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| Volume 8, Issue 4 |
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In This Issue:
 Your boss is a monkey
 How-to video: Install and use six free killer blackberry apps
How to ace an executive-level job interview
 After 38 years, a new type of memory to hit market
Apple, Google vie for hearts (and wallets) of developers
 Windows XP: Going, going ... gone?
Top 10 tech toys to blow your tax refund on
Mac easiest to hack, says $10,000 winner
 Column-store databases and DW appliances: How to make the right choice
 10 products, processes that should be retired
10 most dangerous new technologies
 Eliot Spitzer's seven deadly sins
 Eight healthy reasons to drink beer
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Your boss is a monkey
"Managing up" using the tricks of exotic-animal training.
Exotic-animal trainers need a great poker face. Let's say you're a trainer, and one day, a beluga whale spits a mouthful of cold water at you. Your first instinct will be to shriek or jump or curse, but any reaction will probably reinforce the
spitting. If you react, that whale will own you, and you'll be a Spit Bull's-eye for the rest of your life. Instead, you must ignore it and appear unfazed, expressionless -- a training technique called "least-reinforcing scenario," or LRS. The writer Amy
Sutherland studied animal trainers who could teach whales not to spit, dolphins to jump through hoops, and monkeys to ride skateboards. One day, it hit her: What if she used those techniques on her husband? This epiphany led her to write her witty and
engaging new book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage. Shamu proves that behavioral training works on whales and husbands. But let's apply Sutherland's
approach to another irritable mammal: your boss. Maybe you should start treating him or her like an exotic animal. Say your boss is a yeller...
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How-to video: Install and use six free killer blackberry apps
Get more from your Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry smartphone by quickly learning to install and use a half-dozen free downloads. This video shows you how...
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How to ace an executive-level job interview
Tips and techniques for answering common interview questions, making a good first impression during the interview and for following up.
You've been contacted by an executive recruiter about an opportunity to interview for a position at a successful company. The job the executive recruiter describes sounds perfect for you. You want the position so badly, you dream about it at night. To make
your dream a reality, you need to ace the interview. That's easier said than done. Job interviews are one of those occasions when you just have to be perfect. You need to spin a good story out of your work experience, but your story can't be too detailed or
carry on too long. You need to appear relaxed, but you can't come off as too relaxed. You need to practice your responses to typical interview questions, but in the interview, your responses can't seem rehearsed. It's like Goldilocks and the Three
Bears: Everything has to be just right. And it's tricky. Obviously, you've got to learn as much about the company and the people interviewing you as you can. The more you know about the hiring manager, the more comfortable you'll be talking with him or
her. Similarly, the more you know about the company, the easier it will be for you to present yourself as the answer to the company's prayers. This story walks you through
the interview process, from preparation to follow-up. You'll get tips on how to...
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After 38 years, a new type of memory to hit market
It's been a long haul for phase change memory, but the goal is in sight.
Numonyx, the memory joint venture between STMicroelectronics and Intel, is already shipping samples of phase change memory (PCM) chips to customers and will start shipping PCM chips commercially later this year, CEO Brian Harrison said at a press
conference Monday. "We expect to bring it to market this year and generate some revenue," Harrison said. "It is one to two years before it becomes widely commercially available." Hearing a CEO talk about existing samples and near-term commercial
shipments is a big deal for PCM. The technology has been stuck in the proverbial "a few years away" phase for a long time...
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Apple, Google vie for hearts (and wallets) of developers
For the last four months, Howard Chau has been developing a mobile application that's designed to alert people to their next calendar appointment, factoring in data like the person's physical location and traffic conditions en route to a meeting.
In the next two weeks, Chau plans to submit the GPS-based application, called Mappily, to Google in the hopes of winning its Android Developer Challenge, a developer contest with $10 million in total prize money. Because Chau only stands to win tens of
thousands of dollars in the first round of the challenge, the money would just be gravy. "It's really a way to get seen," said Chau, the 26-year-old president of Cupertino, Calif.-based Mappily, which employs three people. Chau's plight is part of
Silicon Valley's new contest within a contest to create the hottest new mobile technology. Pulling the strings are...
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Windows XP: Going, going ... gone?
According to Microsoft's timeline, XP is on its way to becoming an ex-operating system.
The approaching death of Windows XP may upset you, but it shouldn't come as a surprise. Microsoft Corp.'s product life-cycle guidelines have foretold the fate of XP since 2001. In fact, Microsoft has been killing off one version of a product as it is
replaced with another for years now. But this time around, the approaching demise of XP is getting more attention than, say, the final passing of Windows 2000. Why? For a couple of reasons: XP is the most widely used operating system on the planet, and its
long-delayed successor, Windows Vista, is not proving to be universally popular. The companies that make up the enterprise market for Windows are dragging their feet about
upgrading, and on the consumer side there are signs of a rebellion against Vista. Microsoft has already made changes in its timetables. Last year, the company extended the ...
