Challenging times

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

A few months ago, we asked IT Pro readers to tell us about the challenges they face. We asked, you answered. And, while some of the results weren’t surprising, they do point to worrying trends that the industry at large needs to address.

The majority of you (95 per cent) feel a bit lost when it comes to new technologies, due largely to complexity and confusion.

Even when you do feel able to harness the latest innovations, many of the systems and tools used today need a greater level of support, according to 74 per cent of respondents.

That support might be hard to find, however, with two-thirds of you saying IT budgets have been slashed in the last 12 months, which will have a knock-on effect on your team’s ability to support users and systems.

Despite budget cuts, security remains the main priority for 97 per cent of respondents, with systems reliability and resilience coming a very close second (96 per cent).

Interestingly, there is still a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) when it comes to cloud computing. Indeed, 99 per cent of those surveyed (by IT Pro in partnership with Lifeline IT) said they feel the risks still outweigh the benefits at present.

IT Pro’s sister title Cloud Pro may be able to help. Head there for all the latest information, research and insight to help businesses make sense of the cloud.

Children predict future of tech. My arse!

Wednesday, July 6th, 2011

It may well be stating the obvious but children are, it seems, the future of tech. What’s more, according to a new study called ‘Children’s Future Requests for Computers and the Internet‘ they also have an ability to predict the future shape of that tech.

The Latitude consultancy designed research, asked children from all over the planet to draw their answer to the question “what would you like your computer of the Internet to do in the future that it can’t do now” and the results were, frankly, not as amazing as some commentators are suggesting. It doesn’t take some spooky kid with glowing eyes and a brain the size of my arse to ‘predict’ that Internet tech should be more interactive, more human, more integrated with their lives and more empowering. In fact, I imagine it takes someone quite grown up to interpret kids drawings as predicting that.

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I’m damned if I’ll smash it up

Monday, April 25th, 2011

It’s no secret that I used to be a punk in the seventies and one of my favourite bands was The Damned. I mention this as they used to play a song called ‘Smash It Up’ which always went down well at gigs. Now it seems that one in four perfectly non-punky employees want to do the same. Smash it up, that is, if the it in question is a laptop or mobile phone and the end result is an upgrade.

New research suggests that 25 percent of workers will gladly break their work lappy or drop the mobile down the toilet if they think it means getting a new one. Of course, it’s doubtful if they would even consider wiping the data on the things first. After all, if it’s broken it doesn’t matter, right? Ding! Wrong, and then some.

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Facebook + friends = STRESS

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

Apparently the more Facebook friends you have the more stressed you’ll be when using the site.

In research that some may question the validity/point of, Scottish psychologists quizzed a bunch of students (why just students?!) about how they use Zuckerberg’s baby (I’m referring to Facebook here, not any offspring of the young billionaire).

Edinburgh Napier University researchers found those users who spent the most time on the site and had more contacts than anyone else were likely to be the most stressed. It’s hard being young and popular – haven’t you seen teen not-actually-real documentary The Hills?

I’d like to add a little of my own psychoanalysis here that the researchers didn’t appear to comment on: the people with the most friends on Facebook and who spend the most time on it are more than likely lonely, insecure and in need of real human contact.

When these anti-outside air people go on Facebook, their unconscious is reminded that they aren’t actually making real contact with actual friends, but instead interacting with basically imaginary friends whose online personas are as detached from their genuine personalities as Apple and Adobe are in their outlook on openness. This only places additional stress on the Facebook users’ already fragile state without them appreciating why.

The more virtual friends they acquire, the more they are reminded how alienated they are from real-world and human interaction, making them even more depressed. No doubt stress levels for the Facebook-obsessed went up a notch on Valentine’s Day. It’s little wonder there weren’t any reports of people inexplicably imploding when February 14th hit, with love hearts and adoring messages splattered all over the social network to remind the lonely just how lonely they were.

There’s plenty of papers and research out there raising concerns about how people are becoming increasingly virtual in their social experiences, as well as what pejorative consequences this might entail. But no one really listens.

And who cares? I’m on Facebook right now, blissfully ignorant in the land of quasi-make believe where I’m a really fascinating, loquacious chap who has a startling amount of friends who I get on with all very well and converse with every day… God, I’m depressed.

P.S. To the 32 per cent of students who said rejecting friend requests led to feelings of guilt and discomfort, try doing it in real life to someone sleazing all over you like a sex-starved B-list celebrity on Viagra… it’s actually quite rewarding.

Social Networking History

Monday, January 31st, 2011

If you are interested in Social Networking you could do worse than listen to

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00xw14v/The_Secret_History_of_Social_Networking_Episode_1/

Cutting edge IT, do we need the history? “How can you tell where you’re going if you don’t know where you are coming from.” Any way if you have been cutting edge for a while you may be a part of it!

