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| Volume 7, Issue 6 |
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In This Issue:
 Running the numbers on Vista
Virtualization: A feature of the hardware, not the OS?
Casual fans drive growth of video games
The iPod is growing up
How search engines rate on privacy
 Gates says goodbye, Live Search demo wows at Microsoft's annual meeting
IT job swapping at FedEx for fun and profit
Tales from the hot seat (or, how I aced the interview)
Cooling down from high stress
Ten ways to cut IT energy costs
 How to deal with bully bosses
Eight of the worst spreadsheet blunders
Six keys for creating an innovative IT team
20 USB gizmos that have no place in the enterprise (But you'll love)
 Iacocca’s nine Cs of leadership
 Silence kills, dialogue heals
 Does Mac OS X suck?
Vista SP1: You oughta know beta
 How Boston College recovered from a big data security breach
Verizon smokes out another family
 Top web developer mistakes
Why we haven't stopped spam
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Running the numbers on Vista
Sales of boxed copies of Windows Vista continue to significantly trail those of Windows XP during its early days, according to a soon-to-be-released report.
Standalone unit sales of Vista at U.S. retail stores were down 59.7 percent compared with Windows XP, during each product's first six months on store shelves, according to NPD Group. In terms of revenue, sales are also down, but the drop has been less steep, at 41.5
percent. The findings largely mirror the sales pattern NPD saw for Vista during its first week on the market in January. "It's just not doing well," NPD analyst Chris Swenson said of Vista's performance at retail stores, though he added that most people get their
operating system on new PCs, with only a minority of customers purchasing boxed copies. The report, titled...
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Virtualization: A feature of the hardware, not the OS?
The virtualization specialists are fighting back.
Companies like VMware, and more recently XenSource, got their start with standalone virtualization software that let customers run several operating systems simultaneously on a single computer. But Linux sellers and Microsoft, unwilling to cede their influential
position selling the foundational software of a computer, are trying to make virtualization a feature of the operating system. Now the virtualization companies are trying to make
their software a feature of the server instead. XenSource and VMware both have added new versions of...
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Casual fans drive growth of video games
The $13 billion video game industry is counting on "the noobs" this Christmas.
"Noob," short for newbie, is the online vernacular for someone who is new to gaming or just does not know where to start. In the video game industry, those are known as new customers. Daniel A. DeMatteo, vice chairman and chief operating officer of GameStop, the largest
specialty game retailer and second-largest game-seller, after Wal-Mart, said he expected that a new audience for video games would continue to affect console makers, game producers and retailers this coming holiday season. By far the most important trend in gaming over
the last two years has been...
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The iPod is growing up
If Apple really is putting a version of Mac OS X in a new iPod, presumably it has more in mind than showing high-quality reruns of The Hills.
Any talk these days of Apple and the future of mobile computing quickly turns to the iPhone. The company is on its way to selling a million iPhones in the first three months of what Apple says is a multiyear strategy to enter the mobile phone market. But Apple makes
another mobile device. It's called the iPod. And if the persistent rumors are fulfilled Wednesday during the latest episode of The Steve Jobs Show (a product presentation at San Francisco's Moscone Center), the iPod is about to get a whole lot more powerful. A
wide-screen iPod that looks an awful lot like an iPhone seems like the most likely bet for...
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How search engines rate on privacy
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Price wars are public blessings. Ask anyone who has comparison shopped between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel microprocessors or bought a cheap Harry Potter novel thanks to fierce bookseller price battles.
In the last few months, the search engine business has experienced its own version of cutthroat competition: a privacy policy war, with Google, Ask.com and Microsoft vying to outdo one another in protecting their users' personal information. But it's been difficult
to make direct comparisons, in part because privacy policies tend to be written by lawyers for lawyers. So CNET News.com did some of the work for you by surveying the five leading search companies. Starting on August 6, we asked them eight questions, including how long
they retain search data, how they eventually dispose of it, whether they engage in behavioral targeting, and whether they use information they have from user sign-ups to
guide which ads are displayed...
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Gates says goodbye, Live Search demo wows at Microsoft's annual meeting
The faithful flock to Seattle's Safeco Field; Ray Ozzie speech scores.
One last chance to hear Bill Gates speak before he leaves the company he co-founded to head up his humanitarian efforts drew tens of thousands of Microsoft employees to the company's annual meeting at Safeco Field in Seattle late last week. But garnering the most buzz,
according to attendees blogging about Thursday's event, was a demo of Microsoft's revamp to its flagship Web search engine, which is expected to be launched later this month. Additionally, CEO Steve Ballmer's rousing call for Microsoft to be "bold" and incorporate
great design into its products -- the strategy that has lifted rival Apple Inc. -- made a big impression. Others hailed Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's speech on Microsoft's "software+services" vision, and the awarding of a new technical award to the longtime
Microsoft engineer who headed up the development of Windows NT among other products. Mini-Microsoft, the anonymous blog purportedly written by a Microsoft employee, enthused in its typical, half-sarcastic way: "I love this company. I love this company's Company
Meeting." Criticism of the all-day event, which takes place every year at the home field of baseball's Seattle Mariners, included the lack of parody videos as have
been presented in the past, and other product demos so boring they inspired employees [25,000 to 35,000] sitting in the upper decks to rain paper airplanes onto
employees sitting at field level...
