Have been hobnobbing it at the annual Gartner BI summit in London’s fashionable Hyde Park district, as it’s probably described to American tourists. Now BI is something I was charged with covering at the beginning of my IT journalism career, and I’ve got to say it caused me all sorts of problems. Pretty much because BI vendors are among the worst for deliberate obfuscation, truth-bending and generally talking in riddles.

Now, revisiting this industry two years on I realise it’s all actually quite simple really…it’s just about fetching out of your organisation the information that will ultimately allow you to do business better….and then slicing, dicing and cubing it before cooking up a lovely bowl of profit soup. Simple.

Despite its reputation as something of a nerdy topic, Jonas Ridderstråle, the speaker at the opening keynote this year, did much to try and dispel these connotations, covering everything from female infidelity to the mating habits of peacocks in a rip-roaring set. But I would expect nothing less from a man described by Gartner as "at the forefront of the new generation of European-based business gurus". Rock on BI.

January 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some things in IT journalism seem so passé, so last decade dahlink – think the millennium bug impending-meltdown-and-world-chaos stories of '99, for example. Distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks have also seemingly gone off our radar a little in recent months, but their menace has not been diminished, in fact, those crafter DDOS-ers are thinking up new and ingenious ways to make the most of the botnets at their disposal and to avoid detection. All this according to DDOS prevention specialist Prolexic, by the way.

The firm’s president Keith Laslop was in London this week and warned me, with a look of impending doom in his eyes….ish….that this year would almost certainly see the first DDOS attack by cyber-terrorists, likely targeted at financial institutions or other organisations whose web downtime would likely create mass panic, or at least inconvenience, and publicity. He also said that DDOS as a means of industrial sabotage is on the increase, as are co-ordinated attacks involving DDOS and phishing emails, in an attempt to dupe victims into giving away their details.

Think about it; if a banking site has been taken down by an attack and you receive an email to the effect that your bank’s web site is indeed experiencing problems and would you mind clicking on this second link to reach an alternative, emergency site, it looks more convincing. Crafty devils.

Social networking sites were also on Keith’s hitlist. I’ve mentioned a few times how their failure to vet content being uploaded has led to an increasing number of so-called “passive attacks”, where those unluky to navigate to a page containing malicious code are infected. Well, for the very same reason these sites could also be a cause of many of the zombie PCs that are perpetuating the spam and DDOS problems many firms are facing, according to Keith. The problem is being greatly underestimated because traditional honeypots can’t discover this type of infection.

January 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Web site accessibility is one of those perennial topics we cover with monotonous regularity here at IT Week. You know, along with compliance, spam problems, IT skills crises etc. Nomensa, the accessibility specialists, do a lot of research trying to evaluate and highlight the web sites of sector specific organisations, and usually find they're all terrible. And all this despite the Disability Discrimination Act stating, since 1995, that sites must be "reasonably adjusted" to make them open to all. That’s part of the problem of course; the language of said legislation is so typically wooly and open to interpretation that most firms get away with non-compliance.

So up has stepped industry body the Interactive Media in Retail Group to try and push online retailers et al to take steps to improve their sites. Their new toolbar, produced in association with Hidden Differences Group, includes functionality to change the background colour of web pages, text-to-speech functionality that manages to sound reasonably un-Stephen Hawking like, and a screen magnification option. All sounds pretty good really, except that while it is definitely a step in the right direction, it is definitely not a silver bullet. The risk is that firms will see it as just that though; a quick fix to make them compliant with DDA and an instant way to include all those previously left out in the internet wilderness, and their wallets.

January 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another, day another large-ish chunk of the population wakes up to find an organisation they trusted has managed to let someone steal their sensitive information. This time was the turn of US retail giant TJX Companies, which reported that customer credit and debit card details may have been accessed as part of a hacking attack on its systems last month. The firm, which owns TJ Maxx stores in the States and TK Maxx in the UK, also disclosed that shoppers over here might be affected. No doubt the data breach prevention vendors will be queuing up to comment as we speak.

Despite everything that has been written, the laws that have been passed and the proven damage to brand and image that can result from such an incident – think CardSystems – large corporates who should really know better are allowing this kind of thing to happen. Why? Because they still fundamentally don't understand the risks involved in not properly protecting their most important assets, which these days means information.

