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**** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes **** NewsBytes ****
VoIP in the Office
A recent acquisition by Microsoft’s Real-Time Collaboration Group will allow VoIP capabilities to be offered as an integral part of the Microsoft Office system. The buy-up of Zurich-based Media-Streams ag pulls in the company's expertise in communications applications, in particular the e-phone solution turning Outlook 2003 into a communications centre for all incoming e-mail messages and telephone calls for the user to reduce long distance phone costs and heavy investment in telephone infrastructure.
www.media-streams.com
Microsoft press release
Got a firewall? Get a device wall
DeviceWall is software for managing and auditing USB storage devices to monitor which devices employees are connecting to an internal network. Centennial Software's DeviceWall 3.1 allows auditing functions to work in silent mode for a period that allows system administrators to assess USB device usage connected to PCs and subsequently to plan appropriate policies. Per seat licensing is £13.50 for 250 users.
www.devicewall.com
Safer Internet guide for consumers
A partnership of government and commercial companies have set up a web site presenting practical advice on Internet safety to techies and non-technical people alike. getsafeonline covers a broad range of issues such as protecting individuals and their computers against viruses, hackers spam among other threats. In the run up to end-of-season spending sprees there is useful advice on steering clear of online scams and help on safer online transactions such as buying, selling and banking. Organisations also benefit from small business advice on employee training and data protection.
www.getsafeonline.org
First computer recycling superstore?
One of eight recycling centres across Yorkshire and Humberside, Airedale Computer Recycling is open 6 days a week. Computers donated by business are collected and refurbished under the group's Microsoft Authorised Refurbisher status for training of the long-term unemployed given free of charge to the charitable and voluntary sector.
www.airedalecomputers.com
Patch paucity
After a spate of 9 patches announced for Microsoft Windows operating systems in October, the November bulletin disclosed just one. The single vulnerability in the Windows Graphics Rendering Engine permeates all XP versions, including Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Service Pack 2, such that IT managers and end users should download and install the patch immediately. Are MS closing the chapter on Windows flaws? Difficult to tell, since publicised bugs soon turn into hackworthy exploits, thus making the company reluctant to expose weaknesses too soon.
Chip wars
For the first time in the battle between processor manufacturers, giant Intel has been ousted by rival AMD. A recent study showed 49.8% of US-retailed desktop and notebook PCs contained an AMD processor, topping Intel's 48.5% market share. Industry opinion is that the AMD victory will be short-term one however, since Intel has a trend of leapfrogging seasonal sales and springing (literally) into the lead again come the New Year.
"I'M on the keyboard"
Once dubbed the "plaything of the teenager", Instant Messaging (IM) is now a daily enterprise tool for 28 million business users worldwide. An IDC study expects the market revenue for enterprise IM products (server, security, compliance, and management) will more than double to $736 million in 2009, following a 37% leap in 2004.
IDC press release
**** end of NewsBytes ****
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1. Fly away on my cell phone
The good ol' phone is running rings around ordinary computing devices, but is it just a jack of all trades? | ||||
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If the red hot chili peppers really had been playing "Fly away on my cell phone", they couldn't have been much closer to the mark as a sign of the times. (Anthony Kiedis was actually on about his Zephyr motorbike - the song title kind of gives it away). 
This Christmas time and beyond, hoards of us will abandon 'trad' mobiles and go down the increasingly well-trod smartphone route, a device that bundles an unfeasibly large number of functions into what was once a humble yet streetwise means of communication.
Since the smartphone trend began, the tendency of one small device to usurp the place of many traditional computing functions has moved relentlessly onwards. Several forces are driving the its success:
Pocket rockets?When we go out, we put 3 essentials in our bags or pockets:
Is the last absolute essential that we cram hurriedly into a pocket a ...
Most commonly of course it's a mobile phone, certainly for us chatty Brits, and what better than a shiny gizmo that combines all of those functions above. The tiniest and shiniest of phones will even double as as neckwear jewellery, à la Derek Zoolander, or perhaps an amulet to keep the demons at bay. The functional sophisticates among the smartphone elite are normally owners with busy lifestyles, but the hardware now works well enough to warrant mass take-up, especially when we realise the second most-used function of the mobile is simply to replace the good old alarm clock. 