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Top 10 tech toys to blow your tax refund on
Sure, you could invest it, but this is more fun.
For some of us, it's that magical time of year. Better than the winter holidays, better than Father's or Mother's Day -- even better than your own birthday. I speak, of course, about tax time. For the lucky masses getting a refund, cash coming back
from the government feels like free money. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the average taxpayer will receive about $2,300 back from the federal government. And, this year, starting in May, the U.S. Treasury is shelling out an economic stimulus
payment of $600 per eligible taxpayer ($1,200 for couples filing jointly) and an additional $300 for each eligible child under 17. Sure, you could squirrel that cash away, put it toward savings or retirement, or commit some other unnatural and
responsible act. But why not treat yourself to something unnecessary and electronic? Here's your guide...
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Mac easiest to hack, says $10,000 winner
Security researcher Charlie Miller exploited Safari in two minutes.
The security researcher who walked away with $10,000 yesterday by hacking a MacBook Air in less than two minutes said he chose to attack Apple Inc.'s operating system for one simple reason. "It was the easiest one of the three," said Charlie Miller, an
analyst at Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), a Baltimore-based security consultancy. "We wanted to spend as little time as possible coming up with an exploit, so we picked Mac OS X." On Thursday afternoon, Miller breached a MacBook Air, one of
three laptops up for grabs in the "PWN to OWN" hacker challenge at CanSecWest, a security conference that wraps up today in Vancouver, British Columbia. For his efforts, he got the computer and a $10,000 cash prize. The MacBook Air was running the
current version of Mac OS X, 10.5.2, with all the latest security patches applied. The other two computers...
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Column-store databases and DW appliances: How to make the right choice
With data volumes exploding, conventional enterprise data warehouses are fast running out of headroom. Data warehouse appliances are starting to fill the gap, but
the emerging category of column-oriented databases may offer a better option. The key to success is matching your application to the right product.
All the research points in the same direction: data volumes are growing at a rampant rate within most enterprises, with estimates ranging from 20 percent per year on the conservative side to 50 percent per year among the largest organizations. The
prognosis is such that "within a few years, traditional row-oriented relational databases are really going to be pushing their limits," predicts Boris Evelson of Forrester Research. "There are a lot of DBAs who don't want to hear it because they're
so entrenched in Oracle and IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server, but I think a new era is coming." Enter data warehouse appliances and column-store databases. While the technologies are not new, the last few years have seen the appliance market take off,
and in the last few months, column-store database options have multiplied. Venture capitalists are placing multi-million-dollar bets on both categories, and they are
safe bets, too, given exploding data volumes and the corporate desire to do fast-yet-in-depth analyses of all available data. [Consider Columns Over Rows
What exactly is a column-store database? Unlike a conventional database that stores data in rows, with say, one complete customer record per row, the column-store looks at data vertically...]
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10 products, processes that should be retired
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies to IT as well as to life in general. That said, there are many products in the enterprise that are starting to show their age. And, if they aren’t now, they will be with technologies such as IPv6 and unified
communications coming down the pike, not to mention rising energy costs. Here’s a list of products that deserve a hard once-over...
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10 most dangerous new technologies
Cutting edge technologies offer the hope of a better world, potentially bringing welcome solutions to everything from disease to environmental damage. But these same
technologies can also bring danger, by aiding criminals and terrorists, invading personal privacy and even potentially creating diseases and damaging the environment. By Jim Rapoza. Illustrations by Brian Moore...
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Eliot Spitzer's seven deadly sins
Lust is the least of it. Here's a look at the mistakes New York's sex-scandal-scarred governor made, and the lessons for any leader—in politics or business.
Stunning, shocking, schadenfreude-inducing. All those adjectives have been used to describe the fall of Eliot Spitzer, "The Sheriff of Wall Street" and the man Time Magazine named "The Crusader." On the surface it seems his involvement with a prostitution ring and other
possible illegal behavior are what doomed him as governor. But really they're only the tip of the iceberg. As a leader and manager, Spitzer made plenty of other mistakes that made it untenable for him to stay in office. Here are Eliot Spitzer's seven deadly sins (with
apologies to St. John Cassian, Pope St. Gregory the Great, and Dante), and the lessons they contain for any leader or manager...
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Eight healthy reasons to drink beer
Looking for a good excuse to tip back a beer? You don't have to wait for St. Patrick's Day. That's because a decade's worth of health research shows that regular, moderate beer intake--one to two 12 ounce glasses per day for men and one for women--can be good for you,
especially if you're facing some of the most common diseases related to aging. Experts say wine tends to get most of the attention when it comes to the health benefits of alcohol primarily because of the French paradox, a reference to the relatively low rate of heart
disease in France in spite of a diet high in saturated fat. The idea is that daily sips of Merlot make the difference. But a number of studies are showing that moderate consumption of
alcohol, including beer, can have similar...
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