Here's something you should know upfront: Your editor is not on Facebook, or
MySpace, or any of the popular social networking sites of the day. A few message
boards? Sure. E-mail? A lot. The Internet in general? Pretty much all the time.
But not the social networking sites. Why? Well, it's hard to see what they
deliver on top of everything else, other than providing little ego.com spaces
for most of the people on them (and most of your editor's friends are on them,
in case you were wondering). This relative luddite still gets by on e-mail and
occasionally via telephone without much problem.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 10, 20080 comments
There's the forest, and then there are the trees. Sometimes it's hard to see
one for the other. That seems to be the case right now with unified communications (UC).
With what? That's the question a lot of small to midsize business (SMB) owners
are probably asking themselves if they're reading this. bMighty.com,
a Web site for SMBs, recently released results of a survey
that revealed that SMB owners and IT folks aren't nearly as excited about UC
as some of us in the trade press and the channel are.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 09, 20080 comments
Ever wonder who's really seeing those IMs that are always flying around your
office? Depending on which client you're using, they might be more public than
you think. Check out the comprehensive (we'll give CNET credit for this one)
review of IM security
here
.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 09, 20080 comments
Is somebody plotting something dastardly in the background while you're on
Skype with your best friend in Europe or maybe virtually attending your family
reunion?
Could
be, apparently
.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 09, 20080 comments
Steve Ballmer's talking retirement...but don't hold your breath. Ballmer's
days of daytime television and cross-country RV trips are still
a
decade or so away
.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 05, 20080 comments
It's like the humidity that hangs in the air on a summer afternoon. Kind of
annoying but mostly non-threatening, and it's surely nothing that would actually
produce a rain cloud and ruin a cookout or a picnic. Right?
And then those clouds start to roll in, heavy and gray, slowly eating blue
from the sky. A few warning drops fall and then BAM! Cloudburst, rainstorm,
and you're scrambling to get your burgers and baked beans into the house before
everything gets all soggy.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 05, 20080 comments
Of course,
this
is only really important for those of you who don't already use Firefox.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 05, 20080 comments
Security titan Symantec is opening up its deal-registration program, appropriately
dubbed the Opportunity Registration program. (We just love when the name of
something describes what the thing is.) Primarily, the re-tooling of the program
gives Silver Partners the opportunity to receive a discount on approved registrations;
that perk was previously limited to partners at a higher level in the program.
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 05, 20080 comments
It's not those nasty hackers from outside the company CIOs worry about, but
instead
those
disgruntled employees inside
, a new survey reveals.
So, whatever you do, try to keep your employees, um, gruntled.
Posted by Lee Pender on June 04, 20080 comments
At some point back in the late '90s -- we're thinking 1998 or so -- Quark put
out an acquisition bid for competitor Adobe. Adobe was struggling a bit at the
time, and although Quark's bid ultimately (and obviously) failed, there were
rumors that Adobe might be ripe for the picking.
Your editor covered the story for a different publication (again, obviously,
as RCP didn't exist back then) and wrote some snappy prose, we'd like
to say. But one competitor -- we honestly don't remember who, but please step
forward if you're out there -- won the battle for best lede (first sentence)
in an online story about the whole Quark-Adobe matter. He wrote: "When
blood is in the water, sharks will gather."
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 04, 20080 comments
Somebody at Microsoft -- namely honcho grande Kevin Johnson -- finally realized
that the company's "Live" branding means...well, nothing, really,
and is just a little bit confusing.
So, Johnson and Microsoft's marketers are out to fix
the company's online branding, and he's left us with a mildly funny quote
to boot (from this
PC World story):
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Posted by Lee Pender on June 04, 20080 comments