A live ticker news scrolling service will appear on a new phone from Motorola, the no.2 mobile phone manufacturer in 2005, who will be launching new handset shapes for 2006 like rotating and/or sliding covers. Such advances will herald the commoditisation of news, video and TV footage to handheld devices, as companies who invested massively in 3G seek to recoup their payments on the back of serving content as a broadband service to phone users. Drawbacks
Nobody doubts that this is an ongoing revolution, but it's not all boundless good news. Portable phone design continually runs up against the problems of humans interaction, these crude organic mortals being blessed only with large stubby fingers. Keypads are hugely varied in type, but limited in their permutations - you only have to try texting to experience the naff end of user-friendliness. A stylus on a touchscreen works well when matched with intuitive handwriting recognition software, but will inevitably scratch and die over time. Fortunately a new niche market of screen protectors have leapt into the void. Sony's one-handed 5-way jog wheel is a useful aid to scrolling and navigation, but remains proprietary technology, though the idea is being plagiarised in other makes. 
We end-users want buttons to be bold and tactile, the screen to be large, bright, colourful and easily read, a battery life of forever, yet the whole package has to be small and beautifully fashionable. If that isn't dichotomy writ large, then you must be a leading phone designer. Perhaps one answer to miniaturisation and the consequently small on-screen font sizes is to have your messages read out loud for you! Phones gain hackable statusOnce mobiles opened up their operating systems and allowed external applications to be downloaded and run on them (like games, GPS trackers, financial managers, and so on), the possibility of virus attack was the next logical, if fateful, step. Some security companies rate mobile viruses as a faster-growing threat than the PC equivalent, even though we're only talking about 55 of them, versus the PC's 145,000 or so permutations of malware. Just one such weakness in the Bluetooth wireless protocol has already been exploited many times, and without access to the gamut of anti-virus protection software associated with desktops, an infected mobile can present a major problem. However, the sheer diversity of current mobile operating systems - Symbian, Windows Mobile/CE, Palm OS and Linux, to name just a few - makes it difficult for viruses to spread widely and for prospective attackers to make a large impact by simply writing one piece of code. The phone that knew too muchThe proliferation of personal devices that store non-personal data are causing headaches for systems administrators. Security leaks and loss of confidential company data is leading these stressed individuals to apply policies of 'locking down' the PC, blocking the connection to the network of PDAs and smartphones not owned by the organisation, or in extreme cases, refusing permission to bring such devices inside the building. Less harsh security policies can be implemented by fingerprinting and such add-ons for PDAs and handhelds are slowly growing, but more radical ideas are appearing, like "gaitcode", phone sensors that recognise the way you walk! Finally, for anyone still short of phone functions, the Hyundai MP280 perfumes conversations, quite literally, with its own scent. 
-IB-
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2. The $100 laptop
After a long sojourn from the headlines almost rivalling that of Kate Bush, the maintenance-free network computer is back again, only it's going to be real cheap. | ||
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Remember how much you paid when you last had to buy a mobile phone (assuming it wasn't free)? Now imagine you could have a laptop computer for a similar amount! 
A new prototype computer, based on the Linux operating system, is aimed at educating children in developing countries. Brainchild of the non-profit group One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the project aims to test 15 million systems in countries such as Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa. Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who spawned the non-profit spin-off from the lab, laid out his original proposal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January, but hopes to begin mass production of up to 15 million laptops for the designated markets towards the end of 2006, rising to over 100 million by end of 2007, around three times the quota of commercial laptops shipped annually. 
The innovative $100 machines will run a "skinny version" of open-source Linux on WiFi-enabled, cell phone-enabled, 500MHz, 1GB, hardware with a cluster of USB ports. A novel two-mode, 1 Megapixel screen (approx 1200x900) can be viewed in full colour, but at the push of a button switches to a black-and-white sunlight-viewable display at four times normal resolution. A significant factor in the overall cost reduction, the screen should account for less than $35. 
Following on the ingenious series of Freeplay radios and torches, the $100 laptop features a wind-up generator for additional hand-cranked power in areas where electricity supplies cannot be relied upon. The power cell is also a handle and the shoulder carrying strap doubles as an AC converter and cord for charging and power supply. The portable device is intended to function in the roles of laptop, tablet, handheld or e-book. Too good to be true?Having whetted the appetites of millions of ordinary consumers with this affordable technology, probably the most crushing blow is the realisation that you won't be able to buy it. This particular 21st century laptop is to be targeted at school kids and paid for by governments. 
Indeed, to prevent theft and black-marketeering, Negroponte would like to see the devices being so endemic and distinctively-associated with education that it would be "socially a stigma to be carrying one if you are not a student or a teacher." The other factor is that this is not a machine for storing large quantities of data. It's whole ethos is based on Internet- and network-connectivity as a means of delivering services. No paradigm shift exactly, but perhaps a strong indicator of where the trends are heading. Déja-vue?If you are thinking all this sounds slightly familiar, then it's true that the disc-less workstation - one that boots off and runs applications from the network - is nothing new. 
