Bash tech website Gizmodo all you want for publishing the anonymously sourced "rumor" that Apple CEO Steve Jobs's health is deteriorating. But keep in mind two things:

1) This rumor hardly surfaced in a vacuum. Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer five years ago. His appearance in the past year could charitably be described as gaunt. Also, Apple announced earlier this month that a) Jobs would not be delivering this year's Macworld keynote, and b) Apple no longer will be involved in Macworld.

2) The company has a history of evasiveness concerning information about Jobs's health. Further, its denial of the Gizmodo story is, well, read it for yourself:

A spokesman for Apple declined to comment on the rumor.

When asked about Jobs's health, the spokesman said, "If ever Steve or the board of directors decided that he was no longer capable of doing his job as CEO of Apple, I'm sure they will let you know."

Does any of that sound like a strong, specific denial to you? You could argue that Apple doesn't have a responsibility to respond to unsourced rumors. That's understandable. But its vague response to the Gizmodo story not only does nothing to quell the rumor, it actually fuels it.

It's a tough situation and there are no easy answers. If I were at Apple, I'd probably want to circle the wagons too. But acting indignant about the rumor, as Jim Goldman at CNBC does, won't make it go away. What will is for Jobs to return to the public eye, looking much healthier. That's just the way it is.

Rooting for a large corporation in a lawsuit goes against every fiber of my being, but I'm glad to see telco giant Verizon last week won a huge case against one of the sleazy companies that makes money by taking advantage of confused web surfers or those who mis-type a site URL.

From internetnews.com:

Telecommunications giant Verizon has won a record $33.15 million judgment against Internet domain registrar OnlineNIC for cybersquatting.

The judgment, which Verizon described as the largest ever in a cybersquatting case, was handed down by the U.S. District Court in the Northern district of California in San Francisco.

OnlineNIC had registered at least 663 domain names that were either identical to, or confusingly similar to, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) trademarks, and the court concluded that this had been designed to attract people trying to access Verizon's Web sites.

Well, I'll give OnlineNIC some credit for creativity; coming up with 663 names to exploit Verizon's trademark is pretty ambitious.

Verizon says it's the fourth cybersquatting case the company has won in the past two years. Good luck collecting, though:

While OnlineNIC is registered in San Francisco, it's evidently led Verizon a merry chase, and its physical headquarters still has not been located. The company did not show up in court to contest the case, which was awarded to Verizon by default.

OK, that's enough cheering for a corporation winning a lawsuit, especially a company which cost me a couple hundred dollars this year by messing up a requested change to our rate plan. But that's another blog post.

David Needle has an excellent column on InternetNews.com about what 2009 will bring in the technology world.

The column is part of the site's comprehensive annual week-long look at what's next in technology with predictions that the big stories of 2008 will again be leading the way in 2009.

I'm very curious about how all the social networking players will survive or die or merge. Needle shares my views that we'll be seeing a ton of consolidation, because many of the small social networking players are offering tools that are slowly being added by the big fish (an all-too-common trend with popular tools like this. Thanks a lot, Microsoft). Needle writes:

One thing you can bet will disappear in 2009 are some of the social networking vendors scrambling for a piece of the online pie. Again, looking out to 2012, Gartner expects more than 60 percent of the current social software vendors will exit the market through acquisition or failure.

But I expect several high profile exits as soon as 2009 as established software players adopt many of the key features more niche players are pitching as separate offerings. And many, this author included, are suffering from community overload. You can only join so many networks without the constant add a friend invitations become a serious annoyance.

I'm also interested in the future of instant messaging, which I keep trying to avoid. It was forced on me in the 90s  when I worked at CNET's News.com, but I tried to resist. According to Needle and Gartner, I may have no choice but to re-embrace the IM beast:

The first obvious "victim" will likely be traditional e-mail systems. By 2012, Gartner predicts a whopping 95 percent of enterprise workers will use IM as their primary interface for computer-based, real-time communications, and I would expect that transition to make significant headway in the coming year. Even traditional consumer e-mail is changing to add social features with companies like Yahoo rolling out its "smarter inbox" this month.

Check out Needle's column at InternetNews.com.

