TechWatchSM For IT pros If you are having difficulty seeing this mail or images in it, you can view it in your Web browser. Volume 8, Issue 5      In This Issue:   Microsoft 1, blogosphere 0   Vista 'broom' sweeps top execs out the door   Companies get more savvy with internships to find next-gen IT workers   The top 25 overlooked and underrated features in Leopard   Asperger's and IT: Dark secret or open secret?   Corporate blogging: Getting past 'No' if you're not the CEO   Fat, fatter, fattest: Microsoft’s kings of bloat   Windows is 'collapsing,' Gartner analysts warn   Hiring tips: How to engage candidates   How to: Use Bluetooth with your BlackBerry   The wackiest interview blunders   Google's data centers come to light   10 most disruptive technologies   Where did all the girl geeks go?   World's healthiest countries Microsoft 1, blogosphere 0 Guys, the joke's on us. Big time. Bloggers have been chortling all day over a goofy video made for Microsoft's sales team that made its way onto YouTube. The video, "Rocking Our Sales," by "Bruce ServicePack and the Vista Street Band," is painfully lame. How bad? A friend from IBM who viewed the video said it made him rip out his spleen. That's pretty bad. In short order, Microsoft was getting pilloried for not having a clue about cool. The House of Gates was so square, it was beyond lame. Gizmodo put up a post titled "Internal Microsoft Vista Video is as Painful as Videos Get", while Engadget chimed in with " Microsoft burns our eyes with Vista promo video." Not to be outdone, CrunchGear added its 2 cents with " Don't shoot the messenger: Microsoft internal promo video about Windows Vista is hard to watch." Truth be told, I thought pretty much the same thing. Only one problem. They were messing with your heads. [Who woulda thunk it?]... Read the article.  Back to top Vista 'broom' sweeps top execs out the door No 'brain drain,' but analysts connect Vista problems with Microsoft departures. The departure of a number of high-level Microsoft Corp. executives who worked on Windows Vista doesn't qualify as "brain drain," but it's probably connected to the operating system's perceived failures, analysts said today. Prompted by the news of the departure of Will Poole, a 12-year Microsoft veteran who until mid-2007 was responsible for the client version of Windows, several analysts weighed in on recent resignations. "I don't think it's significant that people who have been there for decades decide to leave," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at JupiterResearch. "They're at the point in their lives -- and probably from a financial perspective too -- when they can do what they want. They've been there, done that for king and country." Rob Helm of Directions on Microsoft agreed that the departure of Poole and others wasn't unusual enough to warrant concern. It certainly didn't meet his definition of "brain drain." But he, along with Gartenberg and Michael Silver, who covers Microsoft at Gartner Inc., mentioned Vista when discussing the departures... Read the article.  Back to top Companies get more savvy with internships to find next-gen IT workers They view students as future IT employees. Having an innovative Web site and smooth-running IT operations requires technology workers with up-to-date skills. To ensure that they always have a talented and well-stocked pool of future workers from which to choose, many employers are getting more savvy about their college internship programs, updating them to keep up with the needs of their businesses. Here's a look at the internship programs at seven large companies. In general, these companies are looking for college students with strong technical skills who could also become employees after they graduate. The good news:... Read the article.  Back to top The top 25 overlooked and underrated features in Leopard Don't miss these little-known but highly useful features in Mac OS X 10.5. About five months ago, Macintosh lovers finally got their hands on Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard," which boasts more than 300 new features spread across its interface and underpinnings. Some of those features are well-known -- the Dock's "stacks" function, Spaces, Time Machine and Screen Sharing, to name some of those most talked about by users and columnists alike. But many others are buried just beneath the surface, unknown or ignored by users even though they've had Leopard installed for months. These "hidden" features may be things you never heard of or noticed, or even used without realizing their presence or scope -- but they're too good to miss. Here are our picks for the top 25 undervalued Leopard features... Read the article.  Back to top Asperger's and IT: Dark secret or open secret? Yes, it is a stereotype, and yes, there are a higher than average number of Aspies in high tech." Bob, database applications programmer with Asperger's Asperger's Syndrome has been a part of IT for as long as there's been IT. So why aren't we doing better by the Aspies among us? "Ryno" is a 50-something ex-sysadmin, by his own account "burned out and living on disability" in rural Australia. He loved the tech parts of being a system administrator, and he was good at them. But the interpersonal interactions that went along with the position -- the hearty backslaps from random users, the impromptu meetings -- were literally unbearable for Ryno. "I can make your systems efficient and lower your downtime," he says. "I cannot make your users happy." Bob, a database applications programmer who's been working in high tech for 26 years, has an aptitude for math and logic. And he has what he calls his "strange memory."