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| Volume 8, Issue 9 |
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In This Issue:
 6 recession-proof IT jobs
How to make better decisions
You need to lie to get a PC with windows XP
How to make Windows Vista look like XP
 Six stupid budget tricks
11 cool new apps for the iPhone
Google is doing WHAT?
 Seven things IT should be doing
Why San Francisco's network admin went rogue
 What if you fell through a manhole?
 Phish your colleagues with PhishMe
 Top 10 worst uses for Windows
 Why I became a Gmail convert
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6 recession-proof IT jobs
Not all IT jobs are being offshored and outsourced. Some positions in IT are among the most recession-proof jobs across all fields. Looking to find one of the hottest IT job tracks in today's downward spiraling economy?
If you want to stay employed in IT amid the economic uncertainty, look for jobs in software design and development, networking and systems administration, software implementation analysis, testing and quality assurance, database administration and
general IT management with cutting edge mobile IT and Web 2.0 skills. Those are the hottest IT job fields today, according to...
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How to make better decisions
Making a big decision? First ask: What have we missed? What if we do the opposite? What if we're wrong?
In 1999, a three-year old girl in London named Isabel received a diagnosis of chicken pox. Overnight she took a turn for the worse and at the hospital was diagnosed with a deadly flesh-eating disease. Fortunately she recovered, but her stockbroker father,
Jason Maude, wanted to develop a way to prevent such misdiagnoses. Together with Dr. Joseph Brito, who had treated his daughter in intensive care, he developed a diagnostic decision-based software tool that would help physicians make more accurate
diagnoses. He called it Isabel. Isabel is not the only tool of its kind, but it does have an interesting feature that Ian Ayres describes in his book, Super Crunchers. As Ayres writes, "The biggest reason for misdiagnosis is 'premature closure.' Doctors
think they have a bead on the correct diagnosis...and close their minds to other possibilities." That's exactly what Isabel is designed to prevent. Ayres describes Isabel as a "reminder system" that prompts a simple question, "Have you
considered...", followed by a list of possible diseases to consider for diagnosis. This feature helps doctors think beyond what's known and consider the unknown. Good leaders also need to think about the unknown in order to plan for the future of their
organization. For that reason, you may wish to employ you own "have you considered" questions when making an important decision. Start the process by asking yourself the following:...
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You need to lie to get a PC with windows XP
A PC World reporter tried to buy a computer with Windows XP preinstalled on it from the United States' nine biggest PC makers. His findings: You can get one, but be prepared to fib.
I won't waste time rehashing the argument over whether Windows Vista is any good. The fact remains that lots of people prefer Windows XP, and they'll go to great lengths to get it. The problem: Windows XP "officially" went off the market on June 30, 2008, and
computer vendors aren't supposed to sell new machines configured with any version of Windows except Vista. Fortunately for XP enthusiasts and Vista vetoers, the PC marketplace still has a loophole or two in it. In response to pressure from customers,
Microsoft has made some concessions for people who really want XP, offering a lifeline for users willing and able to wade through the company's convoluted downgrading program. [To find out how difficult it is to get a new XP machine these days, I asked
the nine largest PC vendors in the United States--Dell, HP, Gateway, Toshiba, Acer, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Sony, and Asus--about the specifics of their downgrade policies. Then, to see how closely the official story synced up with the reality in the
marketplace, I called sales representatives for each company and asked them whether I could purchase a new laptop equipped with XP from them. The verdict?...]
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How to make Windows Vista look like XP
You may be stuck with Vista, but with a few tweaks and tricks you can make it look and feel just like its predecessor.
Your new PC came with Vista. Maybe your office deployed Vista. Or, perhaps, you got caught up in the early hype and bought Vista. Whatever the case, now you're stuck with it. Wish you could turn back the clock and restore your beloved Windows XP? Unless
your name is Marty McFly, you're outta luck. But all is not lost: You can give Vista an extreme interface makeover, tweaking it to resemble XP. Just because you're stuck with Vista doesn't mean you have to look at it all day. Strictly speaking, you still have...