Maybe this isn't the best poll to take when half of my loyal readers are either:

a) not working this week
b) tuned out
c) stressed out
d) still nursing that hangover from our street's progressive dinner party Saturday night (who knew Saki bombs, white wine, and gin and tonics don't mix?)

And yet it must be asked:

How much will you work the next two weeks?

My crack staff of researchers wants to know.  Does the global financial crisis mean you're concerned about your job and will only take the approved holidays? Or will you take most of the next two weeks off?

To Vote in the Poll

1. Click the Watch Now arrow below.
2. Look for the small Vote Now link and click it
3. A box pops up. Vote, and you'll see your vote tally in real time
4. You can also post a comment

Mike Elgan's column this week on Datamation about what it means to have a work ethic in the Internet age hit such a chord with me. I've recently been spending more time on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. Sometimes I feel like my attention span has gone the way of the funny network sitcom.

Warning: this is one of those blogs where I quote Elgan, and he's quoting David Brooks, who's quoting Malcolm Gladwell. But I don't have time to worry about all that attribution. And neither do you. Here's what Elgan says:

Columnist David Brooks, commenting in yesterday's New York Times on a book by Malcolm Gladwell called "Outliers," made a statement as profound as it was accurate: "Control of attention is the ultimate individual power," he wrote. "People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them."

But why is that truer now than ten or twenty years ago? Why will it be truer still ten or twenty years from now? As I wrote in May, Internet distractions evolve to become ever more "distracting" all the time -- like a virus. Distractions now "seek you out."

When I contemplate the work ethic of 50 years ago, here's what I think about: Remember when an executive would boast, "I respond to every piece of mail I get." Can you imagine if he said that today about emails, voicemails, instant messages? He'd be a fool. (I'm anti-instant message, but that's for another blog. I don't have time!)

I recently extolled the virtues of Facebook and other social networking sites. But you have to be careful with how much time you devote to those sites. And guess what: you don't really have 1,693 friends. As Elgan writes, and I'll let him have the last word:

Pundits like me are constantly talking about Facebook, Twitter, blogs and humor sites, not to mention old standbys like e-mail and IM. One gets the impression that we should be "following" these things all day long, and many do. So when does the work get done? When do entrepreneurs start and manage their businesses? When do writers write that novel? When do IT professionals keep the trains running on time? When does anyone do anything?

From Forrester Research, via TreeHugger.com (that's right, get over it), comes good news for those who worry that our serious economic problems will derail or even doom "green IT" initiatives:

Forrester's latest green IT enterprise survey reveals that the slowing economy will not derail efforts to make IT operations more efficient and less environmentally harmful. In fact, of responding companies that are changing the pace of their green IT activities in response to the economic outlook, those going faster outnumber those slowing down by 2 to 1. So the central value of green IT programs -- greener IT also means saving money -- is taking hold among corporate IT practitioners.

And why not? Anyone who finds a way to cut costs these days without hurting the business is going to be a hero to the boss. It might as well be the IT guys.

Forrester's global survey included 1,500 IT professionals. Slightly more than half (52%) reported either developing or implementing a green IT strategy, up 7% from just six months ago.

The obvious question is, what happens when we hit an economic recovery? Or if we have a sustained period of lower energy costs? Will green IT lose momentum? I hope not.

I welcome Yahoo's announcement that it will now retain users' search data for no more than 90 days. That's much more reasonable than the company's previous limit of 13 months, and it sets a bold standard for Google and Microsoft to match.

Currently Google retains personal user search data for nine months, while Microsoft holds it for 18 months (though  last week Redmond said it would be willing to reduce it to six months, as requested by European regulators, if  competitors followed suit).

Of course, despite the "step in the right direction" sentiment among some privacy advocates, Yahoo's move clearly is driven by a desperate business need -- giving online searchers a reason to choose Yahoo's search services, rather than Google's or Microsoft's. This is, after all, about the advertising dollars.

