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C O N T E N T S
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**** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes ****
Wifi Tapei
Aiming to make wireless networks as easy to use as cellphones, Taipei City Government is planning to make WiFi available to 90% of its 3 million population by the end of 2005. Up to 20,000 wireless access points could be required. More at Reuters
Novell's Linux desktop
The NetWare owner has announced its Novell Linux desktop (NLD) computer aimed at enterprises. Based on the SUSE 9.1 distribution of Linux, it competes with offerings from Sun. The 32-bit system platform will also include a 64-bit version in Spring 2005. Novell has pledged support for its new NLD9 for 5 years starting from 50 Euros per machine per year.
Entrepreneurial spirit
The Inner City Entrepreneurs' Fund awarded Co-Operative Systems £10,000 towards a management development programme to help nurture further growth. The fund makes awards to organisations that it identifies as well run, with a good track record and good potential for further expansion.
8Mbps Online
Broadband download services of up to 8Mbps are now available from UK Online for a monthly fee of £39.99. Coming as one of the first side-effects of local loop unbundling (LLU) - the hiving-off of BT's wired telecoms network - connections are being made via EasyNet's DSL equipment newly-installed at BT exchanges. Full 8Mbps speeds are only served up to 2Km from the exchange and the upload speed is 400Kbps, with a contention (sharing) ratio of 33:1.
So-phish-tication personified
A new way of luring Internet banking customers to fake banking sites has been discovered. So-called 'phishing' scams are well-known, but the latest spam emails don't even require the user to click on a link in the message; a sophisticated script inside the email employs the Windows Scripting Host available within every Windows PC. The script redirects login attempts of genuine bank sites, largely Brazilian ones at present, to fake bank web pages.
Printer firm discovers paper
Hewlett Packard is to adopt Blu-ray paper disc technology on many of its products including its PCs, workstations and entertainment centres. The 50GB capacity disc technology will outstrip the 4.7GB of DVDs, finding applications in music and high-definition TV recording. HP will launch with 3 different formats: BD-ROM (read-only), BD-RE, (rewritable for HDTV) and data storage and BD-R (write-once for data).
Firefox hits million mark
Mozilla's Firefox recently racked up a million downloads for its version 1.0, only released on 9th November. The flames of the Spread Firefox campaign are no doubt being fanned by consumers' disenchantment with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and its continual security holes.
iSpot iPod !
A tip for new iPod owners this Christmas: veteran iPodders say get a pair of non-white headphones to avoid the "mug-me" label.
**** end of NewsBytes ****
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1. Where is IT now? A review for 2004
We cast a glance back at the IT trends of the year while keeping our eyes open to what 2005 will bring. | ||||||||||
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What IT changes affected the UK not-for-profit sector the most in 2004 and what does the picture look like now? A suitably graphic image of IT development might be an elongated sausage dog, with its innovative head out in front while leaving its exposed tail way behind. In summary, the ends of the market polarised. The best got better and the poor end suffered. Typical of this overall picture, at the 'shiny new toys' end, was the rise of affordable web Content Management Systems (CMS), and none too soon, with many charities now in the third incarnation of their web sites. CMS is finally delivering what we all need and fairly speedily too. Blogging too became a common phenomenon on many sites where spontaneous public input of ideas and opinions is encouraged. You have mailWe may not all be falling in love over the Internet like Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, but this year saw us embracing ever more varied ways of handling our inboxes, with technologies like Outlook Web Access and IMAP becoming widespread, facilitating any-place fast email and allowing us all to keep up with messages on the move through any web browser, a portable PC or even a phone. For 2005, we're expecting even more seamless mobile messaging with Wifi hotspots and trials cropping up everywhere, not just in cafes as something to occupy us while sipping a cappuccino. With the recent launch of 3G services from mobile giant Vodafone, fast mobile Internet access via mobile cards in laptops will go a stage further by making one's location immaterial. Soon-to-come WiMax services and transmitters with a range of 30 miles will bring broadband-speed wireless and could make us even less dependent on any particular provider. Chips that bundle many wireless technologies together are