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Six stupid budget tricks
This version of this story appeared in the print edition of Computerworld.
Dumb but common monetary mistakes and how to avoid them.
Given the murky economic outlook, budgetary efficiency is an increasingly important part of every IT leader's job. In fact, according to "The State of Enterprise IT Budgets: 2008," a March report from Gartner Inc., 75% of enterprises say improving the
efficiency of IT is a critical or high priority. Think you have the budget covered? So did many others, who nonetheless found themselves explaining missteps that cost
hundreds of thousands -- even millions -- of dollars. Here are some of the things they learned not to do:...
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11 cool new apps for the iPhone
It's the third-party software that makes it rock.
With the release of the iPhone 2.0 software on Friday and the opening of the App Store -- where hundreds of third-party applications are now available -- Apple Inc.'s iPhone has taken a major leap toward becoming a premiere mobile platform. Since the iPhone's
arrival last year, one of the constant complaints about it was that the hardware was a technological marvel but the software was lacking. A little over a year after the iPhone's debut, Apple released not only the most significant hardware upgrade since
the device's inception, but also the most significant software release to date. Best of all, the apps work on the first-generation iPhone as well as the newer iPhone 3G, and on the iPod Touch. (You have to pay $9.95 to update the iPod Touch so it can run
third-party applications, though.) While new hardware is important for attracting new buyers -- thus the lower cost of entry and the 3G chip set -- it's the software and the arrival of the App Store that allows the iPhone to transcend being just another mobile phone...
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Google is doing WHAT?
Street View on an Android phone suddenly becomes much more powerful because you can use it when you are standing on a street corner, trying to find an address. |
Its motto is 'Don't be evil' -- but it looks like anything and everything else imaginable is pretty much fair game.
With a skyrocketing stock price, fanboy hysteria and -- most importantly -- really useful products, Google Inc. is the prima donna of tech for the new millennium. The company is so active that it's hard to keep track of everything it does. And, just
when you get a good handle on its litany of Web applications, promising lab innovations and unheralded research projects, it seems to turn on a dime -- a difficult move for a $167 billion company with 19,000 employees -- and invent
something new. Who would have thought a search site company would get involved in laying a fiber-optic undersea cable between the U.S. and Japan? Of course, not everything has worked out for the company, as these flubs, flops and failures
illustrate. JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg, for one, isn't put off by the wide range of directions the company has taken and occasional miscues. "The whole Google empire started as a research project, and it's a core in their DNA to try and
discover new things and figure out how to monetize them," he says. "When you have a market cap like they do and the cash cow in the guise of paid search, they can keep experimenting. You need the financial wherewithal to support these projects, and
plenty of smart people to carry them out. Google does not seem short on either." Truth and rumors Here's an update on some of Google's most interesting projects...
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Seven things IT should be doing
Taking a hard, honest look at what you need to accomplish is the key to keeping your business competitive -- and yourself gainfully employed.
They're expected to know what their end-users want need, even if their end-users can't articulate it themselves. They're under constant pressure to develop new skills (like AJAX) while maintaining old ones (COBOL, anyone?), and to not only maintain
line-of-business apps but jazz them up to meet the expectations of the Facebook generation. They've got to deal with a data tsunami that increases more than 30 percent per year while simultaneously protecting the company jewels from devastating data spills. They're required to gird for disasters of unknown proportions and figure
out how to keep the business going in the aftermath. [ Think you've got it bad, check out "The 7 dirtiest jobs in IT." ] And, oh yeah -- they need to take a few business finance courses. In their copious spare time, of course. Tough job? You bet. But in
this Web 2.0-centric data-engorged world, it's the cost of doing business. Do them well and both you and your company will succeed. Here are seven (more) things to add to your must-do list. Ignore them at your peril...
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Why San Francisco's network admin went rogue
An inside source reveals details of missteps and misunderstandings in the curious case of Terry Childs, network kidnapper.