EDSAC to be rebuilt at Bletchley Park: Why?

Friday, January 14th, 2011

A replica of the first working stored-program computer is to be created at Bletchley Park, but you could be forgiven for asking why.

Well, according the National Museum of Computing, there are two chief reasons: to remember our country’s rich computer heritage and to inspire future generations.

And that’s good enough for me. It’s genuinely encouraging to see, at the start of 2011, a real enthusiasm for technology in the UK. The fact that the Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) will be rebuilt in full public view will surely get some youngsters excited about

Furthermore, EDSAC was a progenitor of the first business computer and of future PCs, so it’s good to see the respect we have for the past, when it would be all to easy to get wrapped up in the latest developments.

David Hartley, chairman of Computer Conservation Societyand former president of the BCS, sums it up perfectly: “The EDSAC was a brilliant achievement that laid the foundations for general purpose computing and introduced programming methods adopted worldwide and still in use. By recreating EDSAC where the public can watch the process, we aim to enthuse a new generation of computer science and engineering students with the genius of those post-war pioneers at Cambridge University

The EDSAC project is another signifier telling us that this country still has much to offer in the world of computing, building on recent moves by the Government to suffuse the tech sector with new vigour (see the ‘Tech City’ announcements).

So it seems we are looking back whilst moving forward – surely the best way to go. As the classic Take That song declares, never forget where you’re coming from.

ARM shows UK still has its part to play

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

I am not known for my outspoken patriotism and reeling off lines like “proud to be British.”

However, when I saw the news this morning that UK chip manufacturer ARM had usurped Intel’s place at Microsoft’s side and was set to be the latest tablet component, I did beam a little with pride.

As a UK techie, I often stare across the pond at the innovation in Silicon Valley or dream of the broadband technology of Scandinavia or the Far East.

We may have been at the forefront of invention when it came to the likes of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web but we have dropped out of the spotlight somewhat and, in my opinion, without just cause.

It doesn’t help that our Science and Research funding is being slashed to bits by the Government – regardless of what they claimed during the spending review (see the proof here) – and our top techies tend to leave for more prosperous shores.

But perhaps with the (admittedly rehashed) idea of the Silicon Roundabout at Old Street – Tony Blair was said to have spearheaded this years ago – and proof with companies like ARM taking centre stage at events like CES, we can return to a time where being British was seen across the globe as being at the height of the technology field, rather than just by us believers remaining in the UK.

Where is your iPhone?

Friday, December 24th, 2010

Let me answer that, at least as far as I am concerned it is in my pocket where it belongs. Should I forget where I left it, or The Goddess forbid, it gets stolen, I would still know exactly where it was because Apple has this handy thing called ‘Find my iPhone’ which lets me track the location of my iPhone and send it a message which is displayed no matter the user is doing.

If I want I can remotely lock the phone, and even wipe all my data off of it if I so wish. On the other hand, I could simply not leave it on the conveyer belt at an airport security check, on the back seat of a taxi or somewhere that a lowlife chav can grab it and scarper.

For thousands of people it seems that knowing where their mobile phone is creates something of a problem at this time of the year though.

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Spamglish – the language of spam

Saturday, December 11th, 2010

Hands up if you know what spam is when you see it? Are you sure? What about if that advert for some penis enhancing drug is in Spanish, or there are ten million Euros waiting for you in Portuguese, and what’s ‘Make Money Fast’ in French again? It seems that the language of spam is changing, and that could be problematical if you or your filtering cannot speak spamglish.

According to the latest MessageLabs Intelligence reports spam is becoming both more culturally and linguistically diverse; to the point where MessageLabs is predicting that during the course of next year less than 90 percent of it will be in English. OK, that sounds a lot (actually, it is a lot, something approaching 90 percent – doh!) but it represents a fall from the current statistic of more than 95 percent of all spam being in the English mother tongue.

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Internet, bovvered? 88 percent of kids say not

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Prepare for a shock: the Internet is not a scary place full of paedophiles and pornographers and cyber-bullies and other kid worrying stuff. Well, OK, it does contain all of those things but the vast majority of children, if you actually take the time to ask them, will admit that on the whole they don’t find the Internet to be a dangerous or worrisome place.

According to a new report called ‘Risks and safety on the Internet‘ from the EU Kids Online project based at the London School of Economics and Political Science, only 12 percent of some 23,000 kids from across Europe who were questioned actually said that they had been ‘bothered or upset’ by their experiences online. While that is, speaking as both a father and grandfather, obviously 12 percent too many it is not the kind of overwhelming number you might expect given the often hysteric media coverage and jostling for popular position that goes on amongst politicians.

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