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| Volume 9, Issue 9 |
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In This Issue:
 The man who's beating Google
 Windows 7 drives RAM capacity explosion; Vista SP2 usage rising
Stupid user tricks 4: IT horror never ends
What not to code: Why in-house Apps need a professional eye
Ramming Microsoft down ITs throat
 Evaluating cloud services: Five tips
20 goofy USB gadgets & gizmos you'll love
Opera Mini 5 for BlackBerry: Keyboard tricks
 AT&T takes the phone out of iPhone
Intel and Apple--future rivals?
 The unspoken truth about managing geeks
Chrome secrets: Dig into Google's new browser
 10 best places for technology jobs in 2009
 An amazing laptop recovery story
 Microsoft declares war on 'scareware'
The most promising games of fall 2009
 The best free software
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The man who's beating Google
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Robin Li has built the most popular search site for the world's biggest audience--in China. That's round one in an epic battle.
On a smoggy August morning outside Beijing's China World Hotel, Li Yanhong's fan club is assembling. "We'll use his English name, okay?" a wrangler shouts over the chattering young crowd. A black Mercedes-Benz approaches, its door opens and the masses do as they're told. A boyishly handsome 41-year-old executive steps out.
"Ro-bin! Ro-bin!" scream his followers, hoisting led-encrusted placards for a few obliging paparazzi. In his keynote at the Baidu World conference a few hours later, Robin Li describes to a crowd of thousands how the search service he created ten years ago is becoming China's gateway to the world of information. Then he parades
across a stage, surrounded by smiling children as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" plays in Mandarin and soap bubbles fill the room. Li has earned his share of Olympic-style marketing. In a decade he has...
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Windows 7 drives RAM capacity explosion; Vista SP2 usage rising
Real-world usage data also suggests that the popularity of multicore CPUs will soon hit critical mass for developers.
Windows 7 will drive the average PC RAM capacity to 4GB in the next 18 months. That's the conclusion of researchers at the exo.performance.network who are monitoring the ramp-up to Windows 7's launch on October 22. After evaluating data collected from early adopters of the Windows 7 RTM code spread across several
hundred IT sites, the xpnet.com team observed that nearly 50 percent sported memory capacities of 4GB or higher, with some reaching as high as 12GB. The average of all Windows 7 PCs was...
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Stupid user tricks 4: IT horror never ends
Nine more real-world disasters courtesy of your network's weakest link.
Nothing can screw up a well-managed network faster than the people for whom you built it. Whether it's user error, optimistic expectations, or simply that bastard Murphy, IT's job is rarely predictable. Lucky for you, there are lessons to be learned from others' misfortunes. So rather than wait to make your own
forehead-shaped dent in the office wall, familiarize yourself with the screwups detailed below. It will make you that much more prepared to safeguard your IT environment from the ever-evolving boneheaded tendencies of those you serve...
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What not to code: Why in-house Apps need a professional eye
If you rely on programmers to design your application's UI, the result will be software with a face only a developer could love.
Usability has long been the redheaded stepchild of software design. It's a shame, but it's easy to see why. Faced with the growing complexity of OS platforms, languages, protocols, and standards, programmers tend to focus on issues like algorithm design, abstraction, and code reuse first, UI second. They design unit
tests to verify each feature in isolation before they ever look at the big picture. Simply put, if most custom application UIs look like they were designed by teams of engineers, it's because they were. But it doesn't have to be this way. If more development shops put their UIs in the hands of professionals, the result would be
applications that are more consistent, more efficient, and easier to use -- all of which translates directly into increased productivity. Unfortunately, too many software development shops are still settling for the UI equivalent of the Flowbee haircut, putting programmers in charge of user experience -- and their software suffers for it...
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Ramming Microsoft down ITs throat
Why would you gamble with the foundation of your server infrastructure? As it turns out, corporate politics can even screw up virtualization.
A few weeks ago, I read an article discussing how Nissan North America just can't wait for Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration. I was incredulous. Several times I double-checked the date to make sure that parts of this piece weren't somehow transported from 2004. The quotes from the admins and descriptions of the
infrastructure made it seem that they were all bound up due to the lack of Live Migration among other features, even though very mature examples of these features have been around for a long, long time. Then I got to the second section, specifically this quote:...
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Evaluating cloud services: Five tips
Forrester's Paul Roehrig has some advice for IT leaders investigating cloud service providers. Here's his take on how to get started on separating the marketing noise from the must-haves.
