Tools & Technologies - The Bumble Bee

March 6, 2006

Mobile devices pose huge data risks

Your data is far more valuable than your gadget.

85,000 cellphones and 21,000 PDAs were left in Chicago taxis in 6 months last year! Thanks to Ray Symmes for pointing out an article in the New York Times (Feb 21), Too Many New Gadgets, Too Much Information at Risk, which suggests that companies do not realise the security risk they are running by equipping their workforces with high-data storage mobile devices in terms of wifi evesdropping, theft and loss.

More forward thinking companies such as Seitlin, a small insurance brokerage based in Miami are making sure that if the gadget is lost the data is not.

This also addresses a problem which the NYT report does not mention – when your sales staff leave you don’t want them taking all your customer account data to your competitor!

Posted by Ken Thompson on March 6, 2006 at 12:00 AM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 26, 2006

Google Instant Messaging roll out

BBC News (7 Feb 2006) report that Google is to integrate its popular e-mail service with its own instant messaging, known as Gmail Chat to allow users to chat and send e-mails from the same web browser window. The report also gives the current stats on the subscriber bases of the 'big 3' in Instant Messaging:

AOL – 53 Million
MSN – 27 Million
Yahoo – 22 Million

Google Chat currently has a mere 866,000 subcscribers.

The report does not mention Instant Messaging within Skype - with 250 Million downloads Skype will also be someone to be reckoned with in the evolving Instant Message landscape.

But even Skype usage pales into insignificance compared to the one and a half billion people all over the world walking around with mobile phones in their pockets and purses according to Marc Prensky in Virtual teams, online learning and mobile phones.

That is one reason why mobile instant messaging is becoming a hot topic with reports that a number of the biggest mobile operators including Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and China Mobile, have agreed to work together to make it easy to IM across phone networks.

Posted by Ken Thompson on February 26, 2006 at 12:00 AM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 9, 2006

Improve web application usability with Ajax

Newsweek report in Smoother Surfing (Jan 30) on a exciting new set of technologies known as Ajax which underpin applications such as Google Maps and promises to deliver desktop-like usability, smoothness and performance to web browser-based applications. The potential of web-based applications which are equal in usability to their desktop-based counterparts could re-energise both the ASP (Application Service Provider) and web-based application provider markets and threaten Microsoft's long-standing dominance of office-based applications.

Posted by Ken Thompson on February 9, 2006 at 12:00 AM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

February 4, 2006

Anger management software could help virtual meetings

SearchCIO.com, 2 Feb, reports on the emergence of sophisticated speech recognition software which can highlight words that can indicate trouble on the line such as ‘confused’ and ‘cancel’. The software can also monitor in real-time telltale changes in the pitch, volume and timbre of a customer's voice which indicate hostility or rising anger.

Virtual team leaders could also use this software to help them spot the early warning signs which indicate that a web-conference or VoiP meeting is beginning to self-destruct. For more see Analyse This – Anger Management Software

Posted by Ken Thompson on February 4, 2006 at 11:15 AM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 25, 2006

Connectivity technology changing how we live

12 percent of US newlyweds last year met online.

One of the Ten Trends to watch in 2006, according to the McKinsey Quarterly (Jan 2006), is the transforming impact on people’s behaviour of technological connectivity.

“We are forming communities and relationships in new ways: 12 percent of US newlyweds last year met online, more than two billion people now use cell phones and we send nine trillion e-mails a year.”

For a quick summary of all ten trends

Posted by Ken Thompson on January 25, 2006 at 07:00 AM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 22, 2006

Social Bookmarking, Tags and Folksonomies: An introduction

‘Social bookmarking’ is the name given to the family of technologies which began to appear a couple of years back to allow you to share your favourite internet sites with others and to ‘tag’ them with sets of keywords known as a ‘folksonomies’.

The precursor of social bookmarking was plain old ‘Internet Favourites/Bookmarks’ which allowed you to store lists of URLs to be retrieved later.

However there were many limitations in traditional bookmarks/favourites including :

they were tied to a specific computer

they could not easily be shared with others for mutual benefit

they ended up as huge lists which were difficult to navigate

their classification was hierarchical and 1-dimensional

With social bookmarking you can also build up a community around a unique group of Tags known collectively as a ‘folksonomy’.

Social bookmarking makes it less important to know where the information is stored as long as you know how to retrieve it.

