[it-pro] Forum Topics

[URL="http://twitter.com"]Twitter[/URL] has been in the headlines again. You can now pay a company to find potential followers, approach them and ask them to follow you and it's apparently a very innovative approach. It must be, that's why the BBC thought it [URL="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8130456.stm"]newsworthy[/URL]. Actually I'm not so sure. I think I've …

Generally speaking I would not recommend reading a newspaper in the hot tub. If that hot tub happens to be of the spa-jet variety then that only makes it worse. If the newspaper is a rare item from the 19th century then surely only a fool would consider it. Yet …

I attended two seemingly unrelated events things this week: I saw the new [URL="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/"]Star Trek movie[/URL] and I attended the [URL="http://www.mitcio.com/index.php"]MIT CIO Conference[/URL] in Cambridge. At the conference, Tom Malone, who is the Director of the [URL="http://cci.mit.edu/"]MIT Center for Collective Intelligence[/URL] (think about how much they must have just on …

Now there is a headline that is right up there with 'Vatican endorses new Dan Brown novel' in terms of something you would not expect ever to be reading, but according to reports it is true. The Pope is apparently keen to emulate President Obama in the way he has …

There is something of a media fuss going on over here in the UK thanks to the fact that Ivy Bean is using Twitter. No, she is not some soap star or a topless glamour model and does not have a famous footballer as a boyfriend. In fact her claim …

Now this is interesting: with the arrival of a demand for some $4.5 million in damages, one of the [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry4011.html"]founders of Pirate Bay[/URL] has come up with an innovate method of paying it. Gottfrid Svartholm has set up something called [URL="http://internetavgift.se/"]internet-avgift[/URL] which encourages ordinary Internet users who are friendly to …

This looks like it could get very interesting, very quickly. The online auction outfit, eBay, seems to be in the process of having something of a corporate clearance sale. There were stories circulating a couple of weeks back that [URL="http://www.itwire.com/content/view/24377/1231/"]Skype could be sold off[/URL], possibly back to the original owners, …

This morning I awoke to read news headlines declaring the worst snow the UK had seen for some 13 years, with reports of thousands of minor accidents and major motorway networks grinding to a halt. In London the public transport system collapsed, with London Buses, Underground and trains all being …

Remember when China officially declared war on Internet pornography and set a target of just six months to purge the Web of sexually explicit images, stories and AV clips? No, well [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry1407.html"]read this[/URL] to refresh your memory. While you are at it, make a note of the date: that story …

In the USA, according to the Digital World Digital Life study, housewives spend around 38 percent of their spare time on the Internet. Bored British housewives, however, spend a whopping great 47 percent of their leisure time online. That is more time online, by the way, than students (39 percent) …

[I]"With great power, comes great responsibility." -- Uncle Ben in "Spiderman"[/I] I read a [URL="http://ask.metafilter.com/107859/How-to-deal-with-the-IT-Skinner-box"]fascinating question[/URL] over at [URL="http://ask.metafilter.com/"]Ask Metafilter[/URL] this week that I've been thinking about ever since. An anonymous tech worker writes that though he loves job, he's over-worked and over-wrought. His two-man department achieved an uptime of …

If you spend anytime online, posting in forums, discussing blog entries and getting involved in heated IM conversations then the chances are you have said it. Even Lisa and Bart Simpson have said it. Meh. We said meh! Now, meh is officially a word rather than just an online utterance. …

Every so often the idea of an IT worker's union or [URL="http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3069.html"]lobbyist group[/URL] comes up, but it appears most people in the tech sector are [URL="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/04/36NF-union-for-tech-workers_1.html?source=fssr"]opposed to the idea[/URL]. Business partners Jack Edwards and James Smith understand, and say they have a solution: the [URL="http://iitw.org/"]International IT Worker's Group[/URL] (IITW). Edwards …

Historically, here in the UK at least, the electronic and gadget online marketplace has ruled the roost when it comes to consumer spending. However, according to one new survey, now it is milk and bread that are selling the most. Statistics from the largest discount voucher code website in the …