It's still the early days for real enterprise-level commercial cloud services offerings by IT providers. Most providers have only a handful of offerings to enable cloud services for clients or to directly deliver services. Organizations need to be skeptical about some claims made by providers about cloud services. There are
critical differences between managed services repackaged as cloud offerings and true scalable, flexible, easily accessible, utility services. Based on client interest expressed to Forrester and recent survey data, there is clearly a growing desire by enterprise decision-makers to learn more about this potentially disruptive services
model, but IT sourcing teams should start thinking about cloud options now, particularly in selecting providers for the long haul. So what is motivating the growing interest in cloud services by enterprise IT decision-makers? We'll go into
more detail at Forrester's upcoming Services & Sourcing Forum, but here are five tips to help you better understand a provider's current capabilities...
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20 goofy USB gadgets & gizmos you'll love
We scoured the Web for the world's wackiest USB-powered gadgets to dress up and differentiate your desktop or cubicle - and annoy entertain coworkers.
These 20 gizmos, from cubicle stink-busters to toasters that print the morning news on your breakfast, could lower the stress quotient at even the highest-pressure offices...
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Opera Mini 5 for BlackBerry: Keyboard tricks
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Norway's Opera Software released the latest version of its popular Opera Mini browser for Java-based smartphones, including BlackBerrys. Opera Mini 5 beta represents a complete redesign since the company's last major release and with the overhaul comes a brand new set of keyboard shortcuts.
Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry browser has long been the laughing stock of the mobile space for its lack of speed. Javascript-heavy pages frequently bring it to a standstill. And since the browser has problems rendering many common Web pages, simply surfing the Web for a quick recipe or to answer a question can be like
pulling teeth. In other words, BlackBerry users have been dealing with a sub-par browsing experience for quite some time--unless, of course, those users were smart enough to download and install one of the
few quality third-party mobile browsers available for RIM smartphones. Rumors suggest RIM's well on its way to releasing a revamped BlackBerry browser of its own.
But yesterday Norwegian-developer Opera Software upped the BlackBerry browsing-ante with the beta release of its latest mobile browser:...
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AT&T takes the phone out of iPhone
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Three weeks ago, I got a call on a friend's iPhone while in the middle of a desert; cell phone coverage had come to Burning Man. By contrast, several calls I made last night to my parents from my San Francisco apartment were dropped and a subsequent connection became garbled.
That happens daily when I try to converse on my first-generation iPhone in my apartment and in certain other neighborhoods. I've come to anticipate that if I can even make a call it's likely to be short-lived or poor quality. Frustrated by the numerous interrupted calls, I decided to try to find out why my iPhone service is so
poor that it's easier to have a Web video conference over AIM with my boyfriend because neither of us can use our iPhones (his is 3G) reliably inside either of our homes. This is not a new problem. AT&T was criticized when traffic from attendees at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, overwhelmed the network earlier
this year. And there were widespread complaints about dropped calls and spotty service after the launch of the iPhone 3G a year ago. I wondered why, a year later, the service still seemed unreliable. I called AT&T (on my reliable landline at work) to find out. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel blamed the problem on...
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Intel and Apple--future rivals?
As Intel readies its most potent chip yet for small devices, Apple may already be using competing technology.
One of the themes of the upcoming Intel Developer Forum (starting Tuesday) will be the chip giant's foray into the smartphone and mobile Internet device (MID) markets. Intel's current Atom chip is fine for Netbooks but has had little impact on MIDs and zero impact on smartphones, where it is simply too power hungry to be usable. Enter
Moorestown. A much more power efficient Atom chip, due by 2010, that should find its way into high-end LG smartphones, MIDs from Asian device makers, and tablets (from HP? Dell?). Just so happens that Apple is doing analogous chip development...
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The unspoken truth about managing geeks
I can sum up every article, book and column written by notable management experts about managing IT in two sentences: "Geeks are smart and creative, but they are also egocentric, antisocial, managerially and business-challenged, victim-prone,
bullheaded and credit-whoring. To overcome these intractable behavioral deficits you must do X, Y and Z."