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IT job swapping at FedEx for fun and profit
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| Sherry Aaholm |
IT managers spend six months in each other's shoes.
As managing director of shipment data capture at FedEx, Martha Carr had plenty of challenges and ample professional fulfillment. But she wanted new perspectives, more exposure and bigger opportunities. “I felt like I needed an external U.S. experience,” Carr
says. Although international positions don’t come up often, Carr’s bosses gave her the experience she was looking for: They let her temporarily swap jobs with Roger Van Beeck, FedEx Express Corp.’s Brussels-based director of application and architecture for Europe
and Africa. “It was the best learning experience I had,” Carr says. She was able to get it because Memphis-based parent company FedEx Corp. has a formal program for rotating IT managers. The goal is to give workers the experience and visibility they need to advance
their careers, says Sherry Aaholm, executive vice president of FedEx Services, which houses most of FedEx’s IT organization. “We want people to know that having broader exposure is what makes you valuable,” she says. But the rotation program benefits the company as well
as the individual participants Aaholm says. Rotations have helped to...
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Tales From the Hot Seat (Or, How I Aced the Interview)
IT pros who've survived a rough round of questioning share their stories.
Storage. Security. Servers. For IT pros, prepping for an interview by mentally reviewing their areas of expertise is a no-brainer. Then someone asks you to tell a joke, and it all goes to pot. Storage. Security. Servers. For IT pros, prepping for an interview by
mentally reviewing their areas of expertise is a no-brainer. Then someone asks you to tell a joke, and it all goes to pot.
Or maybe not. To be sure, you're in the hot seat when you face an interviewer, either in person or over the phone. But that doesn't mean you can't take control when things start going off course. Here's how a sampling of IT professionals reacted to unexpected
questions, or asked bold questions of their own, or managed to turn around interviews that seemed to be going badly. Not everybody got the job they sought, but most came away with a good story to share.
What's the best -- or worst -- interview question you've ever been asked?
Like other IT professionals, Santosh Jayaram heads into interviews prepared to answer questions about technology and how it can be applied to business problems. So it's no surprise he was caught off guard when an interviewer asked him instead either to tell a
joke or discuss something he's passionate about. "I thought it was a difficult question. I was momentarily stuck. You're all set with your technical questions and cases, and then this question throws you off," says Jayaram, currently a business development manager for
a telecommunications company in Washington, D.C. Jayaram didn't want to tell a joke that might offend, so instead he talked about his interest in...
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Cooling Down From High Stress
Each year, there are just six days — three in late spring and three in late summer — when I wish we had air conditioning in our 97-year-old house; the rest of the year, the breezes off the bay keep the place under 73 degrees.
The tough part of each stretch of three days is that by the second uncomfortable night, it’s hard to remember what cool feels like. The old house and everything in it, including the people, have completely lost touch with what’s normal, and we residents lose all
perspective. Dire thoughts that it will always be like this take over our minds. Stress can have a similar effect. I’ll be working on a project I badly wanted but is turning out to be more challenging than I expected, and suddenly the stress starts to rise like humidity in
August. Stress can be sneaky like that, influencing your decisions and...
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Ten Ways to Cut IT Energy Costs
Companies in the U.S. spend as much as 10% of their total IT budgets on power and cooling, according to Gartner Inc.
Over the past year, virtually every IT publication has recommended ways to reduce energy consumption by migrating to green buildings and green data centers. Most articles focus on basic approaches, including virtualizing servers, migrating to blade servers and cleaning
up the space beneath the raised floor. IT organizations can reduce energy costs in additional ways:...
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How to deal with bully bosses
Do you have a bad manager? Someone who makes your life miserable all week by criticizing your every move? Experts offer their tips on handling bully and toxic bosses.
Is your boss a tyrant of Machiavellian proportions? If it makes you feel better, you're not alone. According to a study by the Employment Law Alliance, almost half of all employees have been targeted by a bully boss.
The study also revealed the following:
* 81 percent of bullies are managers.
* 50 percent of bullies are women and 50 percent are men.
* 84 percent of targets are women.
* 82 percent of targets ultimately lost their job.
* 95 percent of bullying is witnessed.
