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| Volume 8, Issue 7 |
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In This Issue:
 FAQ: XP death watch T minus 5 weeks
15 great gadgets you can't get in the U.S.
Free VM configuration tool offered
Secrets of successful IT teams
How Virgin keeps transactions humming
 Six free security tools you shouldn't live without
 How to manage brilliant people
Microsoft turnabout on XP follows user demands
Reader favorites: 10 great free network tools
China rising: If you know Mandarin and management, you're in
 VMware faces virtual reality
Has the disconnected vacation become extinct?
 10 reasons Gen Xers are unhappy at work
 Images: Secrets of stonehenge unearthed
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FAQ: XP death watch T minus 5 weeks
Veteran OS falls off retail and OEM list on 6/30. Even though it has had its own problems of late, Windows XP remains the most-used version of Windows.
The newest data from Web metrics vendor Net Applications Inc., for example, pegs XP as driving 73% of the personal computers that went online last month, five times the nearest competitor, Microsoft Corp.'s own Windows Vista. Which is why an impending
deadline five weeks from today is important. According to Microsoft , June 30 is the last day it will permit retailers and OEMs to sell the nearly-seven-year-old operating system. You'll have questions as that date approaches, including whether the deadline
will drive up prices (gouging, anyone?). And we [have] the answers, starting with this FAQ...
Read the article. Back to top
15 great gadgets you can't get in the U.S.
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You want great gadgets? You have to go outside the U.S.—or to the online gray market&mdashto get the latest tech toys.
As Americans, we think it's our birthright to always have the latest computers, phones and electronic gadgets, but the simple fact of life is that there's a whole world of digital devices out there that are off-limits to us. It's ironic in this age of
globalization, but it's true: Some of the world's best digital devices stay at home. Regardless of whether the maker is too small for exporting or vendors don't think it will sell overseas, the result is the same: You can't buy it here. To show you what
the world has to offer, we've rounded up our choices for 15 of the coolest (or strangest) bleeding-edge digital devices you can't buy in the U.S. From a germ-proof notebook and super-secret hard drive to do-it-all phones and a variety of
environmentally sensitive products, they cover the gamut of today's mobile electronics...
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Free VM configuration tool offered
Free Tripwire ConfigCheck tool sifts through the hundreds of configuration settings within VMware's ESX Server, identifies possible problems, and provides guidelines on how to fix them.
Tripwire and VMware have teamed up to produce a free tool that VMware customers can use to automatically audit the security configuration of physical and virtual servers. Tripwire ConfigCheck is a lightweight version of...
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Secrets of successful IT teams
Successful IT management requires leaders to understand the strengths, weaknesses and connections of the people on their team. A software developer tells how his former boss used social network analysis tools to identify rising stars and strengthen his bench.
In the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Michael Lewis tells how in 2002, Oakland A's manager Billy Beane used nontraditional statistics to turn the small-market franchise into a team that could compete with big-market franchises.
The story holds lessons for IT management about the importance of understanding objectively the strengths, weaknesses and behavior of individual players in order to build a successful team. Beane dispensed with the traditional—and subjective—baseball
wisdom that scouts relied on to draft players and created an objective method for scouting based on statistics that weren't valued by his competitors. By taking this
new approach Beane revolutionized the way baseball is managed and played, changing fundamentally the concepts behind building a winning team. [Like Beane, Steve Randle,
Vice President of IT Operations for XO Communications wanted to find an objective way to understand his organization and how to make it more successful...]
Read the article. Back to top
How Virgin keeps transactions humming
Credit card transactions comprise between 60 and 70 percent of sales at Virgin Megastores in the U.S. So when the company can't process credit and debit card transactions, it risks angering customers and losing sales.
Managing the technology that runs Virgin Entertainment Group's 10 Virgin Megastores in the U.S. is like staging a rock concert, says Robert Fort, CIO of the media company. When each store opens its doors, the curtain effectively rises, and the systems—the
cash registers, listening station kiosks, digital signage, data warehouse, converged voice and data network—need to perform smoothly and in sync, much like the lighting, pyrotechnics, band and dancers all need to be following the beat of the same drum. To
ensure that store systems don't skip a beat, Fort says he began looking for tools he could use to proactively police them a few years ago. Fort joined Virgin Entertainment
Group five years ago and became vice president of IT and CIO in 2004. Last year, he piloted Microsoft's Operations Manager 2007, which monitors the performance of all devices on his network, including servers, cash registers, and kiosks. Fort says
Operations Manager has provided him with a tremendous amount of useful information at the device level...
Read the article. Back to top
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Six free security tools you shouldn't live without
I won't keep you in suspense. I'll go ahead and name them right here, at the top of my post -- the six free security tools that all IT folks should know about and use.
(But, you'll have to click through this nifty mult-page post to let me explain my choices.) And the winners are ... MetaSploit, Splunk, Google (don't laugh -- it's true!), KeePass, Helix and Netwox. Now read on to learn why...
Read the article. Back to top
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How to manage brilliant people
Clinton Nixon
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Every manager wants an ultrasmart staff. In IT, the good and bad news is that you're likely to get one.
