Have problems disposing of your old IT kit? Of course you do. With the proliferation of legislation like Weee and RoHS etc, things have gotten pretty tricky for IT managers, especially given the new, caring and sharing, eco-friendly, responsible attitudes of many enterprises today. One natural home for used an abused hardware is to ship it off to a charity like Computer Aid, who'll take it off your hands and repurpose it for use in developing nations, to bring IT joy to a whole new generation.

A more unusual use for old kit though might be to throw it all in the corner of a room, think of an emotive title and enter it into Microsoft's DesignIT competition. Actually that's not strictly true. This competition is all about putting the fun back into IT (what, it went missing for a while?) and celebrating the creativity of IT professionals and how they can contribute positively to society. Basically a few charities are asked to come up with problems which can be solved through technology, and the ten finalists' IT system-solutions are then turned into art and put in a gallery. Interesting? Thought provoking? Pile of pretentious toss? It all depends on your perception of art and whether IT and creative types are actually compatible at all.

Leave your preconceptions at the door though and it's a worthwhile project – charities benefiting from the creative ingenuity and outside the box thinking of the IT professionals who took part. Oh, and there was a lively panel debate apparently, featuring our sister publication Computing’s very own (TV’s) Bryan Glick. Would have loved to listen to their words of wisdom but had some pressing matters to attend to in The Burlington Arms at the time…

May 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I read recently that workers in a law firm revolted over their employer's decision to ban their use of Facebook during working hours. I think the arguments made against usage at work were the usual: productivity losses, bandwidth-hogging and, um, a pointless waste of time. But in the end the lawyers used their superior linguistic skills and powers of reasoning to force a back-down from IT – they would be allowed to use Facebook but not access the network resource-draining videos.

Facebook seems to have been causing similar consternation in Canada, having been banned in Ontario government and Toronto city hall offices. The answer, as always, is to set a clear, but fair and common-sense acceptable usage policy (AUP) and communicate it clearly to all staff. And, just as important, to remind staff at regular intervals. I just found my AUP as I was clearing out an old set of drawers…can't even remember being given it.

May 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Sorry about the dry title, what can I say? Am just trying to optimise my lil' blog a bit, God knows I need the hits. Anyway, am in sunny Sweden at the moment hearing all about SAS and its shiny shiny performance management solutions. At least, that's what I thought I was coming for - apart from what my taxi driver referred to as 'Stockholm skirt' - but on the first day it seemed like SAS was almost going out of its way not to mention BI. Apart from an all too brief spell when SAS chief Jim Goodnight shuffled tentatively on from stage right, the keynote talk was all management theory, economic predictions and guru-speak, which is not really my, erm, bag. I'm assuming the 1400-odd European C-level execs the event was tailored for found it a bit more enlightening.

In the end then not an awful lot of BI, which to be honest is not always a bad thing, but quite a lot about what a crackin' company SAS is to work for (don't rub it in guys, I'm a journalist for God's sake). But that said, there was some good insight into what makes a successful BPM (or CPM or whatever you want to call it) project. It all sounds like obvious stuff, but things like executive buy-in, data quality, enterprise-wide deployment etc are probably neglected by many firms keen to jump on the performance management bandwagon because their competitors have.

May 23, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now, we're usually not very keen at IT Week on those seemingly self-serving surveys, reports, pieces of research etc that vendors tend to push out, which seem to say exactly what the vendor wants. But sometimes there is actually something of worth in this lot. Data security specialist Workshare this week released a new report – the Workshare Global Security Threat Report - which could be a useful resource for security chiefs, if there's any out there that still don't appreciate the risks to their company's sensitive information that exist today.

The report, as you can see if you've made busy wiv dem fingers and clickety-clicked on the hyperlink, gathers together various examples of security breach incidents in the last four months impacting in several key ares: privacy, intellectual property, the mobile workforce, and corporate compliance. There's also stuff in there about the legislative background to information leakage; for example Lord Broers speech at Infosec that we reported, which hinted at the introduction of data breach notification laws. And the report covers key developments to keep you eyes on in the coming months.