Do you have a boss who is off the wall—we're talking certifiably nuts? If it's any consolation, take comfort in knowing that you have more company than you can imagine. The simple truth is that bully or tyrant bosses can be found in abundance. Unfortunately, the majority can't legally be institutionalized. Many should not be bosses. Tyrannical behavior comes in all forms...
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Eight of the worst spreadsheet blunders
Spreadsheet typos and oversights can wind up costing your company millions. Here's a look at eight big mistakes, and tips on how to prevent them from happening at your company.
Spreadsheet errors can happen to the best of us. As a result, many public companies and government organizations are trying to wean themselves off their reliance on spreadsheets for complex and critical financial transactions. Of course, to achieve such a goal,
organizations need all the help they can get. Most businesses today rely on spreadsheets in some way. The multi-celled document is used heavily for finance and accounting, as well as supply chain, customer relationship and sales functions. However, recent financial
regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, have had a huge impact on how companies manage changes and controls in financial documents, such as spreadsheets. Because of their preponderance and the amount of digital fingertips that can touch these documents,
spreadsheets have come under a lot of fire. In particular, companies lack the appropriate controls and repeatable processes to mitigate the risks. This isn't about software defects within the applications, such as Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice. The problems associated
with a spreadsheet ordinarily do not reside in the software program itself. It's those imperfect human beings who are using the applications: inputting data, copying and pasting numbers from row to row and column to column, and writing inaccurate formulae. Research
abounds on the prominence of...
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Six keys for creating an innovative IT team
Before IT can innovate, it needs to build a solid infrastructure and demonstrate business-savvy.
CIO Steven Agnoli is a full innovation partner at global law firm K&L Gates. What it takes to be in that position—which helped earn his company a 2007 CIO 100 award—requires a balance of practicality, creativity and a hefty dose of soft skills.
1. Lay a strong IT foundation.
You need to get the basics right before you can start thinking about innovation, says Agnoli. To that end, strong operations and well-running infrastructure have to be a given. “It’s very difficult to move forward without that strong foundation,” he says. If you
aren’t keeping the lights on and the trains running on time, you won’t even have the time to devote to innovation.
2. Create an IT team that inspires confidence and trust.
An IT team with strong communication skills lays the foundation for...
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20 USB gizmos that have no place in the enterprise (But you'll love just the same)
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In the spirit of summer, we compiled a list of 20 USB-powered gadgets with very little business value—but that still tickle us pink.
Many USB-based products deserve a place in the enterprise, such as memory sticks or flash drives, universal chargers and password tokens. They are useful but generally unexciting. But then there are the USB gizmos that provide little or no business value. These items,
such as USB lava lamps, fans and other amusing desktop paraphernalia, lighten up employees' days and can shape comfortable, personalized office environments. And there are the wacky USB gadgets more suited for use in fraternity houses or toy stores than in office
buildings. You know: circus cannons that fire festive foam projectiles. Memory sticks shaped like glistening Japanese cuisine. An android that breaks it down on your desktop dance floor...as long as it's connected to your USB port. What follows is a list of our
favorite USB gizmos from the latter two categories. We collected a handful of USB products CIOs would normally have no reason to check out—except perhaps to bar from the premises—but that we think you'll appreciate just the same...
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Iacocca’s cine Cs of leadership
I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten [I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses]. I call them the “Nine Cs of Leadership” - says an excerpt from former Chrysler Chairman and CEO Lee Iacocca’s Where Have
All the Leaders Gone? Enter, Robert Nardelli, who private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management named the new Chrysler’s CEO and one with numerous sobriquets, including “The Turnaround Specialist”, “The Hatchet Guy”, “Tough Job, Tough Guy”. The list
goes on...When asked by Fortune in April, what he would be doing if he were to be back as CEO of Chrysler, Iacocca, in his characteristic style, put it bluntly:
[Here’s Iacocca’s C-list, not only for Nardelli, but for all corporate leaders, as listed in his book...]
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Silence kills, dialogue heals
The reluctance of American workers to confront questionable workplace practices takes an extensive toll on results such as productivity, quality, job satisfaction, and especially
safety. Here's how to use crucial conversation skills to address issues, solve problems, and save lives.
Why do fatal auto accidents occur when the passengers in the car are fully aware their driver is driving under the influence? Why do commercial airliners crash when members of the cockpit crew have reason to believe the aircraft is unsafe or the conditions are
treacherous? Why did the seven crew members of the space shuttle Discovery lose their lives when qualified scientists and technicians had reason to question the safety of the space vehicle before launch? The propensity to remain silent rather than confront unsafe
practices is embedded deeply in our culture. Sometimes it has dire consequences, and sometimes the consequences are fatal. The reluctance of American workers to confront questionable workplace practices takes an extensive toll on results such as productivity,
quality, job satisfaction, and especially safety. Unfortunately, health care is not immune from these same destructive tendencies. Even in an industry where the stakes are especially high and errors can mean the difference between life and death, people are reluctant to
speak up about questionable practices. Indications that people hesitate to confront unsafe practices include:...