Unfortunately for Yahoo, protecting user privacy, at least according to this New York Times article, may not be a magic bullet:

[I]t is not clear that stronger privacy protections are enough of a selling point with consumers to make then switch search engines. Last year, Ask.com introduced a new feature called AskEraser, which allows users to search anonymously, and which the company said would help it increase its audience. However, Ask.com's share of the search market has remained relatively stagnant. Google is the dominant search engine.

On the other hand, Yahoo has a much larger share of the search market (almost 21%) than Ask.com (4%) and thus might be in better position to leverage users who do view privacy as a selling point. On the other, other hand, there's not much to stop Google or Microsoft from matching Yahoo's policy, which essentially wipes out Yahoo's advantage. Tough spot to be in.

Internet security vendors are telling the industry to basically stay away from social networking sites. While we all can appreciate the heightened level of security risk stemming from these new types of Web-based services, security providers need to tread carefully in discouraging the inevitable. And the fact is, social networks are a new and progressive way to drive business, and they are here to stay.

Some still don't get it though, and one security vendor this week told a colleague that no one needs social networks to get their job done, and therefore, social networking should only be done away from the corporate grid, and not on company laptops.

Apparently he doesn't realize that many companies -- media, high-tech, and others -- are using these tools to help drive business.  Take my blog (please). It's one of numerous examples of how huge social networking is becoming, both at work and home.

After I write a blog, I send out a Tweet, not from my personal Twitter account, but from the Datamation Blog Twitter site. Then I go over to Facebook and let the few friends I have left know that The Great One has blogged. Then I alert the readers of Reddit and Digg.

You might think, well, Jupitermedia is a media company, and page views are paramount. Page views and the accompanying advertising is where our bread is buttered. So that's why you splash your diatribes all over so many social networking sites, you might think.

But the use of these sites goes far beyond media companies. Most big companies are putting their videos on YouTube, everyone from Cisco to my wife's research firm, ESG. As I wrote in a recent blog, ("Jupitermedia in your Face(book)") editors at my company are creating dozens of Facebook pages.  Not the personal kind (although that's happening too) but the professional kind, so that most of our sites now have their own Facebook page, where you can get the RSS feed, leave messages, see other pages in the network, check the latest stories, read about Jupitermedia events, etc.

The way I see it, social networking is becoming like corporate email. It's just part of the deal. And just like some personal email has to be permitted on your corporate email account, so must the use of social networking tools be allowed on company machines. It should be encouraged.

It looks like Google's evil plan to take over the world continues, at least based on this Wall Street Journal article:

Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic the same -- nobody is supposed to jump the line. ...

[P]rominent Internet scholars, some of whom have advised President-elect Barack Obama on technology issues, have softened their views on the subject. ...Lawrence Lessig, an Internet law professor at Stanford University and an influential proponent of network neutrality, recently shifted gears by saying at a conference that content providers should be able to pay for faster service.

However, Google hotly disputes the WSJ article, here, and Lessig does so here. First Google's Richard Whitt, writing in his Google Secret Plan to Take Over the World Public Policy Blog:

Some critics have questioned whether improving Web performance through edge caching -- temporary storage of frequently accessed data on servers that are located close to end users -- violates the concept of network neutrality. As I said last summer, this myth -- which unfortunately underlies a confused story in Monday's Wall Street Journal -- is based on a misunderstanding of the way in which the open Internet works. ...

Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday's Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.

And Lessig, from his Lessig 2.0 blog:

I don't know what Google is doing, though if they are trying to negotiate exclusive deals for privileged access, that shows exactly why we need network neutrality regulation.

Missing from the article, however, is the evidence that my view is a "shift" or "soften[ing]" of earlier views. That's because there isn't any such evidence. My view is the view I have always had -- whether or not it is the view of others in this debate.

Also, as Lessig points out in his blog, while the WSJ claims that "some of those who advise the new president on technology have changed their view on network neutrality," the only Obama "adviser" actually mentioned in the article is Lessig (unless you want to count Google CEO Eric Cchmidt).

I have to agree with Lessig that this appears to be a "made-up drama." First the WSJ takes Google's attempts to colocate caching services, then throws in the old news that Microsoft and Yahoo "have withdrawn quietly from a coalition formed two years ago to protect network neutrality" (what does "quietly" mean here, anyway?), then adds the assertion that "prominent Internet scholars, some of whom have advised President-elect Barack Obama on technology issues, have softened their views on the subject," yet cites only Lessig. It'll be interesting to see if the paper sticks to its guns.