in development right now. You have too much mail!Despite a whole year with a new anti-spam EU directive in force, junk mail poured into our inboxes faster than ever. Leading spam preventers estimated over 75% of all email messages flowing through the Internet to be unsolicited. Next year, expect the fruition of some technologies that challenge the sender's email clients to identify themselves as genuine corresponders.Game over?The computing play arena has shifted hugely towards games-specific machines like Sony's PS2 and Microsoft's XBox, with fewer serious game fanatics hunched over Windows PCs. In tandem with the specialisation of computer entertainment, there is a more clear-cut emphasis on the difference between 'home' and 'professional' versions of both hardware and software and more concentration on work users being suitably equipped with 'business-style' PCs. Security bugs everyone
At the 'grunge' end of IT competence, viruses, Trojans and malicious intrusions were as prominent before, if not more so. From the start of the year, we had an inkling this would be the case and launched our Secure in 2004 campaign So, were Co-Op customers "secure in 2004"? Undoubtedly so. Experience shows that for the less well-informed and IT-naïve, security issues were still way down their priority lists; virus problems and lack of firewalling still persisted, caused by widespread ignorance of the consequences. In extreme cases, some businesses were knocked out for extended periods following malicious and 'email-icious' intrusions. Whither viruses?
What about next year? Will viruses become a dead issue? Certainly the more IT-aware organisations have virus protection under control, to the extent that, if the anti-virus vendors can provide updates in time before major viruses spread, then they can consider their systems safely inoculated. In addition, customers on FM contracts have all 'pluggable' system vulnerabilities securely plugged, with critical updates for Windows, Exchange and Office, automated rollouts and the benefit of our established firewall experience. Next year, we will have the benefit of new security experience and be able to head off 'over-the-horizon' threats, building systems that are more secure than when they are conventionally patched.
Service Pack 2 for Windows XP came as a huge relief to anyone dealing with XP security, but the drawn-out trumpetings over what was mainly a collection of fixes and its severally-delayed launch during the year kind of took the 'joy' out of it. Added to that, a considerable number of commercial applications were listed that would encounter problems with SP2. On the plus side, successful upgraders to SP2 definitely benefited from a safer Windows environment with fewer intrusions from annoyances like pop-up adverts. Following your every keystrokeHowever, the current rising threat is spyware and its associated malware. Whether or not UK gambling legislation will restrain or release (delete according to your view) the nation's propensity to 'have a flutter' or 'dig into debt' (ditto), have no doubt that online gambling sites - the dubious ones anyway - have already entered the fray without waiting for any debate. Merely visiting such sites with an insecure browser can have results that go beyond generating incessant advertising pop-ups, but also attempt to dial premium rate services and reach into the PC altering shortcuts and program applications. These newer threats don't come under the aegis of viruses - and hence are not detected by anti-virus software - since the activities performed by such tiny resident programs, like stealing passwords by logging keystrokes, don't necessarily harm your files directly - at least, not as a "first order order effect", as science students are always so fond of saying. Fortunately, universal removal tools exist, such as old saviour Ad-Aware and this year's star, SpyBot, a free tool with its own immuniser and update service, which had notched up over 20,000 threats it could fix towards the end of 2004. Most recently, it embeds resident detectors to warn about invasive modules like Active-X controls. A big bonus for defence against spyware and the like, SpyBot deserves a donation from all who use it. However, new pestilential threats keep cropping up and, with them or rather against them) a whole raft of specific tools (CoolWebSearch has thus gathered its own range of pesticides). For 2005 and beyond then, we are likely to witness fewer purely disruptive threats and more of the sophisticated information-stealing kind. "Exploit, don't destroy" will be the theme. The old-style threats still abound, however, with examples like the "Bacros gif overwriter" which attempts to delete all the files on the hard drive. Since this triggers on 25th December, it will either pass most people by, who have better things to do, or utterly spoil the Christmas Day of children just trying out their latest software presents. Small Business means businessWindows Small Business Server 2003 bundled a vast chunk of standard Windows Server components into one very affordable sub-£500 package, especially attractive for groups who found the full-blown Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2003 out of their budget range. 