It's a management axiom that the smarter the employees are, the harder they are to manage. Employees with a high degree of left-brain intelligence, which is common among IT professionals, can be demanding, blind to the opinions of others, easily bored and
bent on being "right," according to the people who manage them. "Highly intelligent, highly technical people inhabit a subculture where knowledge is social status and power, and correctness is key," says Clinton Nixon, a senior developer at Viget Labs
LLC, a Web design, development and consulting firm in Falls Church, Va. This can lead to disgruntlement when inevitable disagreements occur, particularly between employee and boss. So, while you may dream of supervising a brilliant staff, be careful what
you wish for -- or at least learn the best way to manage ultrasmart people. Here are six tips from those in the know...
Read the article. Back to top
Microsoft turnabout on XP follows user demands
And if customers and partners continue to press, it will capitulate again, says analyst.
Microsoft Corp.'s decision today to allow low-cost desktop makers to install Windows XP Home on their hardware until June 2010 reverses a move it rejected just two months ago. At the Computex trade show that opened today in Taipei, the company said it would allow computer manufacturers to pre-install Windows XP Home on what it called "net-tops" -- which it defined only as "low-cost desktops" -- through June 30, 2010. Today's decision follows an early-April change in XP Home availability, when Microsoft postponed the retirement of the seven-year-old operating system by telling OEMs they could slap it on small and lightweight notebooks -- dubbed ULCPCs, for ultra-low-cost PCs -- until the end of June 2010...
Read the article. Back to top
Reader favorites: 10 great free network tools
The Dude Web interface allows for network management without loading The Dude client via a Secure Sockets Layer connection.
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From sniffing to mapping to monitoring, these utilities perform surprisingly sophisticated tasks. Computerworld
recently showcased 10 great free network management tools. Readers responded with some of their own favorites, so I'm going to take a look at those tools and report on their capabilities and usage from my perspective as an experienced network manager. But
first, let's address security. Readers mentioned the possible security implications of downloading free tools, which is a valid concern. What's to stop a coder from producing a neat network administration tool that secretly sends information about
your network to a collection point for exploitation at a later date? That's why it's a good idea to only download applications from valid sites -- such as SnapFiles.com and
Download.com -- that test applications before releasing them -- or from open-source sites such as SourceForge.net. Sometimes, such as in the case of...
Read the article. Back to top
China rising: If you know Mandarin and management, you're in
Globalization pushes enrollment in Chinese-language programs higher.
Three years ago, Chris Collins, a Wisconsin native, flew to China to take a job teaching English at a private school. He began studying Mandarin on the plane. Today, at 25, he is the international business development manager for a Chinese software
outsourcing company, MaesInfo Corp., speaks the language and lives in a high-rise apartment in Chengdu. Collins' fast track to management ranks is a direct result of China's accelerating growth as an offshore outsourcing provider. The Chinese IT and
business process outsourcing market, at $1.7 billion last year, is growing at 38% annually and will likely reach $7 billion in 2010, according to the Everest Group, a Dallas-based outsourcing consulting firm. China's outsourcing growth is still only a
fraction of India's outsourcing market, which hit $40 billion last year and is expected to rise to $60 billion by 2010, according to Everest. But the rapid development of the Chinese market is creating opportunity for U.S. citizens with a
spirit of adventure, a willingness to learn the language and some business smarts...
Read the article. Back to top
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VMware faces virtual reality
VMware CEO Dianne Greene discusses the challenges the company is up against as the virtualization market grows more crowded.
A year after VMware's successful IPO, virtualization has shifted gears from niche technology to the must-have underpinning for projects ranging from disaster recovery to data backup to desktop application delivery.
It's not surprising, then, that other companies are developing products for the market that VMware has been synonymous with up until now. So CEO Diane Greene is looking two steps ahead. And what she sees is that server virtualization was only the start.
The end destination is a fully automated data center, with x86 virtualization as the lynchpin holding all the various parts together. In this virtual world, applications are built specifically for virtual machines and are moved from virtual to physical
systems, regardless of the operating system. To achieve this goal, VMware...
Read the article. Back to top
Has the disconnected vacation become extinct?
You call this a vacation? Four out of five IT workers stay in touch with the office while away—by choice.
Since the advent of the PDA—and to a lesser degree, cell phones and laptops—workers have been decrying the end of vacation as they know it. Technology has given employers the ability to reach workers at all times in all places—making it impossible for
employees to maintain boundaries between times off and being on-the-clock. [Yet while IT workers also led the way in the requirement to be connected in the off-hours—19 percent said working, checking voice mail and/or e-mail while on vacation was mandated
by their employers—the reverse of this is that four in five IT workers are checking in with their jobs while on vacation on their own volition...]
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10 reasons Gen Xers are unhappy at work
I'm worried about Generation X and corporations.
As far as I can tell, these two have a tentative relationship at best—and are likely headed for some rocky times ahead. Corporations really need Gen X—folks in their 30's to early 40's, who should begin to serve as our primary corporate leaders over the
next couple years. But I fear many current corporate executives are taking this small and therefore precious group for granted. Why are many X'ers uncomfortable in corporate life?...
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Images: Secrets of stonehenge unearthed
Now that's a pretty impressive tombstone.
New research suggests that Stonehenge was used as a cemetery for more than 500 years, much longer than previously thought. The new findings also show that people used the area as a burial site long before placement of its trademark stones (or sarsen stones)
was complete. The team was led by Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeology professor at the University of Sheffield, with support from the National Geographic Society. Andrew Chamberlain, a colleague of Parker Pearson's, says burial at Stonehenge was not for
commonfolk. He believes Stonehenge was used as a burial site for an elite family, probably ancient royalty. Archaeologists believe...
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