When I say 'they' I mean the board; of course IT is well aware of the dangers, but so often the men and women in smart suits who are liable should anything go wrong, are "ill-prepared and ill-informed about the scale of the risk and the threats". Not my words, the words of Jim Kent – chief exec of information assurance specialists Vistorm. As he said, these events are not exactly unpredictable these days, and policies can be created and technology implemented to safeguard data. Forget about big name brands at low, low prices and do a bit of basic risk management next time.

January 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think I’m having a premature mid-life crisis. I can’t imagine what else it could be; a few months ago I bought a digital multi-track recording device with the aim of freeing the frustrated rock star in me and writing and recording some tunes. This of course entailed the traumatic experience of seeking advice from in-store staff at some specialist music shops, who seem to only have two default settings when ‘helping’ out a novice such as me; distain or thinly veiled contempt. And then there was the predictably farcical delivery process – it’s still very much a hit and miss affair and the sooner the IMRG’s Internet Delivery is Safe kitemark becomes the de facto standard for quality of service the better.

Then I was plunged into the murky world of memory cards; of Compact Flash, SD Cards, and all that jazz. The product I finally chose, a Korg D4, took only Compact Flash cards, and thus began my epic quest to find the best manufacturer. CF cards are of course more well known for use in digital cameras, camcorders and the like, and the problem I soon found out was to find one compatible with the Korg.

Time was when these little matchbox sized cards cost a small fortune but the technology has now developed to such an extent that it is yet another commoditised product in a highly crowded market, so in theory there should be little to choose between various brands. Being a born cheapskate, my default setting is that any old brand normally does the trick; that the so-called market leaders only occupy that position because they were there first and  IT consumers tend to be an irrationally loyal bunch etc etc. So I opted for a MyMemory 2GB card…and lo and behold it didn’t work, despite being advertised as Korg compatible. After similar problems with other makes, I settled on SanDisk’s Extreme III.

Even within the firm’s portfolio there are is a confusingly wide variety of cards, from the Standard all the way up to the Extreme IV. My baby is nearly the fastest at 133x, and may have been on the market for a couple of years but is still pretty reliable, from my experience. In hindsight the Ultra II – at the next price and performance step down – was probably equally suitable, as the Extreme III is designed for professional photographers whose storage requirements are likely to push this product a little harder than I have been doing so far. But because larger capacity cards tend to be slower than smaller ones, it made sense getting a faster one; in fact read/write speed seemed more than twice as fast as the Korg-branded card provided with the machine. While this isn’t strictly essential for recording music, it does make things a lot easier; as did the speedy formatting.

And it came with a cute little case and data recovery software that I hope I’ll never have to use, but knowing my luck probably will. So sometimes it pays not to go for the budget options, at least not with compact flash. Now all I have to do is learn how to sing in tune; that could be a bit more tricky.

January 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Marks and Sparks became the latest retailer this week to announce its Christmas trading figures, and again the online channel proved to be a major factor in the success. In fact, in M&S's case, the turnaround has been more dramatic than most, with online sales up 70 percent and contributing to a general revival in fortunes that seemed unlikely when chief executive Stuart Rose took over in 2004.

Perhaps it's all down to the Bassey factor. Some commentators have suggested that those lavish TV ads in the run up to Christmas may have helped attract customers, but I can't see how a septuagenarian Welsh crooner singing a song about popping a pill in a nightclub could have appealed to the kind of customers Marksies was after. Maybe Next could similarly revive its fortunes by getting Tom Jones to do a cover of the Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up. Or how about Daniel O'Donnell covering the Dead Kennedy's classic Too Drunk to F**k? If you don't do it Next, Woolies will...

January 12, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

There's e-commerce gold in them thar…um, bear with me. No, can't finish that one, I meant in China. Yes, it seems as with laptop manufacturing and software development, the Orient is becoming an increasingly attractive place for firms which facilitate e-commerce. ATG, which makes e-commerce software for businesses, yesterday announced a major new customer; online marketplace Wooha, which presumably got its name because the founders were fans of the Al Pacino classic, Scent of a Woman (go on, watch it if you don't believe me).