Sun Microsystems first mooted the Network Computer, a workstation that fetched all its information from a server via its network connection, and that included applications like a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database plus all the data that those applications worked on. None of this was held in the local machine's hard disc because there wasn't one. No downloads of operating system updates were needed because it was small, not prone to attacks and was stored in an unwriteable chip that could not be overwritten easily. Later, this idea transmuted into Sun's JavaStation and SunRay products and Sun have published a Network Computer Reference Profile to provide a common denominator of popular and widely used features and functions expected in a network computer. Microsoft made various moves towards a thin client PC and Terminal Services has stepped into this role to some degree, but its primary market remains a 'thick client' - unfortunately a virus-prone operating system requiring a hard disc and plenty of memory, namely the Windows system, whatever its current flavour. The interest for commercial producers of these light, cheap machines stripped-down to their bare operating essentials - keyboard, mouse, screen, network ports, perhaps a DVD drive - is that the development of Internet services is sky-rocketing, a latent consumer demand for ever cheaper devices exists and vast new markets of Internet have-nots are there to be tapped, notably in China. 
The thin client computer has been tried recently in the UK too. A Cambridge-based project called Ndiyo in partnership with Newnham Research, created a nivo (Network In, Video Out), a small 12x8x2cm box that simply sends compressed screen information to the nivo from the server via the network which result in the pixels to be displayed on the user's screen. Aiming to undercut significantly the cost of other thin-clients, the nivo already costs less than £100 to produce, while it is hoped future versions will offer local USB ports for peripherals devices and sound, probably embedded on-chip. Hands-on success?
With a device that hinges crucially on the infrastructure of the Internet, the 'surfing censorship' of some repressive regimes may present a significant stumbling block, however the inclusion of mesh or peer-to-peer networking, a concept employed successfully in applications like Skype, will allow the laptops to share a single Internet connection with each other. With the prevalence of the Internet as a provider of ever more services - be they email, web storage, photo sharing, instant messaging and chat, collaborative corporate databases, extranets, document backup or Internet telephony - an increasing dependence on a single connection would be cranked up at least a gear or two if it meant abandoning all those all those everyday applications stored on the local machine (just look in a PC's Programs menu to see how many) to have them delivered instead from a distant server. In aiming to create a commodity item for learning children as much as pencils are now, Negroponte needs each government to buy a million laptops up front to achieve the necessary economies of scale. Fortunately, OLPC is an independent, non-profit association and has some big backers and funders in the form of AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corporation, and Red Hat. Contacts
-IB-
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3. Email etiquette: subject for discussion
A couple of brief reminders about email etiquette: subject lines and reply addresses. | ||
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Off messageOften when a mail with a popular topic or frequently asked question starts the rounds - eg, "Does anyone know how to add members to the contacts list ?" - lots of replies soon flood in so that in effect it becomes a public discussion. However, suppose someone replies and switches the topic of the message to a query about imminent salary increases, 'in mid-flow' as it were. This too often happens just because the message has a convenient list of people to circulate. Referring back to this 'discussion' in your inbox, the subject headers will reveal a confusing mix of helpful tips on adding contacts, plus a whole load of irate complaints about pay levels - not very efficient for anyone interested in either debate. This kind of expediency translates to the same technique as used by spammers and viruses (changing the subject to get your attention), but perhaps worse because it's born out of laziness. It also has a 'cry wolf' effect on recipient's who continually get messages that appear to have urgent subjects but are in fact routine. So the subject of this particular message is "Stick to the subject"! Are you addressing me?When hitting "Reply", how many of us ever look at what goes in the To: box of an email? Here's an embarrassing incident to illustrate: Press officer Brian receives an email from campaigns worker Jill about a new section for the web site. A few minutes later, he receives the same email forwarded and modified by his boss, Chris, who now wants a press release for tomorrow. Already feeling stressed, and reluctant to alter his packed schedule, Brian puts both emails aside. Knowing that co-worker Jill will sympathise, he later replies to the message, with a tirade of "Why doesn't Chris ever allow enough time to think this kind of thing through". Only after hitting the "Send" button does Brian realise he replied to the version of the message from his boss. Learn more about email etiquette. -IB- Acknowledgements: Philip Anthony |
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4. IT strategy: Don't do it 'lastminute.bom'
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For some organisations it's the end of the (calendar) year, but many others who sync with the standard tax year aren't there quite yet. 
