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| Volume 8, Issue 3 |
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In This Issue:
 20 things you can do in 20 minutes to be more successful at work
11 cloud computing vendors to watch
What IT job candidates need to show
7 dirty IT jobs and skills needed for them
 Who says IT ain't sexy? Not Eliot Spitzer
Record heat sweeps Arctic Sea, ice in 2007
 [Software Engineer] tells (almost) all about Casino security
 Five things you'll love (or hate) about IE8
10 broken technology ideas -- and how to fix them
Seven rules for life in a start-up
IT's top 5 training mistakes
 Off-Site datacenters: 10 questions to ask potential vendors
 A look at Steve Ballmer's workday
 Kissing the earth goodbye in about 7.59 billion years
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20 things you can do in 20 minutes to be more successful at work
There are things you can do in just 20 minutes that can have a meaningful and even a long term positive effect on your IT organization, your career, your technology knowledge, your
management skills and your relationship with the business. We've gathered 20 of the best ideas we could find.
You look at your to-do list and everything seems hard and insanely long-term. Create a five-year strategic plan. Map out the skills your IT organization will need over the next 36 months. Sign that seven-year outsourcing deal. It's okay. You can admit it. Sometimes it can
get a little...overwhelming. Then there's your schedule. Project updates. Executive team meetings. Vendor visits. Tête-à-têtes with direct reports. E-mail. Presentations. There's just no time to breathe. The thought that you could possibly fit in anything else seems
downright laughable. What you need is a 20-minute miracle. Of course, most big transformations take a while, but not all changes require a military campaign. There are things you can do in just one-third of an hour that can have a meaningful and, yes, even a
long-term, positive effect on your life, your job and your enterprise. You could call a customer; you could downsize (and revolutionize) your weekly meetings; you could try out some Google Apps. We've gathered 20 of the best ideas we could find: quick yet effective
tactics that can improve the IT organization, boost your career, add to your technology knowledge, sharpen your management skills and enhance your relationship with the business. Now all you have to do is...
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11 cloud computing vendors to watch
From Akamai to XCalibre, a new Forrester Research report examines intriguing cloud computing vendors. Get to know them: Like it or not, people in your company are already experimenting with the cloud, Forrester warns.
Cloud computing looks to be a "classic disruptive technology," says Forrester Research in an interesting new report published yesterday. For enterprise IT shops, cloud computing still poses some real risks, including an almost complete lack of service-level agreements and
customer references, plus some genuine security and compliance concerns, according to Forrester. But even so, IT shops are tapping into cloud services for targeted projects: "There's a high likelihood that developers inside your company are experimenting with it
right now," writes senior analyst James Staten in the report,"Is Cloud Computing Ready for the Enterprise?" That analysis meshes with what we recently reported hearing from CIOs in "Cloud Computing: Tales From the Front." The cloud isn't new per se; enterprise IT has had
access to the Internet and software-as-a-service for years. But now, some vendors are giving enterprises the chance to run not only hosted apps but also custom-developed apps in the cloud—with great flexibility to scale computing power on short notice, and to pay only for
what computing power is used. Enterprise IT sees the promise and is experimenting, cautiously. Which cloud computing vendors should be on your radar screen now? In its report, Forrester cites...
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What IT job candidates need to show
The National Multiple Sclerosis Society's EVP of internal operations looks for personable individuals with good communication skills, energy, curiosity and experience managing large-scale systems.
He may not admit it, but David Price has a knack for hiring good people. He's demonstrated it since day one. The first person he ever hired when he was a manager with Arthur Andersen in the late 1980s was a computer science major from the University of Virginia—who
eventually became a partner with the firm. Sure, Price has made his mistakes (who hasn't?), but he's learned valuable lessons from them, and he shares those lessons in this Q&A. Price, who is stepping down this month from his position as the National Multiple Sclerosis
Society's executive vice president of internal operations to start his own consulting firm, DVPrice & Co., says he relies on "proven techniques" for sussing out candidates. He's a rigorous reference checker. He involves as many peers and staff members as he can in the
hiring process and values their input. Rarely does he override their opinions. He knows exactly what he's looking for in candidates for various positions. And he tries to spend some time with candidates outside his office in a more relaxed setting, such as a
restaurant, to get a better understanding of the candidate's true personality. "None of these techniques are ground breaking," says Price. "They are fundamental techniques that have served me well." Hopefully, they'll serve you well, too...
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7 dirty IT jobs and skills needed for them
From COBOL programmers and cat herders to help desk zombies and hired hacks, we've got a list of the dirtiest jobs in IT and feedback from the poor souls who've held them.
Working in IT isn't always pretty. After all, we can't all work on the cutting-edge technologies all the time. Some of us have to get dirty—in some cases, literally. Unfortunately, dirty jobs—whether you're being chained to a help desk, hacking 30-year-old
code, finding yourself wedged between warring factions in the conference room, or mucking about in human effluvia—are necessary to make nearly every organization tick. (Well, maybe not the human effluvia part.) The good news? Master at least one of them, and you're pretty
much guaranteed a job with somebody. We don't guarantee you'll like it, though. Here are seven of the dirtiest jobs in IT, and why your organization needs them...
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Who says IT ain't sexy? Not Eliot Spitzer
I was sure that Henry Blodget's comment on the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal would come with a heavy dollop of schadenfreude.
After all, Spitzer as New York Attorney General forced Blodget to eat humble pie en route to an ignominious exodus from the securities industry. But in his new role as tech industry commentator, we're seeing a kinder, gentler side from the one-time Wall Street stock pumper.