The stock market seem to be stabilizing, aided by news that the Federal Reserve will buy up short-term debt in order to get companies financially interacting again. I won't get into the gruesome details, but buying up short term debt (known as commercial paper on Wall Street - a mechanism …

First some good headline news amid all the gloom: spam incidents are going down. There has been 8 per cent less unwanted junk e-mail over the last year worldwide, according to a new report from Messagelabs. The reason is relatively simple; an American ISP called Intercage went down the swannee …

[URL="http://www.cern.ch/"]CERN[/URL] is a funny old place. It was where Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, and it is where many have predicted the beginning of the end of the world started today. Of course, that is a load of old codswallop. Not least because the Armageddon today hype …

Attention bosses: [URL="http://blogs.nfl.com/2008/09/07/brady-injured-for-patriots/"]Tom Brady's knee injury[/URL] in yesterday's New England Patriots game against the Kansas City Chiefs is going to cost you. According to a survey by outplacement company Challenger, Gray and, Christmas Inc. employers will cough up $9.2 billion dollars in lost worker productivity due to the proliferation of …

According to a recent survey by [URL="http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/home/html/home.jsp"]WorldatWork[/URL], the number of employers that offer remote working options have risen 40% in the past year. On the surface, it seems like it's the ideal arrangement, however telecommuting is one of those ideas that looks great on paper but doesn't always work well …

Internet Broadband subscribers are being peeled away by cable television and there’s really not much the phone companies can do about it, analysts say. That could move a lot of money around on Wall Street. According to Leichtman Research Group, cable companies added 887,000 high-speed Internet subscribers in the 2nd …

I have an iPhone on my desk. Don't get excited, though - you'll have read a number of accounts of difficulties getting hold of them in the UK, and they're right. I have one on my desk because mobile phone company 02's media relations department kindly sent it over so …

The [URL="http://www.messagelabs.com/intelligence.aspx"]MessageLabs Intelligence Report[/URL] for May 2008 has revealed that spam levels have risen across all industry sectors, but manufacturing remains the leading vertical as far as spam activity is concerned at 83.7 percent. The biggest rise, however, can be found in the non-profit sector with spam levels up by …

Spam is annoying, resource consuming, malware driven and often offensive. It is also nothing if not responsive to market needs. This can be seen in the market driven swing from pharmaceutical and health related spam which has pretty much dominated the landscape during the last couple of years, to the …

If you’re developing applications for MySpace or just thinking about it, the social networking company has made it easier to get the word out about and popularize your apps. An update to the fledgling [URL="http://developer.myspace.com"] MySpace Developer Platform [/URL] released last week lets app builders add messaging and posting capabilities …

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Or something like that. However, there are also some really interesting figures emerging about online life right now which are worthy of repeating here. How about [URL="http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10007735o-2000537720b,00.htm"]this report[/URL] that the numbers of web sites on the Internet has risen from, can you believe …

Security provider Webroot has today published its [URL="http://www.webroot.com/En_GB/land-sois-home.html"]State of Internet Security: Protecting Business Email[/URL] research report and estimates that every single business email account will receive some 42,000 spams during the course of 2008. Or 116 junk messages every single day if you prefer. That is an increase of some …

Think of where your spam comes from and the usual suspects, according to most surveys of such things by the security and messaging experts, turn out to be the good old US of A, Russia and China which between them accounted for 33.8 percent of all spam in the last …

According to the Managing Your Organisation’s E-mail and Messaging survey, the results of which were announced today by network management developer [URL="http://www.ipswitch.com"]Ipswitch Inc.[/URL], the feeling that you are drowning in spam happens for a reason: you are. The survey revealed that 20% of those responding reported more than a 100% …

Yesterday I laid out the risks and rewards of investing and trading stocks online. As I said, it's easy to do and actually kind of fun, but like going to Vegas, you have to be able to walk away from the table if you're losing money. To help you avoid …

My friend and I were texting each other about the Red Sox World Series rout the other night -- way to go Sockies, how to beat 'dem Rockies! -- and, both being Boston natives, were having a grand old time. My pal won some money on the Series and had …