I have to report the sad news of the closure of my local IT dealer who, after many years of building up a trusted relationship, has felt directly the pressures on the economy and the ever tight margins on IT equipment. This is the second time in my working life I have seen a local dealer go under like this, the last being some 15 years ago, and that too was a sad time for me.

Building a relationship with a small local business over a long period can bring its rewards as they appreciate all orders, even the low margin ones, and are often keen to assist in issues larger companies would prefer to avoid. Building a rapport with the same person to a point where they understand the needs of your business, and can prompt you when you haven’t checked your stock levels from time to time or let you know of new relevant technology that complements your existing infrastructure, is also of great benefit.

Margins, in particular, are so tight on technology equipment these days it’s a wonder any tech company is making any money. Smaller companies can also act as a useful barometer giving you the best price first time where other company sales managers will often try the old “tell me what you pay and I’ll try and beat it” technique - a game I never play.

As you can probably tell, I am saddened to see them go, particularly when Christmas is just around the corner.

I need an espresso and I need it quick! But what I really need is to find a good cafe but I don’t know the area very well so what am I to do?

I recently wrote about a new online service called Tagggit, the location-centric social network which hopes to address this problem and many more. Tagggit allows you to tag interesting (and uninteresting!) places, search for previously tagged places, share them with your friends and community and rate and discuss them. You can read more about Tagggit in the post Bring Your Social Network Into The Real World With Tagggit. One of the more interesting features of Tagggit is the new mobile application allowing tagging and searching of tags directly from your mobile device. I have had it installed on my phone for a short while and have found it really handy.

If you want your eyes opened about the sheer amount of personal information you may have put on the Web, or perhaps you just want to find an old friend or wonder what happened to a work colleague you could try 123people, a real time people search tool. You can read more about 123people in Who Are You? Find Out With 123people. Of course you could get this information by checking each site individually but there really is nothing like getting it all in one place.

Don’t forget - we recently launched the new Befriend A Monk page on Monk And His I.T. Junk technology cartoon - pop on over and say hello, you might want to make a habit of it!

So, the Christmas tree is up, the kids have already been to see Santa with their lists, we have had snow on the ground and have been listening to carols on the radio whilst colouring in pictures of snowmen. As the kids are very little, one asked me, how many more sleeps ‘til Santa comes? My answer, oh, not many, just 32 more sleeps – “Is that a lot?” I am asked. Under the current economic climate it isn’t the most straightforward of questions to answer. Mind you, I had to smile – whilst at Santa’s Grotto one of the kids was asked “And what is your name little lady?” to which she replied “If you really are Santa then you already know my name” leaving Santa to squirm whilst Mommy tries to quietly mouth it without her noticing.

So what has all this got to do with technology? It reminds me how quickly time flies and how things change. I remember sitting down to write my technology predictions for 2008 last year where I put number one on my list as “Year of the Zune” – this year I am left thinking … what’s a Zune? Mind you, I fared a little better with number two “Budget ‘Back to Basics’ Laptops” – one out of five isn’t bad is it?

It’s time to start thinking about technology predictions for 2009 – but does any tech really stand out as being promising for 2009 – Pico projectors perhaps? Or will 2009 be a year of tightening up the belts, consolidating equipment and maximising the value of what we already have?

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 addressed quickly, become the norm to leave a user account and password combination with a colleague or even worse on the desk, taped under the keyboard, stuck to the screen on a post it note, or in the drawer. Common sense dictates this is a major security risk and yet I bet it continues to go on. It makes nonsense of any audit logs, policies or security controls that may be in place; I remember one particular instance in a previous job, of a user who had been sharing an email account with another user because their own user account “wasn’t authorised to send outgoing emails”; even the line manager was aware of the situation but nothing was done to satisfactorily address the problem and ensure it didn’t happen again.

But, practically speaking, what can be done and is it really an IT issue?

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Phone: “Ring Ring”
Me: “Hello”
Caller “Hello, I am Blah from Blah Blah Software Security - could you tell me what network security you currently have in place?”
Me: “No”
Caller “Oh, are there any particular areas of concern for your network security?”
Me: “Sorry, I am not going to tell you that”
Caller “Oh, what are the weak areas of your network security then?”
Me: “Sorry, I am not going to tell you that either”
Caller “Er, Um, you are not making this very easy for me are you?”
Me: “Well, I am not likely to give out my network security information to cold callers now am I?”
Caller “Could you at least tell me if you are looking to review your current network security?”
Me: “We review it constantly”
Caller “When are you next looking to change your network security system?”
Me: “When this one does not work any more”
Caller “Is there someone else in your company I could take to about network security?”

