warning enterprises away from VoIP, particularly the increasingly popular Skype:

Researchers said if an unpatched version (of Skype) is sitting inside the corporate network, and malware writers capitalize on that, it could create problems for IT managers that don't even know the application is behind the firewall.

Well, Enterprise Networking Planet columnist Paul Rubens isn't having it. In a column published last week, Rubens takes the tech industry to task for "over-hyping threats."

The problem with being afraid of your own enterprise shadow, Rubens argues, is that "you may never implement technology which otherwise would have given your organization a significant competitive advantage."

He singles out recent scare stories about spam over Internet telephony, or SPIT. If some industry Chicken Littles are to be believed, Rubens says, "VoIP will soon be overwhelmed by spam calls clogging up networks and voice mailboxes."

But a Gartner Group research director interviewed by Rubens provides a reality check:

Not only is it too expensive to send voice messages around the world using VoIP, due to termination charges when connecting to the PSTN, but more the point, voice as a spam medium just doesn't work. You can click on a link in a spam email if you are foolish enough to want to buy fake Viagra or take out a loan from a spammer, but who's going to make a call?

Hopefully, nobody your company hired.

It's getting cold here in the Northeast, which means (for me anyway) less outdoor activity and more time for things like reading. I always ask for a couple of books for Christmas to help get me through the winter.

Fellow Jupitermedian Pedro Hernandez, who manages Enterprise IT Planet, sent me a press release yesterday for a book by Peter Schutz, who once led Porsche AG. The book is called The Driving Force: Extraordinary Results with Ordinary People, and I'm going to pick a few pieces of advice from the release:

• Remove the glass panes between people
  
• Four of the most powerful words in the world are "I need your help"
  
• Pursue excellence, not success
  
• Build credibility
  
• Don't give your customers what they say they want. Instead, redefine customer expectations
  

To expand on that last point, Schutz says:

You cannot do good proactive marketing or new product development by listening to your customers. There was no customer demand for the transducer, the airplane, the automobile, the microwave oven, the Internet. No one asked Steve Jobs to invent the personal computer. You must use your imagination and vision to decide what customer expectations are likely to be after change has occurred.

Also on the book front, Susan Visser, who is the IBM Press Program Manager for Information Management, is putting together a list of the best tech books of the year. She's looking for books that were well-written, helpful, and worth the money. If you've read one, let her know in the comments section of her blog.

If you think you've found a gap in the tech book world; that is, you're looking for a book a on a certain topic and haven't been able to find one, let Susan know about that too. She's planning books to be published in 2006.

Thanks to Bill Higgins for the link.

An article in CMO Magazine says that a strong relationship between the CMO and the CIO may provide the keys to competitive advantage. CMO stands for Chief Marketing Officer, by the way. Geeks aren't the only ones with lingo.

An increasing number of marketing campaigns take the Internet and technology into account, so having your CMO and CIO on the same page will only aid your organization.

What both sides need to realize is that they enable each other's success, says Scott Davis, senior partner of marketing consultancy Prophet. "Few marketing imperatives can be met without the capabilities and insights of IT," he says. "And IT is only as adept as its grasp of the customer requirements."

Some of the most effective types of marketing — word of mouth, RSS feeds, blogs, and Web sites to name a few — rely on cooperation between IT and marketing, and can provide amazing ROI if done properly.

Web sites go beyond simple brochureware and e-commerce these days. I've been catching up on the first season of Lost on DVD this week (I know, late to the game). Few shows on TV have as much buzz as Lost. There's even a Web site devoted to Oceanic Airlines, the fictional airline in the show. Little touches like that can go far.

The same goes for blogs. Niall Kennedy is doing a demonstration product blog for iRobot's Scooba wood floor cleaning robot. He shows, among other things, how a blog can be used to explain an issue like the product not shipping in time for the holidays.

ClickZ has an article today on pop-up blogs, a rather poorly named concept for temporary blogs that accompany an event or product launch. The Fortune Business Innovation blog I've been reading is one example.

Have you had lunch with your CMO lately?

