I recently commented on a post by Rory Cellan-Jones, on the BBC dot.life blog, and the BBC removed it issuing me with a very nice warning

“Dear BBC Blog contributor,
Thank you for contributing to a BBC Blog. Unfortunately we’ve had to remove your content below. Postings to BBC blogs will be removed if they include contact details such as phone numbers, postal or email addresses…[snip]…Please note that anyone who seriously or repeatedly breaks the House Rules may have action taken against their account.”

The post titled Is blogging dead? talked about how social networking and micro-blogging is supposedly killing blogging which I don’t particularly agree with. Anyway my comment is here (hopefully IT Pro won’t pull it!):

“Twittering, or micro-blogging, often gives an interesting heads up, or lead in, to a fuller article the reader can follow if they wish. In this way there is room for both - for example on my Uk based technology blog at www.jasonslater.co.uk I post full articles but also provide a much briefer post to twitter.The platforms, languages, and levels of interaction may change but discussion is alive and well and its great to see you blogging about it.”

No phone numbers, postal or email address included - oh wait - I did include the URL to my blog - could that be the reason? There were about a dozen other posts all with URLs pointing back to blogs (some with names in) so at the time I didn’t feel I was doing anything out of the ordinary and I felt my post was in line with the subject matter. I asked the BBC to clarify exactly why they pulled my comment and thus far they have not replied.

So, is Blogging dead? The BBC are certainly do there bit to help.

I wonder what Rory Cellan-Jones would make of it? Oh, yes, I can’t ask him can I?

Happy New Year for 2009 - and best wishes to you all. I have my fingers crossed for my annual technology predictions.

By the way, where did Christmas go or did I blink and miss it? It is the first time I have booked the time off over Christmas (At ages 3 and 2, the kids know what Christmas is this year!) so it was nice to take a little time away from everything and spend good quality time with the family. I didn’t make any New Year resolutions this year (apart from the usual ones I promise to myself - “Eat more healthily, exercise more, yada yada yada” then break them on January 2nd!) - did you?

Back at work there are lots of things to do, contracts to check, help desk calls to resolve and a good amount of New Year cleaning out of the drawers to be done. Whilst I work through these I am wondering what 2009 will bring for tech? Reading Asavins’ article What will next year hold in the ever-changing world of IT security? I feel a sigh building then I read that Microsoft may be planning a huge job cut - not a great start to 2009 - mind you according to Reuters 2009 may be one of the warmest years on record.

So, lets be positive - what good tech do we have to look forward to in 2009?

You can put in place all the security protocols, technologies and procedures you like but it seems there will always be a way to simply and easily circumvent them - and most of the time this has to do with people. More needs to be done to help and support IT departments when problem areas are flagged and business really needs to take its head out of the sand a little more often. Addressing problems ‘after the horse has bolted’ is just not enough.

One particular problem is user logons and passwords - when an employee goes on holiday, calls in sick, or doesn’t turn up for work for any other particular reason it can, if not

I previously wrote about Green IT in our company and have been busy trying to raise awareness with our user base. Switching off the screen at night, and being more selective about what needs to be printed are simple ways that everyone can contribute to more efficient use of the technology around us. I have created a poster to help with this and am making it available online in case it might be useful to others.

You can download the poster from

Nothing divides communities quite like a little humour - lord knows I have had my fair share of flack from Monk and his I.T. Junk over the years. The television sit-com The IT Crowd is another example - are we really that geeky ? I know I am ! I can’t recall the number of times I have told a user to simply “switch it off and on again”. I just read in Graham Linehans Blog article “Be my hive brain!” that he is calling for suggestions to help design the look of the set for the next series, specifically, all things “cool” and geeky from the last few months so if you are interested get your thinking caps on and head on over to his Blog for more details. I would think that you guys and gals who live iGizmo should be full of ideas.

I wrote recently about the low cost Dell Vostro aimed at the SME market and I see that Maggie Holland talked about them as far back as July 2007 in Dell unveils Vostro offerings for small businesses. There are both Laptop and Desktop solutions on offer and they do seem reasonably priced for what they are (forgiving the comparatively large delivery price!). The site is at www.dell.co.uk/vostro

Has anyone any experience of these machines? Are they worth looking at?