As 2008 comes to a merciful close, we cast a hopeful eye on the new year.

What about you and your organization? How much is the recession affecting you and your information technology purchases?

Are you holding your breath till the economy improves? Or is it full speed ahead? Will you finally upgrade to Vista, or keep XP until Windows 7 arrives? Or will you finally take the Linux plunge?

Will you ramp up your Internet security? Are you considering a new fleet of notebooks? Or Netbooks? What I'm trying to say is:

How much will you spend on IT in 2009?

To Vote in the Poll

1. Click the Watch Now arrow below.
2. Look for the small Vote Now link and click it
3. A box pops up. Vote, and you'll see your vote tally in real time
4. You can also post a comment

Last week I was reading a discussion thread somewhere about good and bad ways for companies to handle layoffs. There were a number of horror stories -- one involving a poor woman who was told in front of all of her colleagues that she was being laid off, after which people in the room were encourage to chime in as to why.

The comment that stuck with me, however, came from a reader who said layoffs should never be done in phases. Rather, they should be done all at once, thus averting the kind of morale and productivity crisis that impending doom can bring.

I agree completely. Nothing could be more debilitating to a workforce than to know with certainty that the ax will fall again. That's why I hope Yahoo's recently announced layoffs aren't merely part of an installment plan. The year's been bad enough for employees of the troubled search/content company.

Also, call me crazy, but I think it'd be a good gesture if departing CEO Jerry Yang, who reported the 1,500 layoffs (10 percent of the workforce) in a corporate blog post titled, Tough Times, declined to take a salary during the rest of his tenure at the company he co-founded. It's not like he can't afford it.

Update: Call me uninformed. A reader informs me that Jerry Yang has an annual salary of $1. Nice to see that he's already made the good gesture.

In this current economic climate, we humble and hardworking Jupitermedia editors are reaching out more than ever to our readers.

All of us in the world of information technology, business, and the information superhighway (that's a joke) need top-rate news, commentary, tutorials, and a strong network of other human beings these days. So at Jupitermedia we're putting more emphasis on our Facebook presence, our Twitter shout outs, and our entries on Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and other sites.

OK, this sounds like a commercial. I beg your indulgence. But how else am I going to alert readers to all the new Facebook pages that Jupitermedia editors are slaving over as we speak?

I'm still tweaking the Facebook page for one of my biggest sites, Intranet Journal. It's not at 100 percent capacity, but to the naked eye the site is an armed and fully operational Death Star.

From that Facebook page, you can go to the Favorite Pages section on the right to find links to many of the other Jupitermedia Facebook pages. Those include:

• Datamation
• Internet News
• Small Business Computing
• Linux Planet
• Java Script Source
• Web Reference
• Web Developer
• Webopedia
• Database Journal
• DBA Support
• Enterprise IT Planet
• Codeguru
• HTML Goodies
• PHP Builder
• Web Video Universe
• Devx

We're also Twittering this Datamation Blog. The Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/DatamationBlog.

Good interview in the Wall Street Journal with Sunoco CIO Peter Whatnell, who also is the new president of the Society for Information Management, a professional organization for tech executives.

Whatnell talks about IT's role during the economic downturn. Some highlights:

WSJ: How does this downturn compare to the tech bubble earlier in the decade?

WHATNELL: The tech meltdown was narrowly defined in terms of it was just that part of the market. This time, the general economy is in disarray. It's not just a national event, but a global one.

WSJ: How do you decide which projects make the cut when you're tightening your budget?

WHATNELL: They tend to be those things that save money rather than those that make money. It's not that you don't want to make money. It's that cost-saving projects tend to be easier to measure and are more predictable.

WSJ: How important is it to network with colleagues in the industry?

WHATNELL: I think it is critical. It's where a lot of ideas come from. It doesn't even have to be your industry.

The overarching takeaway from Whatnell's WSJ interview is that IT leaders must understand and be relevant to the business:

"You should to be able to ask any CIO: Are you able to describe in three minutes or less how your company makes money? To me that's where it starts."