Last Sunday, Terry Childs, a network administrator employed by the City of San Francisco, was arrested and taken into custody, charged with four counts of computer tampering. He remains in jail, held on $5 million bail. News reports have depicted a
rogue admin taking a network hostage for reasons unknown, but new information from a source close to the situation presents a different picture. In posts to my blog, I postulated about what might have occurred. Based on the small amount of public
information, I guessed that the situation revolved around the network itself, not the data or the servers. A quote from a city official that Cisco was getting involved seemed to back that up, so I assumed that Childs must have locked down the routers and
switches that form the FiberWAN network, and nobody but Childs knew the logins. If this were true, then regaining control over those network components would cause some service disruption, but would hardly constitute the "millions of dollars in damages"
that city representatives feared. Apparently, I wasn’t far off the mark. In response to one of by blog posts, a source with direct knowledge of the City of San Francisco’s IT infrastructure and of Childs himself offered to tell me everything he knew about
the situation, under condition that he remain anonymous. I agreed, and within an hour, a long e-mail arrived in my in box, painting a very detailed picture of the events.
Based on this information, the case of Terry Childs appears to be much more – and much less – than previously reported...
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What if you fell through a manhole?
Having only one person with critical knowledge in an organization is an inherently dangerous situation. You don't need malice for it to blow up.
The most striking fact about the San Francisco network lock out case has been the absence of details that would allow an informed outsider to say "Oh, that's what's going on." We've been left mostly with vague accounts from spokespeople. But one thing
must be true of this incident: Administrative controls in San Francisco government IT were inadequate. You don't need to imagine a rogue administrator; whether this is such a case or not, in order to know that better controls are necessary. What if Terry
Childs had fallen through a manhole, been hit by a car, or ate some bad tomatoes. If critical information exists only in the brain of one person, that person is a disaster waiting to happen. I had early exposure to this problem...
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Phish your colleagues with PhishMe
The software lets IT departments identify the most gullible message recipients so that they can be made to understand the error of their ways.
Corporate IT administrators can now conduct targeted phishing attacks against company employees to see who's likely to be duped by real malicious messages. On Tuesday, Intrepidus Group, a New York-based security services company, plans to release
PhishMe, a Web-driven phishing service for social penetration testing. Like a more polished version of the template-driven phishing kits available online to would-be attackers, PhishMe allows you to "emulate real phishing attacks against your employees
in minutes," the PhishMe Web site explains. The goal is to identify the most gullible message recipients so that they can be made to understand the error of their ways...
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Top 10 worst uses for Windows
After all these years I am willing to admit that Microsoft has won the desktop and server wars. Thanks to VMWare Windows is spreading throughout the datacenter.
And, of course, there is only one operating system to use if you are dependent on Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word, and Excel. While I have joined the chorus of security folks who rail against the Microsoft Monoculture I still cannot believe some
of the uses for Windows. Some of them are just downright silly, some you may claim are criminally negligent. So here is the Top Ten List of Worst Uses for Windows:...
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Why I became a Gmail convert
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Here's why I'm a Gmail convert: for the first time since I started using e-mail nearly 20 years ago, I can keep my in-box tidy.
A month ago, I switched my personal e-mail from Yahoo Mail, with which I've been generally happy. What attracted me to Gmail was a number of specific Gmail features, but what I've come to appreciate is the big picture: a new way to look at the task of
e-mail. The old paradigm follows the metaphor of a paper-pushing office job with an in-box, trash can, and filing cabinet. Gmail brings that paper pushing into the computer age. Most messages I care about are already organized with labels
automatically as they arrive. I still must read and reply if necessary, but after that I just plop messages into a giant archive with no pesky manual filing. They can be retrieved easily via search or labels. The result: my Gmail in-box has 14 messages in
it, and I've had no trouble thus far keeping it in that neighborhood. I wouldn't say it's life-changing, but it's an improvement. Here's one measure of its user interface success:...
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