So if you can get over the vested interest thing there's plenty of food-for-thought here; and for those that might argue it's an overly pessimistic and alarmist view of the threat environment…um, better off being overly cautious in this situation than being forced to shell out sack-fulls of money to investigate the unfortunate loss of 45 million credit card numbers.

May 17, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (5)

The 12^th annual JavaOne love-in continues. Queues everywhere, I mean for everything. The firm has really placed a consumer focus on this event rather than last year’s enterprise-dominated conference, spearheaded by the JavaFX announcements on Tuesday. Which is fine for us in a way, because for one thing consumers are also enterprise workers, and the barriers between consumer and corporate IT diminish daily. Plus, in the B2C space there will surely be no shortage of device manufacturers, content owners and service operators queuing up to exploit the new JavaFX open source platform. There are still some reservations that the plans lack enough concrete detail and tools are yet to be announced which would actually enable developers to get cracking on this stuff…but Sun certainly has high hopes the technology will boost its standing in the increasingly important Rich Internet Application (RIA) space.

This is actually one of the least corporate corporate shows I’ve been to; I mean, yes there’s a certain amount of razzamatazz, but Sun is more of a facilitator, a benevolent uncle looking after its flock of Java geeks, than the main attraction. And that kind of attitude comes from the top down, from the thoroughly pleasant bunch of execs who bicker and banter with each other like old friends. I don’t know if this is a new leaf the computing giant has turned over since its open source mission began or not, but it makes a refreshing change all the same.

May 10, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week I’ve turned on, tuned in and erm, chewed the fat with 18000 Java developers. Not literally of course. Really, I’m trying not to get swept away by the mass hysteria of this year’s open source-tastic JavaOne conference, but it is, according to Sun’s very own stonewashed denim CEO Jonathan Schwartz, the largest OS developer conference in da world, and who are we to argue?

My takeaway from this trip will be creepy Alcatraz, trying desperately to find a trolley bus in the early hours, maps which don’t show the freakin inclines on the street – and I thought Sheffield was bad  - and Sun SVP Rich Green’s superb tight jeans, tight black t-shirt combo. Nice try Rich, but Jobs has the trademark already on non-descript sports casual wear, good as your keynote was. Oh and that hot DJ at the opening keynote. Oh and the…never mind.

But before I sound like an unappreciative, sexually frustrated developer, the show has shown me the fanaticism of the open source crowd and Java developers. I heard there are workshops in the Moscone Centre (the aircraft hanger building where JavaOne is held) at around midnight. Midnight? That’s when most sane people are trying to score crack from a toothless crone in The Mission. Sorry, that’s exaggerating. Maybe a bit of weed.

May 9, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the government. Almost. The fact that the electoral turnout has been dropping to record levels in the last few years is worrying many people. How can our elected officials really claim to have a mandate for power if they have only been voted-in by a small percentage of another small percentage? More people probably vote for Big Brother or the latest Celebrity find-the-new-lead-in-a-West-End-musical programme to shame our screens, than for our politicians. Maybe they could combine the two and have Simon Cowell hold an election night stand-off between Cameron and Brown?

That is of course one of the reasons why e-voting has been trumpeted as the saviour of democracy – give them a system so easy they don’t even have to leave the house to do it. Problem is it really isn’t good enough yet, as US precedent has shown. But as usual the government took has taken no notice and tried it anyway, in 17 local authorities to be precise. And guess what…electoral turnout jumped by a massive 4 percent. Could it be that the public is also unconvinced about the accuracy of the technology?

Brian Chess, chief scientist of Fortify Software has gone on record as saying, “As with any computerised system, e-voting machines can be subject to programming errors and malicious tampering. With evidence in the States clearly showing that the voting machine certification process is flawed, how can any citizen be expected to trust this new system?”. And he’s right. The problem is, though, that the vast majority of the public probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote anyway. And as was seen in Scotland, even the old cross-in-the-box malarkey can prove to be a little too taxing for some: there were over 100,000 spoilt ballots north of the border.