64-bit computing appeared on the horizon but its effects haven't really 'hit the streets' until now, with 64-bit server versions starting to ship. Putting on a good displayThe old CRT desk-hogging displays are all but gone, appearing as a zero-cost item on some new PC purchases. The heat and power consumption of these older displays is out of line with new environmental regulations, so 2005 will see flat panel LCDs dominating the market, and easing the strain on our desk spaces and electricity bills in one smooth move. Around the same time, base-unit-only deals hit the market in a big way, though the benefits are not always clear. Networking exploded
And diversified. 2004 saw further extension of the boundaries of the 'traditional' network in the growth of remote access mediums and technologies - a remote network revolution. They started to appear in varying forms, such as home phone networks, wireless networks in cafes and even going so far as to track our movements by mobile phone. As if to illustrate poignantly this 'extension of the boundaries', Skype took its free and easy to use PC-to-PC calling service, employing Voice Over IP (VOIP) technology, a step further by offering an inexpensive tariff to connect with landline phone networks with a global call rate of 1.7 Eurocents (€0.017) per minute to popular destinations like the US. With 3G services starting to take off, there will certainly be more new services like this appearing next year, but the net effect will be to drive down the cost of voice communications. At the other end of the scale, support for one of the early pioneers that brought networking to the workplace, old-timer Windows NT4, was finally ended. Bone diseaseWith the UK population currently buying one mobile phone per minute and with increasingly sophisticated features like Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for route-finding being packed in, the 2003 trend towards smaller devices for our everyday needs continues.
PrintersTa-da! 
However, whereas the old fiddly multi-function printers (MFPs) used to be unreliable and with awkward drivers, HP set the standard with its OfficeJet 6110. Re: RecyclingNowhere else could you find a better example of the truism that someone else can always use whatever you no longer need. Five years ago, auction site eBay was a doubtful concern with few members signed up. Recently its business profit was up by £100 million, a 77% increase on last year. Certainly, in the environment of electronic goods manufacture, the landscape of PC buying and decommissioning will change dramatically by August 2005 with the new WEEE directives coming into force, which will translate as much more re-use and recycling of all sorts of computer and electrical equipment and a ban on landfill dumping. -IB- Phil Anthony, Spencer Buck, Zorina Baksh, Tony Weeks, Paul Craig |
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2. Toy Storeys
Architects are rarely creatives. | ||
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When it comes to building the layers of your IT networks and information processing systems, much of the foundation work is done by specialists, outsourcers, contractors and the like. Not dissimilar to the construction of the buildings you occupy perhaps. However, the builders with their building bricks and infinite layers of structure must eventually fade away, and the folks with the content (that's you lot) step in. To illustrate with a short anecdote:
Fancy tools don't inherently make for fascinating content. IT specialists can build database structures, the carcass for a web site, an intranet layout, a workflow process and so on, but only your staff can fill those empty vessels with something interesting, relevant and vibrant. A thought worth carrying forward to the next time your organisation undertakes a major project. -IB- |
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3. What the customer wanted
The great "Interpreter"! | ||
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Although a very old joke (at least 25 years), it's aptly illustrated here. Perhaps a suitable point to revive it and say that at Co-Operative Systems, "We do try to remember this!" 
-IB- Acknowledgements to 'primate sympathiser' monkeyx |
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4. A big thanks from Co-Op
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Aside from helping several thousand employees and volunteers in over a hundred charities by supporting and moving forward their IT systems, Co-Operative Systems also achieved a few of its own personal goals during the year.
Just a few of the more notable milestones were that we passed were:
We couldn't have done all that without you, so please accept a BIG, BIG thanks from us. -IB-
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