For more on social bookmarking check out:

7 Things You Should Know About Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking - Getting your Blog Noticed
Social Bookmarking Tools - A General Review

Posted by Ken Thompson on January 22, 2006 at 06:56 PM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (1)

January 18, 2006

Anti-spam act update

Maurene Grey in Collaboration Loop January 03, 2006 reports that two years after being signed into law, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have released their report to the US Congress on the effectiveness of the CAN-SPAM Act.

The 116-page report gets an "A+" for its in-depth research of the conditions that led to the spam problem and for its explanation on the mechanics of e-mail in layman's terms.

However it earns an "F" on some of its conclusions such as the acts impact on decreasing the volume of SPAM which is more down to supplier improvements in anti-spam technology rather than the act itself.

To read the full article, CAN-SPAM Act: The 2005 “Report Card” in Collaboration Loop.

In an another article, Legal action against spam, I report how the owner of a business in the Channel Isles has successfully used a new anti-spamming law, The Directive on Privacy and Telecommunications, to win out of court damages against a UK company who sent him spam

Posted by Ken Thompson on January 18, 2006 at 12:00 AM in News & Media, Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 14, 2006

RFID implants: passwords you cannot forget

Reuters report, Jan 6 2006, that some users are taking their lead from tagged animals and having minute RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Chips storing their personal codes implanted into their hands to allow them automatic access to computers and access-controlled locations. But its going to make you think twice about changing your password. To read Computer chips get under skin of enthusiasts.

Posted by Ken Thompson on January 14, 2006 at 08:00 AM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 12, 2006

Message archiving software: new report

Message archiving software can help organizations and teams achieve regulatory and corporate policy compliance, reduce the cost of eDiscovery, and reduce storage costs through mailbox management. The top message archiving software vendors include Computer Associates, EMC, IBM, Open Text, Symantec and ZANTAZ. Forrester have evaluated their strengths and weaknesses across 74 criteria in a newly published research report: (December 05) Message Archiving Software, Q4 2005

The result:

Symantec and Computer Associates come out on top in the report because they meet multiple business requirements with top-notch functionality and provide message archiving in the context of a broader solution — in their cases, information life-cycle management.

In a previous article, Technology in the workplace: a recipe for legal trouble, we read that although 31 percent of employees use instant messaging at work only about 20 percent of companies have issued a policy addressing the content and use of instant messaging.

Note:
Electronic discovery (also called e-discovery or ediscovery) refers to any process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case

Posted by Ken Thompson on January 12, 2006 at 12:00 AM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

January 8, 2006

Cell phone viruses: deadlier and more infectious

Despite some false alarms cell phone viruses have not yet reached epidemic levels with just 200 viruses compared to some 160,000 computer-based ones. However when they do start to arrive in numbers they may be deadlier and spread even more rapidly due to the way we use these devices. In addition with wireless technologies like Bluetooth these mobile viruses will not only be able to infect by connectivity but also by proximity - just like biological viruses.

The impact of cell phone viruses could be more severe as the cell phone is much more of an "always with us" communications device than a computer. Imagine the hassle of hundreds of unrequested ringtone downloads or even worse - phone calls placed on your behalf to premium numbers or bank IVR Systems.

Businessweek, Mobile Viruses: If Not Now, Soon report a recent Blackberry virus threat which was averted and suggest that it is only a matter of when, not if, mobile viruses start to appear in significant numbers. They also suggest that these viruses will have an easier time proliferating that their PC counterparts.

The Register, Mobile virus epidemics: don’t panic, makes two very important points:

Firstly the ability of cell phones viruses to infect by proximity through technologies like Bluetooth.

Secondly a key 'tipping point' in the growth of mobile viruses being when a critical mass of cell phones are running a single dominant operating system, such as Windows Mobile, rather than the current mix of mobile operating systems which also includes PalmSource's Palm OS, RIM Blackberry, and the Symbian OS.

Posted by Ken Thompson on January 8, 2006 at 05:25 PM in Tools & Technologies | Permalink | Comments (0)

Mobile devices pose huge data risks
March 6, 2006

Google Instant Messaging roll out
February 26, 2006

Improve web application usability with Ajax
February 9, 2006

Anger management software could help virtual meetings
February 4, 2006

Connectivity technology changing how we live
January 25, 2006

Social Bookmarking, Tags and Folksonomies: An introduction
January 22, 2006

Anti-spam act update
January 18, 2006

RFID implants: passwords you cannot forget
January 14, 2006

Message archiving software: new report
January 12, 2006

Cell phone viruses: deadlier and more infectious
January 8, 2006

Design Killer Applications
January 3, 2006