If you're a CIO and can't pass the three-minute test, you may be jeopardizing not only your career, but your organization's future. When what you could be doing instead is learning about the business so IT can be a strategic partner. Now go back out there and save your organizations.

So now I'm on Twitter. I'm twitting, tweeting, whatever it's called. I'm late to the game and still learning the lingo. Maybe I'll win "Upperclass Twit of the Year," which you Monty Python fans may remember. I'll be Nigel.

As an old timey newspaper editor and someone who actually reads a book of poetry occasionally (gasp!) I understand the appeal of the concise Twitter entries. Forcing so-called writers to edit and re-write is always good.

"Omit needless words" is one of my favorite rules from a style book that used to be considered a writer's bible, but about which I hear little these days: Strunk and White's "Elements of Style." (Some of you may know that the co-author called White is E.B. White. Maybe today's bloggers would better relate to the movies from White's work regarding a mouse and a pig.)

So, tight Tweets are a nice development. But the self-absorbed mindset of the legion of long-winded bloggers is still way too prevalent in the Twit world. I'm currently adding some Twitter followers. I'm checking lots of pages and lots of Tweets, to see what appeals to me, or who might like my stuff.

So I ask you, and I know many writers before me have complained about this: Why would ANYONE take the time to type this sentence and pretentiously send it out to their Twitter network:

"Needing coffee in a bad way this morning..."

I will say this: If I can get my brain around Twitter, maybe it will help me navigate all the news I need to read, all the contacts I'd like to stay in contact with. Maybe it will reduce the number of times I need to go to FaceBook, LinkedIn, Yahoo Mail, etc. My boss Chris Nerney, as well as the columnist Mike Elgan, make some compelling arguments for Twitter (see the blog post below this). As someone who loves breaking news, I'm sure the Twit army will alert me to stories like O.J. Simpson getting 15 years today (hallelujah). Just please don't make me read stuff like this:

"we are doing a little house cleaning @izeainc today. the office is a bit too dirty for our guests."

"Holy crap I am hungry. If you had to choose between a burrito or pizza what would you pick?"

Although maybe that last one would make a good quick poll.

If you can get used to its 140-character limit, Twitter is a fantastic communication device for information both important and insipid -- making it perfect, of course, for your average workplace.

That limit is the key, because otherwise Twitter would be little more than an IM broadcast tool. Datamation columnist Mike Elgan put it well last August, when he wrote:

A pervasive cult of wordiness and a blindness for and apathy toward the value of dense, concise language has formed online to the detriment of all. ...

One glorious exception to this is the "microblogging" site Twitter. ... Nearly every user I've spoken to about using Twitter admits to constantly revising each post to squeeze it into 140 characters. The habit and skill of revising for brevity and clarity is one of the secrets to good writing.

Like professionally written and edited material, Twitter posts are harder on the writer and easier on the reader. And that's why Twitter's popularity is growing. It's one of the few places online where people on the brink of information overload can get a break from long-winded blather and read something concise for a change.

See, so even if the information is insipid, at least it's relatively brief. Is that not in itself a worthy advancement?

And if greater efficiency and belt-tightening are how organizations will weather this recession, wouldn't Twitter complement and advance that strategy? Could it not be argued that organizations would be much more efficient if they restricted all communication -- even verbal -- to Twitter-like limits? ("Damn the soliloquy, man, get to the point!") Brevity and clarity in writing and speaking invariably lead to clearer thinking, which usually begets intelligent decision-making. Plus I'd rather cut words than jobs.

The time will come when organizations primarily will issue smartphones to their mobile workers instead of notebooks. And if the recent introduction of new BlackBerry and Nokia smartphones, along with the boom in mobile apps development spawned by the iPhone, is any indication, it may be sooner than you think.

Here's internetnews.com's David Needle reporting from a venture capital summit in Halfmoon Bay, Calif. (how does Needle get these cushy assignments? Look at this place!):

Ditch the notebook for a smartphone? It may not yet be a mainstream idea, but there's an explosion of mobile applications making the concept more viable.