X, Y and Z are variable and usually contradictory between one expert and the next, but the patronizing stereotypes remain constant. I'm not entirely sure that is helpful. So, using the familiar brush, allow me to paint a different picture of those IT pros buried somewhere in your organization. My career has been stippled
with a good bit of disaster recovery consulting, which has led me to deal with dozens of organizations on their worst day, when opinions were pretty raw. I've heard all of the above-mentioned stereotypes and far worse, as well as good bit of rage. The worse shape an organization is in, the more you hear the stereotypes
thrown around. But my personal experiences working within IT groups have always been quite good, working with IT pros for whom the negative stereotypes just don't seem to apply. I tended to chalk up IT group failures to some bad luck in hiring and the
delicate balance of those geek stereotypes. Recently, though, I have come to realize that perfectly healthy groups with solid, well-adjusted IT pros can and will devolve,...
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Chrome secrets: Dig into Google's new browser
A handful of tips and tweaks to get the most out of Chrome.
Google's Chrome is a stripped-down, no-nonsense browser, and unlike Firefox, it doesn't have an array of add-ons available to change its behavior. So at first glance, you might think there's not a lot you can do to hack Chrome or bend it to your will. Think that and you'd be wrong. In fact, there are plenty of secrets
hidden beneath Chrome's shiny surface. Whether you want to do something as simple as reload the past 10 tabs you've closed or something fancier like force Chrome to use a different theme, peer into the mysteries of the Chrome "about:" page, or power up Chrome with "bookmarklets," we've got help for you...
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10 best places for technology jobs in 2009
The U.S. News & World Report’s "The 10 Best Places for Tech Jobs" factors in the following criteria for making the list: number of opportunities relative to education, geography of job openings in a broad range of tech-specific job categories, supply and demand ratios, salary, and cost of living.
It's not surprising to see Boston, San Francisco and Seattle on this list, but Houston, Phoenix and Huntsville, Ala.? Now there are some nontraditional places for technology work. Why is that? Let's find out...
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An amazing laptop recovery story
Using remote access software, a Miami man helps cops track down and recover his two stolen laptops.
This is a true story about sex, computers, the Internet, spying, theft, intrigue, and the police--and it all began this past February when David Krop made the mistake of leaving his two laptop computers inside a locked SUV in a parking garage. While Krop, 41, attended a brief business meeting in downtown Miami Beach, Florida, a
smash-and-grab thief stole the two laptops, a Toshiba and an Apple Macbook. When he returned to his SUV, Krop saw the shattered passenger window and realized that his computers were gone. "It's just a terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach," Krop, a vice president of marketing at Nationwide Diabetic says. He reported the
theft to the police, who were not optimistic the laptops would be recovered. Then he drove home, thinking about the personal data stored on his laptops. He had never planned for a catastrophic event like this--in fact, he hadn't even bothered to set
up a user password to shield the laptops' contents. When he got home, though, Krop remembered that he had installed a trial version of remote access software called...
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Microsoft declares war on 'scareware'
Ads for bogus security software are everywhere. Microsoft and the FTC are fighting back, but jaded geeks must do their part.
A couple weeks back the digital version of the New York Times found itself hip deep in manure when it got tricked into serving up "scareware" ads to unsuspecting readers. You know the scam. You're merrily surfing the Web when suddenly a window pops up: "Your computer is infected with malware, but if you send us $49.95 we'll
clean it right up for you." Of course, there is never any malware. Nothing happens save for the bank draft. And then they'll scam you again in a few months with ads for another bogus product.
Usually these ads are the result of a malware infection itself, or something that sites serve up when you cruise the Net's dark and dirty underbelly (or so I've heard -- I've never been there myself ;). Inserting them into the ad servers of a trusted site, though, was a stroke of malevolent genius. According to the Times'According to
the Times' Ashlee Vance, an ad for the "Personal Antivirus" scanner showed up inside readers' browsers instead of the legit ad the Times thought it had sold: The creator of the malicious ads posed as...
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The most promising games of fall 2009
It's a perfect storm for gamers.
Sony's PlayStation 3 recently shed $100, along with its jumbo exterior, and sales have already rebounded. Microsoft countered with a $100 drop of its own. Nintendo is counting on brand momentum to carry it through the season, and Windows wonks have Intel's new Core i7 and i5 processors to consider. Now all we need is new games--and
they're on the way. Here's a look at the Lamborghini and Bugatti racers of Gran Turismo PSP, the shuffle-the-scenario option of Halo 3: ODST, and the host of new multiplayer features in Modern Warfare 2, plus many other exciting developments that are coming this fall...
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The best free software
Paying is passé. Use these 10 free software programs instead. Free
is a lovely word; unfortunately, it's often followed by a disappointing product. We have found 10 great free apps that will help you run your business. Some are so good, you might even be willing to (shudder) spend money on them. -- Mark Spoonauer...
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