... "Jeremy" excels at being able to see an engineering problem from the inside out, internalizing it almost from the point of view of the code itself. He's great at hammering out details one on one with other intensely focused people, often the CEOs of the companies he contracts for. To protect his anonymity, he doesn't want to mention his programming subspecialty, but suffice it to say he's a very well-known go-to guy in his industry. What Jeremy is not good at is suffering fools in the workplace or dealing with the endless bureaucracy of the modern corporation. [These IT professionals are all autistic. Bob and Ryno have Asperger's Syndrome (AS), sometimes referred to as Asperger's Disorder; Jeremy has high-functioning autism (HFA)...] Read the article.  Back to top Corporate Blogging: Getting Past 'No' If You're Not the CEO When Bob Lutz of GM or Jonathan Schwartz of Sun set up their blogs, they probably didn't worry too much about the review with Legal. After all, they "outrank" the senior legal counsel. But how does, say, a midlevel corporate marketer or product manager set out to create an "official" blog with the blessing and sanction of Legal? It turns out, despite the prevalence of corporate blogging today, that there is still a fair amount of trepidation over the legal-review process. Bloggers need to recognize that "sanctioned corporate" blogging is different from publishing a brochure or issuing a press release. Those documents go through a review process before being set in stone, and sometimes do undergo legal review. Blogs should never go though a "sanitization" step (or they aren't really blogs and you shouldn't bother doing them), and a successful blog will usually include largely unmoderated or semi-moderated comments from the public. [It's not easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission...] Read the article.  Back to top Fat, fatter, fattest: Microsoft’s kings of bloat Download the Windows Sentinel Widget Our tests show that Windows Vista and Office 2007 not only smash Redmond. What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away. Such has been the conventional wisdom surrounding the Windows/Intel (aka Wintel) duopoly since the early days of Windows 95. In practical terms, it means that performance advancements on the hardware side are quickly consumed by the ever-increasing complexity of the Windows/Office code base. Case in point: Microsoft Office 2007, which, when deployed on Windows Vista, consumes more than 12 times as much memory and nearly three times as much processing power as the version that graced PCs just seven short years ago, Office 2000. Despite years of real-world experience with both sides of the duopoly, few organizations have taken the time to directly quantify what my colleagues and I at Intel used to call The Great Moore's Law Compensator (TGMLC). In fact, the hard numbers above represent what is perhaps the first-ever attempt to accurately measure the evolution of the Windows/Office platform in terms of real-world hardware system requirements and resource consumption. In this article I hope to further quantify the impact of TGMLC and to track its effects across four distinct generations of Microsoft's desktop computing software stack. To accomplish my goal, I'll be employing... Read the article.  Back to top Windows is 'collapsing,' Gartner analysts warn See why Microsoft may have dug itself into too deep of a hole. And join 111,000-plus other users in InfoWorld's campaign to save Windows XP. Due to poor response to the marketplace and decades of legacy issues, Microsoft must either radically change Windows or risk its collapse. Calling the situation "untenable" and describing Windows as "collapsing," a pair of Gartner analysts Thursday said Microsoft must make radical changes to the operating system or risk becoming a has-been. In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft has not responded to the market, is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and decisions and faces serious competition on a whole host of fronts that will make Windows moot unless the Redmond, Wash. developer acts. "For Microsoft, its ecosystem and its customers, the situation is untenable," said Silver and MacDonald in their prepared presentation, titled "Windows Is Collapsing: How What Comes Next Will Improve." Among Microsoft's problems, the pair said, is Windows' rapidly-expanding... Read the article.  