Hardly the time to be delving into IT strategy you might think, and with Christmas project deadlines looming, not much incentive either to switch priorities. However, a bit of shrewd cogitation now could save a whole bundle of scrabbling around later - the "£20,000 on the back of an envelope". This typical March scenario results when many organisations have 'spare' money at the end of the year and wonder why they can't get things moving (not just IT projects) even with cash swilling around, a relative bonanza. To set up a small department with PCs and one printer in few weeks might actually only require a 'back of an envelope' calculation, but a 3-year IT plan will mean sitting down with committees, approaching funders, consulting staff and so on. Herding all those people together and getting them to agree usually far outstrips the time it takes to get suppliers to assemble a quote. There may also be unforeseen hurdles in terms of technical knowledge to be gained. For example, a recent home-worker client thought it would only take half an hour to set up a computer network at home with Internet access. However what they didn't realise was that WiFi security, Windows updates anti-virus, anti-spyware, Office software would have be installed on all PCs too, and then there was sharing of the only printer and email accounts to consider. The longer the term of your IT plan, the more time you need to invest in upfront thinking. But the same applies the more money you have to spend, "have to" usually being the operative phrase at the time of year! Lead times for ordering equipment may often lengthen, especially if everyone else in the marketplace is desperate to spend ring-fenced money and equipment retailers are beleaguered with orders. One's heart may not bleed for firms up to their ears in orders, but the practicalities are that said orders will fulfilled more efficiently outside the seasonal 'rush hours'. Small bills (not used fivers)
When getting down to planning is just too much of a headache, try turning the problem on its head. Figure out what percentage of your IT budget you can afford to whim away on the back of an envelope, eg 2% of 25k would allow up to £500, a 'just go for it' ploy, without getting bogged down in justifying small amounts. And if you don't do any of this now, resolve yourself to returning in the New Year after a decent break with a clear head and to start thinking strategically. Contact us for some help with your IT strategy and a holistic approach - just don't leave it too long! -IB-
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5. Virused mailer fixes itself
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As a positive footnote to conclude October's article about a rash of virus-laden incoming emails, the story has ended favourably and the malicious flow of attachments has now ceased. Whether this was due to the culprit PC (probably a lone machine in a French hotel) succumbing to meltdown from a surfeit of viruses or whether the owner finally took some long-overdue anti-virus measures, we will never know. As if to underline this example, major anti-virus vendor Sophos reckons that an unprotected PC on the Internet has a 50% chance of being infected within 12 minutes! -IB- Paul Craig |
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6. Q&A: How to shorten web links
Question 
Hi Mark, We often print web addresses in our brochures and information leaflets to give our readers further information online, but some of the links are awkward to print as they are very long and unsightly in a printed context. Occasionally we have made mistakes which result in the links not working or leading to embarrassing places! | ||
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This is a common problem for anyone who wants to publish web links (aka URLs) in magazines, annual reports or in any form of print. Championed by the Guardian newspaper for many years the www.makeashorterlink.com web site has specialised in abbreviating URLs, even taking its own advice and shortening itself to a more memorable http://masl.to/. The process works by simply plugging your long URL into the box and the site responds by spitting out a much shorter one. For example, the Multimap reference to the location of Co-Operative Systems is: http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?client=publicbut the shortened version is a much more acceptable http://masl.to/?Y28715E1C that one could find space for even in narrow printed columns. Even some emails can benefit from shorter links, preventing the break-up of long addresses resulting in confusion at the recipient's end. Alternative mimic sites have sprung up, like http://tinyurl.com/, that also adds toolbar and preview features if you want them, and the slightly less polished http://metamark.net/ and http://linkme2.net/ makeashorterlink and tinyurl have promised thus far that links created will not expire (given the constraints of a free service) while metamark will make unused links redundant in 2 to 5 years. -IB-
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7. FM: all change
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Stalwart of the FM and contracts department, Nicole Antonelli, has returned to New Zealand with her fledgling family.
The good news for us is that much of the FM and contracts role has been placed in the capable hands of Azana Lewis who is doing an admirable job with renewals and billings. -IB-
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Since this kind of distance is a bit far to commute, Nicole is giving up her job (sadly for us) at Co-Operative Systems. We send her our very best wishes for the future and say a Big Thanks for her systematic approach in pushing forward the programme of IT Facilities Management for Co-Op clients.
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Clicks of the Trade - recapturing an offscreen window
--- Quick tips for happier clicks! --- | |||
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-IB-
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