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It is amazing how technology can surprise you

February 2, 2010 Comment

First your phone was a watch and now your watch is a phone. Geraint Lewis hails the return of a lost classic and pines for a dummy wah-wah pedal.

I was recently talking with a colleague about the apparent decline of the humble wrist watch. At the recent Open Championships, my colleague was bombarded with requests for the correct time. The reason? People now no longer have a wrist watch as they use the clock function on their mobile device.

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Open source server-based databases – a viable economic choice?

February 2, 2010 Comment

The choice of server-based databases has never been so interesting! As a champion of the open source movement Jonathan Westlake continually speculates about the open source database market and 2009 was particularly rich with events.

I use a number of open source offerings for my various University database modules but primarily the MySQL database for teaching/advising on server-based database development and administration. The appeal is the low cost approach and the use of MySQL as part of a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) platform where the database supports a web front end.

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Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt

February 2, 2010 Comment

For Steve White, two recently running threads came together this month; and both are examples of real life imitating IT.

Firstly I was ‘inundated’ with a letter following my recent article on ‘how to kill a company’ where I suggested that the recipe for the destruction of a company was silent data corruption in a core IT system which remained undetected for too long, and brought the company down. My correspondent pointed out that there is clear to see data corruption going on every day throughout companies and governments, the corrupting of good quality information from problem detectors toward the people who make the decisions; the removal of ‘bad news’ from upward reporting.

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New lamps for old?

November 11, 2009 Comment

As IT manager for the PGA, Geraint Lewis is qualified to make comparisons between the flashy world of new golf equipment and the thought of perhaps shopping for new IT hardware.

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Identity theft – what are you doing about it?

November 11, 2009 Comment

National Fraud Prevention Week has raised the issue of ID theft. Jonanthan Westlake offers some useful advice.

The 12th – 18th October, 2009 saw the fifth annual National ID Fraud Prevention week and comprehensive advice can be found on www.stop-idfraud.co.uk for both individuals and more importantly in my view for businesses. The key ingredient of ID fraud of course is personal data.

I am always wary of reading too much into statistics but recent evidence quoted on the site makes for disappointing reading. It is obvious that UK businesses are still not doing enough to create and encourage a climate to combat the threats of id fraud.

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Features:

Does service really matter?

February 2, 2010

Does service really matter?

In these tough economic times, though it’s tempting to include service in the many cutbacks being made across the breadth of an organisation, it is important to remember that it’s precisely service that will keep your current customers and will continue to attract new ones, which is essential in surviving the downturn. The gap in [...]

USBs: An employee’s dream – IT’s worst nightmare

February 2, 2010

USBs: An employee’s dream – IT’s worst nightmare

Avoiding USB risk exposure, John Jefferis, vice president of Ironkey on how to define and enforce an effective USB security strategy.
USB drives, or memory sticks as they are sometimes referred to, are immensely popular and increasingly selected as the weapon of choice by employees looking for flexibility in their working environment. Having proved invaluable in [...]

One system to rule them all

February 2, 2010

One system to rule them all

A strategic IT initiative with many benefits, Phil Van Etten, chief executive of Azaleos outlines why many organisations are waking up to the potential of unified communications.
A couple of years ago the concept of unified communications (UC) was more a vision and hype of the vendor community than reality. Today this vision is slowly maturing [...]

Creating a global standard for IT knowledge, service, and execution

February 2, 2010

Creating a global standard for IT knowledge, service, and execution

As the world’s largest privately held commercial real estate firm, Cushman & Wakefield recognises the need to create a consolidated service desk. However, five years ago, the situation was very different. As Steve Kennedy, associate director of Cushman & Wakefield recalls.
 “The IT service desk was little more than a basic call-logging system, and, even then, [...]