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Does Mac OS X suck?
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Apple's desktop platform has impressive technical chops, but it falls short from a business perspective.
Paul Venezia bamboozled me into buying a MacBook Pro back in January, and I've been on it semi-daily ever since. And yeah, overall, I've been pretty happy. Of course, the only reason I was willing to buy one at all was because Parallels made it so easy to run
Windows. But while my initial usage ratio was 85 percent Parallels, 15 percent OS X, over the last six months, that's changed dramatically to 45 percent Parallels, 55 percent OS X. Yup, the Orchard does slowly assimilate you. But not everyone that uses a Mac is suddenly
streaming sunshine from their palest nether parts. Scour the Web looking for unhappy Mac users and you'll find that they're just as vocal as those who hate Windows (like this guy off Google Video). Just as I asked, "Does Vista suck?" last week, the question this week is
"Does Mac OS X suck?" After six months playing with the platform, I figure I have a viable opinion. Plus, it's my second-to-last column, so I couldn't resist. Hope a sniper bullet doesn't take me on my way to my morning bagel, but I think I've been as objective as I can,
given the nature of this column. As with last week's column, I'm looking at the Mac from perspective of the Windows-centric network manager and grading basic categories on a pass/fail basis.
Windows networking
Nobody complains about this because it works. OS X has an excellent networking client, both wired and wireless — due in large part to FreeBSD rather than anything coming out of Cupertino. Seriously, I think it's noticeably better than...
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Vista SP1: You oughta know beta
Cringester and book author John Hedtke came up with that little gem, as pithy as any real Microsoft slogan and far more accurate.
We may finally have a chance to test it out, now that Microsoft has released the schedule for Vista's Service Pack 1. (What does it say about a company when it takes six months for it to release...
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How Boston College recovered from a big data security breach
Head of IT security says prompt response in wake of 100,000-record breach helped to regain customer confidence.
In 2005, Boston College recovered from a data breach by putting its customers’ needs first. On Monday, at The Security Standard conference held here, the college’s head of security explained how. Walking the audience through the data breach that occurred at Boston College
in 2005 when personal information of 100,000 alumni was potentially put at risk, David Escalante, director of computer policy and security, explained how the college recovered, and managed to regain its customers’ trust...
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Verizon smokes out another family
They're a bunch of pyromaniacs, those Verizon FiOS installers, that's all I've got left to say about it.
OK, maybe not all I've got left to say. (Friday update: Yikes! Verizon exec offers tone-deaf reply.) Before spending the past two weeks on vacation, I had devoted the better part of the prior week to sparring with Verizon's public relations department after the latter got all hot and bothered by the fire department in Needham, Mass. (and me) calling a fire a fire - a fire which in that case had been sparked by a FiOS installer hitting an electrical main. Well, these sparkies wearing hard hats have done it again, this time generating billows of smoke and causing $2,650 worth of damage to the Philadelphia area home of John Wilen, his wife and young child. Wilen, unfortunately for Verizon, happens to be a business reporter for the Associated Press. (And it's become clear now that the company, whose senior vice president of media relations accused little ol' me of trying to bring it down through this type of coverage, has it in for professional journalists.) You - and Verizon, I trust - will note that to this point in this particular narrative I have not once used the much-disputed F word (fire) in relation to what happened at the Wilen home. That's because John Wilen tells me...
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Top web developer mistakes
For most businesses today, the face that they show to customers, partners and the world, isn't their CEO or founder or spokesperson, it's their website.
Often the first impression that a person will form about your company will come when they visit your website. Given that knowledge, one would think that businesses would put a lot of time and effort into putting the best "Web face" on their company as possible. But that
often isn't the case. Many company websites, and the web applications that they offer to customers, are riddled with bugs, flaws and outright errors that can make your top-flight business look like cheap amateurs. However, the good news is that many of these mistakes are easily avoidable. Learning from the mistakes of others can help web developers build sites that avoid common problems. With that in mind here is our list of the most common web developer mistakes...
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Why we haven't stopped spam
Opinion: Even very smart people are misinformed on this subject. Here's a clue: If it were easy to fix, it would have been fixed already.
Several years ago when Bill Gates declared that the spam problem would be solved within two years, he appeared to be thinking of SMTP authentication as the heart of that solution. I wouldn't have said what he said, but I was pretty optimistic too. Not anymore. The
overwhelming power of inertia seems too much for any solution to take on. People just won't stand for the inconveniences that fixing spam would bring. Bill and I may have learned our lessons, but there's a long tradition of smart people looking at the spam problem and
deciding that it would be easy to fix if only they were in charge. There's a good example of this on last week's Wall Street Journal op-ed page, of all places...
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