Some day, I believe, you will be able to tap into a public wireless network and receive spam almost anywhere in the U.S. That day, for good and bad, may be coming soon.

ABI Research study forecasts a 10-fold increase in the number of "mesh networks" for wireless mega-deployments over the next five years.

In a study released Wednesday, ABI predicted most of the new mesh projects will involve citywide wireless networks, with corporations and universities also launching deployments. Most of the new deployments will come from "alternative service providers such as Earthlink," according to ABI senior analyst Sam Lucero.

Networking equipment giant Cisco Systems gave mesh's future a boost this week with the release of wireless mesh networking products. Said Lucero (in a statement):

"Cisco may be able to jumpstart the campus-scale wireless mesh networking market in a way that its competitors have largely been unable to do to date."

Technology's playas have a way of doing that.

Lacking any real leverage, the European Union and other countries have failed in their bid to wrest control of the Internet's domain name system from the United States, which I've written about here and here.

At the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia, negotiators agreed to let the U.S. retain authority over the Internet in return for...nothing, really.

Sure, the parties decided, as this Associated Press story says, to "create an open-ended international forum for raising important Internet issues."

Ooh, that sounds significant! Oh, wait a minute: "The forum, however, would have no binding authority."

In a face-saving (or delusional) statement, the European Union said the agreement would result in "further internationalization of Internet governance, and enhanced intergovernmental cooperation to this end."

According to one EU delegate:

"In the short term, U.S. oversight is not immediately challenged, but in the long term they are under the obligation to negotiate with all the states about the future and evolution of Internet governance."

I bet they are.

U.S. Ambassador David Gross, head of the U.S. delegation, had the proper perspective on the deal:

"No oversight mechanisms were established by anyone over anyone. There was also no change in the U.S. government's role in relation to the Internet, and no mechanism for such a change was created. It was a clean sweep, I'd say."

No argument here.

File this one under good ideas for a perfect world. John Murray, writing at IT Manager's Journal, makes the case for scheduling project breaks into IT projects.

The concept is to allocate a portion of the total project time to an in-depth analysis of the status of the project midway through the development process. The focus of the analysis is to consider each project component in order to identify areas that require attention. In other words, you shut down the entire project for a given period to provide an opportunity to step back and take a hard, candid look at its status, identify existing project hurdles, and devise a plan to overcome them. Completely stopping a project forces everyone involved to concentrate on the necessary corrections, as opposed to the usual process, which is to simply drive the project, with all its problems, to completion.

He's right when he says his proposal requires no expenditure for new technology and is applicable regardless of the size of the organization. But he's also right when he says:

I can hear a chorus of objections. "Stopping the project will only delay it. Doing what you suggest adds additional expense to the project. Senior management will never support such an idea. Opening up a discussion of the project status will only encourage the members of the participating departments to push for additional functionality, which will only expand the scope of the project."

I'm going to guess that a lot of organizations that tried to schedule breaks into their IT projects would end up eliminating the breaks as soon as the project fell behind schedule. After all, even Murray admits scheduling breaks will add expense and lengthen projects.

Organizations that can pull this off probably deserve consideration as one of the best places to work in IT.

When Computerworld's annual IT salary survey found only modest raises across the board for IT workers for the fourth year in a row, it probably set off a large groan.

But are raises all that make a good job? What about benefits? As Ian Lamont noted earlier this week:

Of course, regular, above-average raises must make people happy about the companies they work for, unless there are other underlying reasons for dissatisfaction — depression, poor working conditions, 90-hour workweeks. But other factors figure in as well. Obvious ones include generous non-salary benefits, chances for career advancement, and confidence in management.

With that in mind, Computerworld is accepting nominations for the best places to work in IT. You can nominate your organization, or the organization of the that friend of whom you are always jealous at http://www.rresults.com/n062914/index.cgi?s=O.

You can also read about last year's winners on the Computerworld site.

Spend two minutes talking to IT pros about their greatest workplace frustrations, and you're likely to hear more grumbling about people than technology.

That's because IT pros usually can solve any technological challenges thrown their way. It's the idiots in the workplace human element that constantly undermines their efforts to maintain a secure, well-run enterprise and a modicum of mental health.