David's article cites three companies in particular. The one that jumped out at me was YouMail.com:

The free, ad-supported service includes features such as visual voicemail, voice-to-text (so you can read your voicemails as text messages or e-mail), filtering to lock out telemarketers, and "smart greetings" that let you customize different greetings for family, friends and co-workers.

That's a handy application. And it's only the tip of the iceberg as far as what mobile devices will be enabled to do. Which gets to another interesting thing I read this week, in a Datamation column by Steve Andriole on the urgent need of IT to adapt to and embrace technological change:

Smart phones -- otherwise known as mobile thin clients -- are more than adequate for a huge segment of professionals in many companies. Why are we still living in the "break and fix" world of the 1980s and 1990s? Do you actually support PCs at your company?

Just taking the proliferation of apps -- especially Web 2.0 apps -- designed to allow mobile phones to do more, the continual improvements in smartphone hardware and built-in features, and the growing number of people using them, and it's clear there's no stopping the infiltration of smartphones into the enterprise. Network pros, good luck with that.  

Friday was "Black Friday." Yesterday was "Cyber Monday." So today is "Identity Theft Tuesday," Jay Leno said. Let's hope that's not the case, but what is true is that online retailers are taking some comfort in figures that showed a slight uptick in e-commerce that started over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The outlook for online retailers is mixed: Analysts have predicted only moderate growth, or no boost, in online buying this year, compared to last. Which brings us to today's poll question.

What percent of your holiday shopping will you or your significant other do at online retailers? Or how much have you already done?

While voting you can also leave a comment about your online shopping experience or which sites you frequent, such as Amazon, Bestbuy, Ebay, Craigslist, Toysrus, Landsend, Gap, etc.

To Vote in the Poll

1. Click the Watch Now arrow

2. Look for the small Vote Now link and click it

3. A box pops up. Vote, and you'll see your vote tally in real time

4. You can also post a comment

Many people in the technology industry believe -- face it, some fervently hope -- open source is the magic bullet that finally will slay software giant Microsoft.

One of the many is a former long-time Microsoft programmer. Before we meet him, however, let this piece in the New York Times set the scene:

Microsoft, of course, has long been the archenemy of the open source community, which is built on the notion of freely sharing intellectual property for the good of the community. I.B.M. and Sun Microsystems have embraced the open source cause, as have other technology giants. ...

In contrast, Microsoft has made only grudging accommodations to the open source movement, offering some of its source code to programmers who use its technology while valiantly arguing that for-pay software is less expensive than free software when you consider the bigger picture.

The bigger picture, indeed. Whatever that may be.

Enter Keith Curtis, who worked at Microsoft from 1993 to 2004. He's just written a book, "After the Software Wars," which, the Times write-up indicates, is particularly popular with his spendthrift mother (though she just may be doing some early holiday shopping; just throwing that out there).

Curtis believes his former employer "is toast," according to the Times. One gets the sense from the article that Microsoft's rank-and-file were in basic denial about open source's potential:

While [Curtis] was at Microsoft, he had learned little about the open source world. In cafeteria conversation, he had usually take the position that proprietary software would always maintain a technology lead over open source. He recalled a friend who had tried to install Linux in 1999, but gave up because the backspace key didn't work.

Backspace key? How Microsoft is that? And that's the thing with open source: There's no backing up. It's all about moving forward.

Then, the epiphany:

After [Curtis] left Microsoft, he installed a copy of the Linux operating system on a lark. His world was turned upside down.

One of my friends said that same thing about seeing the Mahavishnu Orchestra on Midnight Special in the '70s. He, too, eventually got a book out of the experience.

As for Curtis, he argues that the power of open source is its ability to leverage collective intelligence. He likens the proprietary crowd to alchemists, who jealously guarded their secret method for turning lead into gold, a process later to become known as selling derivatives.

UPDATE: My friend informs me that it was ABC's In Concert, not Midnight Special, that helped change his life. And that it was the Grateful Dead, not the Mahavishnu Orchestra. And it was in the '80s, not the '70s. Otherwise the anecdote is accurate. Just kidding on those last two, but my friend did say the show was In Concert.