May 7, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sometimes I almost feel sorry for the government. Almost. The fact that the electoral turnout has been dropping to record levels in the last few years is worrying many people. How can our elected officials really claim to have a mandate for power if they have only been voted-in by a small percentage of another small percentage? More people probably vote for Big Brother or the latest Celebrity find-the-new-lead-in-a-West-End-musical programme to shame our screens, than for our politicians. Maybe they could combine the two and have Simon Cowell hold an election night stand-off between Cameron and Brown?

That is of course one of the reasons why e-voting has been trumpeted as the saviour of democracy – give them a system so easy they don’t even have to leave the house to do it. Problem is it really isn’t good enough yet, as US precedent has shown. But as usual the government took has taken no notice and tried it anyway, in 17 local authorities to be precise. And guess what…electoral turnout jumped by a massive 4 percent. Could it be that the public is also unconvinced about the accuracy of the technology?

Brian Chess, chief scientist of Fortify Software has gone on record as saying, “As with any computerised system, e-voting machines can be subject to programming errors and malicious tampering. With evidence in the States clearly showing that the voting machine certification process is flawed, how can any citizen be expected to trust this new system?”. And he’s right. The problem is, though, that the vast majority of the public probably shouldn’t be allowed to vote anyway. And as was seen in

Scotland

, even the old cross-in-the-box malarkey can prove to be a little too taxing for some: there were over 100,000 spoilt ballots north of the border.

May 7, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm so out of touch…I mean, really not down with the kids man. No surprise then that I had no idea what Netlog was before speaking to the company the other day. Turns out they've been on the go since 2003, running social networking sites across Europe for over 13 million young 'uns. There are obviously a lot of competitors in this space but co-founder Lorenz Bogaert told me they have got a lead on some of them by giving the users what they want, like an IM facility so the kids can talk to each other in real-time.

Whenever we cover Web 2.0 and social networking stuff it's always with one eye on the security, office productivity and/or legal implications of the technology. But Netlog seems to be doing a little more than most to moderate content – with 24/7 monitoring by dedicated community managers. This also makes it harder to sneak through some naughty malware, Bogaert said…in fact it's impossible to upload viruses, he told me. So there you go. From an AUP and content security point-of-view then there's probably less to fear from this site than some others out there…and as a new younger Web 2.0-savvy generation of school leavers hit the workplace these issues will become increasingly important.

May 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pssst, wanna take a look at the future? Then look no further than Earl’s Court 2 (until Thursday) where the wonderful world of all things internet will be laid before you on a platter. And don’t tell your friends, they’ll all wanna come, and to be honest, only the cool kids are allowed into this one. Send them to the Business Continuity Expo instead.

Apart from a significantly higher proportion of good looking people than Infosec, just what does Internet World have on show this year I hear you ask. Well, like any popular trade show it’s usually a pretty good barometer of what’s going on in the industry – the fact that this year’s is the biggest since 2000 says a lot about the confidence, nay arrogance, returning to the show floor. The keynote theatres were again woefully too small and inadequate for the masses of people craning their necks to hear, though – I gave up on several because, quite frankly, life’s too short to be fighting for a seat in a seminar on affiliate marketing.

Lots of stuff then on marketing and how to make the most of your paid and organic campaigns, and a keynote by Forrester analyst Rebecca Jennings focussing on how to use Web 2.0 phenomena of user-generated content and social networking to your advantage. I’ve sat through roundtables covering this stuff before, but it’s still worth pointing out to firms (as many are still living in some kind of fairytale Web 1.0 world) that you are no longer solely in charge of the way your business is perceived. The customer is actually pretty much king these days, and online firms have to be a lot cleverer and a lot more subtle at working around this and finding ways to engage and interact with them.

Jennings focussed particularly on Nike, whose web site allows users to design and customise their own shoes, which the firm then cobbles together and sends out. Great idea…touching lots of Web 2.0 bases like interaction, giving the user what he/she wants, looking cool without seeming to try too hard etc. And as Jennings pointed out, by monitoring what designs their customers are choosing, the firm could even pre-empt rushes on certain types of shoes in the stores. Nike is actually taking a loss on this campaign of twenty odd Euros per order, she told us. But the publicity is of course priceless.   

May 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)