Back to top Hiring tips: How to engage candidates Pat Lawicki asks candidates the kinds of questions they'd have to answer on a day-to-day basis about projects if they got the job. Pat Lawicki joined Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in early 2005. Her mission? To modernize the IT department. By June, Lawicki, PG&E's senior vice president and CIO, had developed a three-year strategic plan for IT as well as a more tactical 12- to 18-month plan. Both ultimately called for the centralization of IT, which then was distributed throughout the $13.2 billion energy company's 19 lines of business. Servers were moved into a secure data center. Hardware, software and process standards were established. And hundreds of legacy systems are being replaced with three major platforms. "We're pushing out a lot of standard processes, standard equipment, and bringing in some new and advanced technology," says Lawicki. "We are leapfrogging what was a very minimal investment in technology and adding human capital to make it happen." Indeed, Lawicki says that in the course of "just a couple of months," the IT organization has grown from 1,200 employees to more than 1,400. In addition to the new positions the restructured IT organization has created, she also has to fill positions vacated by retiring Baby Boomers and by IT staff who, she's happy to say, are being accepted for non-IT jobs within the lines of business. With all those open positions, it's a good thing she has a reliable methodology in place for interviewing job applicants... Read the article.  Back to top How to: Use Bluetooth with your BlackBerry If you use your Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry's Bluetooth wireless connectivity, it's probably to connect to a hands-free headset or ear piece so you can drive or take notes during conversations, or a set of earphones to beam your latest tunes from your device sans wires. But did you know you can transfer files like photos, voice notes and songs from your BlackBerry to other compatible mobile devices using Bluetooth? Over the past few weeks we shared our best BlackBerry keyboard shortcuts, our favorite free software downloads, offered up a handful of ways to extend your RIM device's battery life and published five advanced tips and tricks for all you BlackBerry experts. This week's Bluetooth file transfer technique can come in handy in areas with poor or no cellular coverage or when you need to get files off an old device which no longer has active cellular service... Read the article.  Back to top The wackiest interview blunders What's the most unusual thing a candidate ever did in a job interview? Fall asleep? Disappear? Bring his/her mom? CareerBuilder.com released its annual survey of the most outrageous interview mistakes candidates have made, as related by more than 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals nationwide. Among this year's top 10 dubious occurrences:... Read the article.  Back to top Google's data centers come to light A couple of sites have put together some interesting information on Google's clandestine data centers. Data Center Knowledge has logged an incredible amount of data about the 36 or so centers worldwide, painting a broad picture of what to many users were almost mythical entities. Royal Pingdom followed this up by mapping out the locations for us. The post lists the locations of the sites, including some under construction, such as one in Goose Creek, S.C., as well as Pryor, Oklahoma, Council Bluffs, Iowa—real heartland stuff after building data centers in more urban areas such as in its Mountain View hometown and Los Angeles. Many know that Google keeps mum on their data centers [What most probably don't know is that the company takes such steps to obfuscate data center details by getting permits for its data center projects using LLCs...] Read the article.  Back to top 10 most disruptive technologies Here's a look at the technologies Gartner analysts voted most likely to succeed—at changing the face of business. Gartner analysts at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Las Vegas discussed what they believe will be the most disruptive technologies through 2012. Disruptive technologies are those that force changes in industry models, business processes, vendor types, products and services, as well as the all-important user model. Take a look at this list and tell us whether you think something has been omitted—or just plain doesn't belong. This list is ranked in order from least disruptive to most disruptive... Read the article.  Back to top Where did all the girl geeks go? A professor says he has only one girl in a computer science major class in 2008, down from 40 percent in 2000. What happened? eWEEK gets field experts to weigh in. While women hold 51 percent of professional jobs in the United States, they make up only 26 percent of the IT work force, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Furthermore, fewer women worked in IT in 2008 than in 2000. But the loss of women in the technology field begins long before they reach the professional level. The proportion of CS (computer science) bachelor's degrees awarded to women has fallen from 36 to 21 percent between 1983 and 2006... Read the article.  Back to top World's healthiest countries In Depth: The World's 15 Healthiest Countries Back pain: What works Simple treatments may help as much as high-tech gadgets or surgery. James Weinstein, an expert in back pain at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, was bending down two years ago when his back went out... There are lots of reasons to envy residents of Northern Europe. Each day they get to take in raw, dramatic landscapes, stunning architecture and world-class shopping.But, more important, they know a thing or two about health and wellness. Forbes.com has found that the region is home to some of the world's healthiest countries, including top-ranking Iceland, Sweden and Finland. Others that fared well include... Read the article.  Back to top Forward to a Friend: Do you have a friend that would like to receive TechWatchsm? 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