Sorry if this sounds like I might have fell out of bed the wrong way -I really do understand suppliers need to conduct their business and sometimes that may involve a cold call introduction. That said, surely, if you are a network security company you wouldn’t really expect customers to give out details of their network security platform to cold callers would you? And for those cold callers who ask to speak to someone else, or who call the main number a few minutes later in the hope of reaching someone who just might give out this information, you really ought to know we work in a small open plan office.

I can imagine the scenario if we started giving out sensitive information to cold callers:

Phone: “Ring Ring”
Me: “Hello”
Caller “Hello, I am Blah from Blah Blah Software Security - Could you tell me what network security you currently have in place?”
Me: “Yes of course, We use blah network firewall on our blah blah T1 line”
Caller “Great, Are there any particular areas of concern for your network security?”
Me: “Yeah, we have a few open ports and don’t handle incoming SPAM particularly well”
Caller “Even better, what are the weak areas of your network security?”
Me: “The really weak area is that we dont patch our internal web server very much - someone who knew what they were doing could easily hack our network”
Caller “Fabulous, You really are making this very easy for me aren’t you?”
Me: “Of course, I just love giving out my network security information to cold callers - where did you say you were from again?”
Caller “Click…”

More of a chilling call than a cold call? A cold call introduction should be just that and nothing more. I must get a few of these cold calls every month asking all sorts of questions about network security and my policy is to avoid giving out specific information about our network security system.

Our user email folders are starting to grow quite big and attachments are largely responsible for this. The platform is Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2007 (with a bit of OWA thrown in) clients.

I am looking for a straightforward plug-in for Outlook that would allow users to highlight a folder (or perhaps a selection of messages) and perform a bulk save of attachments then strip the attachments from messages - possibly replacing with a shortcut to the attachment itself.

Does anyone have any particular recommendations of product before I hit the search engines?

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 the downloads section in my other blog.

These days we barely get to finish installing one version of Creative Suite before another one pops up - personally I can’t wait to see what new features are on offer.

This time it’s CS4 on the horizon and in just over a month I’ll be off to the Take the Shortcut to Brilliant Tour in Birmingham, sitting in the Odeon with my popcorn, ice cream and pop in hand, where I hope to find some interesting reasons to upgrade and see if any of Tom Arahs speculations have come true. I’ve often fancied giving Flash a real go but there just isn’t enough space to get familiar with the product before it’s time to roll up the sleeves with new installation media - so I am particularly hopeful to learn some new information that may help me take the plunge and finally commit.

Mind you, my interest in Silverlight is slowly growing…slowly…

In answer to the question “Where have all my deleted items gone?” - the answer really should be “Well, they were deleted”.

Here is a tip - when using email, don’t store essential files in your deleted items folder - or treat it as a long term mail archive (hoping to keep your inbox size small !?). Having recently switched on the “clear deleted items on exit” group policy I was faced with explaining to some pretty irritated users that the deleted items folder is for … well … deleted items. Deleted items are typically items that you don’t want anymore - at least that’s what I thought - but what do I know.

I hope there aren’t any group policies dealing with the sent items folder.

Well, it’s finished and I am no longer a number in the education system (not until I decide what to do next anyway) so I hope you guys and gals can forgive this little self indulgence but being the only IT guy for quite some distance you are my adopted peer network and I need to tell the good news to someone!

My Masters certificate arrived at the weekend in all its A4 glory after three years of hard graft. So apparently now I know a bit about Computer Science (Internet Technologies) and ahem … with Distinction (head gets bigger). I opted out of the presentation ceremony as that sort of thing isn’t really my cup of tea but I wasn’t ready for what else arrived in the post though - a nice little HP iPAQ PDA with a little sticker on it - “EDS Prize for best Masters project 2008″. Wowee - I didn’t even know there was a competition.

Anyway, that’s the self gratifying post over, unless of course you need to know anything about location aware mobile push applications using Bluetooth technology - then I’m your man.

In the meantime I’ll be in the computer room having fun and games with Microsoft Exchange 2007 Anti-Spam filters. Have a great day!