Then there is Japanese online shopping mall Rakuten, which is planning to expand west, possibly later this year, as its home market stagnates – according to that paper with the girly pink pages, that is. ATG claims the potential for growth in China is significant, which is not hard to see, if its figures add up; there are 123 million internet users in China but only 24 percent currently shop online, according to the e-commerce specialist. Now I'm no expert but…it would certainly seem to pay off to get in there early, especially when there is such a rich seam of online gold to be mined.

January 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

The speech recognition software industry has experienced more false starts than a steroid-pumped Olympic sprinter. Microsoft famously had its nose bloodied when it tried to demo the speech-to-text capabilities in Vista, at a meeting of financial analysts a while ago. Here the MS demo'er very soon had the smug expression wiped off his face, as the program proceeded to translate his words into "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all". Makes perfect sense to me.

But Nuance seems to think it has finally cracked the problems that have plagued this often unbearably inaccurate and frustrating technology, with its current Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 software. It's 99 percent accurate and requires no training, apparently, and the firm is so confident in the product, that it is now inviting bloggers to trial it and try to compose their entries using it. Judging by the reviews posted on Nuance's site, there are mixed reactions; although it probably depends on what accent you have as to how quickly the software can learn your dialect and the way you dictate.

Now Nuance can apparently translate speech to text at up to 160 words per minute, which is more than three times faster than my typing speed, although with typical bravado I thought I'd take the online test and try to beat Dragon 9. After typing my hardest for a minute, however, I looked up to find my report as follows: "WPM 0; Accuracy 0; With Dragon NaturallySpeaking your speed could increase by INFINITY". I think I forgot to click the cursor in the text box. Doh.

January 9, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's always a joy to witness the seemingly endless ways in which organisations can use the interweb to educate, inform and entertain. This week many of you might have spotted the story about C'est so Paris; the appallingly-titled web site created by the Ile-de-France tourist board to encourage more UK tourists to visit the hands-down winner of world's rudest national capital for the last millennium or so; Paris. The best bit, entitled Cop the Parisian Attitude is a brave attempt to teach us stuffy Brits about that national French pastime, the indecipherable bodily gesture.

This part of the site was apparently designed to show us that our close neighbours can poke a little light-hearted fun at themselves; it features eight or so gestures for you to copy and practice, the idea being that if you master these then somehow you will find Paris a little less of an intimidating place to visit.

Well, two things to note here. Firstly, they should have tried inserting movie clips in there, rather than a single pic with the barest of accompanying descriptions. To be honest, some people have trouble enough employing the time-honoured one or two-fingered salute, so what chance do they have of doing "le bof" or the "on se tire" correctly? And secondly, how many opportunities am I going to have in the company of complete strangers to use a gesture indicating, "I'm fed up", "call me", or "shut up" – alright that last one may be handy. In my humble opinion, "where's the nearest metro station?", "how much is that piece of cheese?" and "Christ what's that smell?" might have been more useful.

This genius idea apparently came off the back of a survey of tourists to the French capital and forms part of a £700,000 ad campaign to attract more of us over there. As anyone who's read my colleague James "Muzza" Murray's recent column will realise, however, this could all be a complete waste of time, depending on exactly what the questions to said survey were. It might be that the British are abandoning Paris not because of the rudeness of the locals but simply because we'd rather spend a city break somewhere cheaper, warmer and which requires less effin' hand gestures to practice.

January 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It has been reported recently that several high-profile bloggers received free Vista-ready laptops from Microsoft worth thousands of dollars, to do with what they will. Now it was a Christmas-time story, during which period most journalists' minds are pretty-much pickled and incapable of a great deal of rational thought, but the news raises some interesting issues about blogging ethics (as has been reported elsewhere too, no doubt, but I'm going to weigh in anyway).

Most of those on the receiving end of this early Christmas gift were apparently reviewers, the implication being that if they were to get something like this in the post they'd be more inclined to go easy on old MS. Some declared the freebie, some have (presumably) not, which leads us back to ethics…To my mind unless you're one of those who has declared, you should no longer be trusted as a purveyor of impartial wisdom – got to give your readers the facts and let them decide for themselves.

But then again, there is a kind of misconception about bloggers anyway; yes, some of them (or us) do know what they're talking about, but to think bloggers are any more likely to be neutral and reliable than your average hack – as many people seem to – is pretty naïve…and should be punishable by death, or something equally unpleasant, like being forced to watch back-to-back omnibus editions of Eastenders.

January 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)