In a thought-provoking column on eSecurity Planet, network security analyst Linda LeBlanc agrees that "our end users have no clue." But, she adds, "that's our fault."

If we don't teach the people we're responsible for to take care of themselves -- just a little bit -- we are going to continue spending the majority of our time cleaning up perfectly preventable computing tragedies.

I know where Linda's coming from: Many IT pros prefer to work with technology than humans, and thus don't always communicate with enterprise users on a regular basis. And some are virtually invisible until they parachute in to solve a crisis.

The sad truth, however, is that some users are just beyond hope. I'll ballpark the number at 20 percent, though some IT workers will say it's more than half. These are the users who never will grasp the concept of email and IM viruses, data backup, etc. One IT manager wrote in response to Linda's column:

Some of my users are dangerous because they do not believe that most security rules apply to them. I have come to the point where I have to lock them down as tight as possible to prevent them from hurting themselves. I send out daily emails explaining the threats with example from real articles. They refer to me as the IT Nazi. It's like working with 40 adults with ADD when it comes to security.

While Linda doesn't offer any magic solutions (there aren't any), she suggests focusing on three messages and pounding them home to users:

1. Don't EVER open email that could be spam (no matter how much you desire to be wealthy/popular/well-endowed/refinanced).

2. Back up data religiously (whatever your spiritual beliefs).

3. Turn on auto-update. (Yes, that means you.)

Google may not be a pioneer, but it's better to be a settler.

Last week I mentioned I've been reading the Business Innovation 2005 blog, which goes along with the Fortune Innovation Forum going on later this month. Today, it led me to the blog for Innosight and its discussion of the Google innovation culture.

In the comments to that blog post, and in the comments to the BusinessWeek article that inspired it, people question whether or not Google is an innovator. After all, they say, Google didn't invent search, toolbars, blogs, Web analytics, or any other of the Web-based business ideas the company has brought to market.

There's a difference between an innovator and an inventor. If you don't believe me, check out the dictionary. Inventors make up something completely new. Innovators introduce things as if they're new. Robert Fulton did not invest the steamship, as many believe. But he was the first to put it into regular passenger service. Fulton's name would go on to become synonymous with steamship service the way "Google" has become a verb for search.

If you're interested in learning more about famous innovators, I can personally recommend the book They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine (since I've read it). At the end of the book, which is written like a timeline, you'll find the founders of Google.

Innovators don't have to invent; they just have to act like they did.

JupiterResearcher Gary Stein and PR blogger Steve Rubel have been blogging about ways to use blogs and search engines to track the buzz (or lack thereof) surrounding your company, your brand, or your products online.

Last week, I mentioned IBM's Public Image Monitoring Solution, which is a more complicated and costly solution that employs text analytics and semantic search technology.

Rubel, who wrote about what he calls "The Conversation Gap" back in October, uses the results of his technique to show marketers that they can join the conversation with a blog.

The concept is simple, yet it makes an important point. I try to show the communication/brand manager their share of the online conversation. I talk about the gap that exists between the number of conversations that are just about their category and the ones that are about their brand AND the category. This illustrates the gap they can narrow by getting more involved in the dialogue by having a blog.

Stein further developed the concept by introducing what he calls "Equity Share" — the topics mentioned most frequently by people posting about a particular brand.

He's the billionaire the right wing loves to hate.

But along with "socialist," "shylock" and "threat to democracy," conservatives owning stock in several major Internet and technology companies now have a new term of endearment for Hungarian emigre and international financier George Soros -- fellow shareholder.

An investment fund controlled by Soros on Monday revealed previously undisclosed positions in Amazon.com, eBay, Microsoft and Intel.

The good news for tech investors is that Soros Fund Management LLC holds "long positions" in these companies, meaning it expects shares to increase in value. Soros largely made his reputation betting "short" on many companies and even entire currencies -- well, that and being as one with Satan.

In fact, given some theories about Bill Gates, the next Microsoft shareholders' meeting could be wickedly confusing.