On this blog at Silicon Alley Insider, Blodget opted for... The more interesting angle in this affair is the role IT played in Spitzer's downfall...
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Record heat sweeps Arctic Sea, ice in 2007
This graphic shows in red the area of arctic ice that was present in the summer of 1980 but missing this summer. At lower right is the equivalent surface area in terms of
the size of the United States. (Credit: Credit: Don Perovich, U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory) |
Warmth may not be an attribute you associate with a place where the sun doesn't shine in the winter and the sea freezes over, but all things are relative. And compared to earlier years, the Arctic was downright sweltering this year.
According to new research presented here at the the American Geophysical Union conference, the Arctic Ocean reached record high temperatures, arctic ice diminished to a record low, and ice melted on Greenland for a record number of days. "In 2007, we had off-the-charts
warming" of the Arctic Sea in the summer, said Mike Steele, an oceanographer with the Polar Science Center at the University of Washington. Specifically, he said the Arctic Sea surface temperature was...
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[Software Engineer] tells (almost) all about Casino security
Engineer built systems used by up to half the world’s casinos.
Jeff Jonas knows the Las Vegas gambling industry inside and out. As the founder and chief scientist of Systems Research & Development (SRD), Jonas helped build numerous casino systems before 2005 when his company was purchased by IBM. Big Blue was intrigued by SRD’s
NORA system (Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness), a technology that uncovers relationships that can be exploited fraudulently for profit, such as connections between dealers and gamblers. Now a distinguished engineer and chief scientist for IBM’s Entity Analytic
Solutions, Jonas is still based in Las Vegas but is focused more on applying his technology to national security and the banking industry. Speaking at the O’Reilly ETech conference on emerging technology in San Diego on Thursday, Jonas promised to reveal...
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Five things you'll love (or hate) about IE8
Wondering what you'll love (or hate) about IE8? I've put the beta through its paces, and I've got the goods for you.
I've found some nifty new features, and one that spells annoyance. Read on for details and screenshots.
WebSlices
Think of this feature as RSS feeds on steroids. As with an RSS feed, you subscribe to changing content from a Web page. But WebSlices are graphically richer, and as you can see in the screenshot below, you can view them directly from the newly configured Favorites bar
(previously called the Links bar), by clicking them. When you click one, the WebSlice drops down. You can click through to go to the Web page that houses the slice, or simply view it
in the drop-down. This is a nifty feature, but only useful if Web developers place WebSlices on their pages. At the moment...
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10 broken technology ideas -- and how to fix them
Here are 10 high-tech ideas that sound good but don't work out so well in practice.
Sometimes a technology idea is too good to be true. A flexible keyboard, Internet voting and watching feature films on your smart phone are examples. Today, these concepts are still
evolving, but they're broken right now. I'll tell you why and what could be done to fix them once and for all...
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Seven rules for life in a start-up
I'm on my first start-up. My experience had been at companies that were making significant strategic changes and wanted to ensure that IT could support the new direction.
They were mature companies, at one time successful but now feeling that their choices were either to change or sell.
Looking back, I realize that at every company, many of my recommendations focused on the fundamentals of IT management — project management, life-cycle planning, governance and staff development. Given that tendency, you'd think that when I had the opportunity to
create it all from scratch, I would remember the fundamentals. But at our first audit, I was informed that we needed to increase our focus on the fundamentals. Why had I neglected the
very things I'd been preaching about for years? In hindsight, it's pretty easy to see the things I needed to be doing better:...
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IT's top 5 training mistakes
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I've yet to come across a commercial company that embraces training as a requisite value-added service." David Murphy, founder, ITrain |
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You just rolled out Microsoft Windows Vista companywide, only to find your help desk flooded with calls.
Or you spent hours with the mobile sales group going over the basics of laptop and wireless security, only to discover team members still opening rogue e-mail attachments and stumbling over password protocols. Sound familiar? The problem could be in your training. It's all too
natural for IT to cast blame on end users when new or upgraded systems hit snafus, but rather than pointing fingers, IT should instead consider its own role in training miscues, experts advise. While IT's relationship with end-user training has always been ambivalent,
the pressure is on to get users comfortable and productive on new tech systems, thanks to a corporate emphasis on information security, compliance and return on investment to justify
costly hardware and software rollouts. In that light, a good training program can count as a competitive advantage, but management isn't always sold on the business benefits of...
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A look at Steve Ballmer's workday
Microsoft's CEO says that he only gets about 70 e-mails a day, and that he answers most of those himself.
Ever wondered what drives Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, or what he does every day as head of the largest software company in the world? Well, apparently, so do lots of other people. During a fireside chat at the annual MIX conference here March 5, moderator Guy Kawasaki, a
managing director at Garage Technology Ventures and a former Fellow at Apple Computer, asked Ballmer those very questions. He is driven by three primary things, the Microsoft CEO
replied. Firstly, he loves what he does and loves the fact that the company is at the forefront of creating technologies that change the world. Second, he has...
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Kissing the earth goodbye in about 7.59 billion years
In the end, there won’t even be fragments.
If nature is left to its own devices, about 7.59 billion years from now Earth will be dragged from its orbit by an engorged red Sun and spiral to a rapid vaporous death. That is the forecast according to new calculations by a pair of astronomers, Klaus-Peter Schroeder
of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and Robert Connon Smith of the University of Sussex in England. Their report, to be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, is the latest and gloomiest installment yet in a long-running debate
about the ultimate fate of our planet. Only last year, the discovery of a giant planet orbiting the faint burned-out cinder of a star in Pegasus had suggested that Earth could survive the Sun’s death. Dr. Smith called the new result...
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