The return of stupid user tricks

If you’ve been to the multi-mondo-mega-cineplex lately, you know that we’re entering sequel season. Spider-Man 3 just opened, while Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End are just around the corner. Not wanting to be upstaged by Spidey, Captain Jack, or an oversized cartoon ogre, InfoWorld is launching its own sequel — “More Stupider User Tricks: IT Horror Stories Redux” — a follow-up to last year’s popular “Stupid User Tricks” article.  

Despite the title, and its dubious syntax, our sequel isn’t actually a horror flick (well, it may be for some of the participants). Think of it more as a tragicomedy, with elements of an instructional documentary thrown in for good measure. Senior Contributing Editor Oliver Rist, who also wrote last year’s installment, has dug up 10 accounts of staffers, managers, bean counters, and others who meddled unwisely in IT’s business, often to disastrous effect. Read it and weep … or laugh. And feel free to pass along any tales of ineptitude you may have encountered. After all, Spider-Man, Pirates, and Shrek are already on their third go-round, whereas we are only up to our first sequel. I suspect that “Even More Stupider-er User Tricks” is just waiting to be written.

Leaving stupidity well behind us, I’d like to introduce a new video feature we’ve been developing behind the scenes. “The Week Ahead with Gina Smith” is a weekly planner that will give you a heads-up on tech events for the next seven days, from trade shows and product launches to court rulings and other goodies. I’m sure many of you will recognize Smith’s name, whether from her days as founding editor in chief of E2 (which created the E3 gaming conference), her 10 years as a nationally syndicated radio tech-talk show host, or her gig at ABC, where she was an on-camera reporter covering technology for Good Morning America and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. And that doesn’t include her experience writing seven books or heading up The New Internet Company, a Larry Ellison network computer startup. We’re lucky to have Gina on board here at InfoWorld, and I encourage you to check out her work bright and early every Monday morning.

Last week, we rolled out the Month of Enterprise Startups, day-by-day profiles of 31 freshly scrubbed companies vying to crack into the enterprise market. This week we continue the parade with seven more contenders. We also decided to circle back to last year’s “15 Tech Startups to Watch” to see how they’re doing. In “Startups Class of ’06: Where are they now?”, writer Galen Gruman learned that most of the lucky 15 are continuing to execute on plan: Some got purchased (Jotspot by Google, Akimbi by VMWare/EMC), and a few shook up their management and refocused their products. But the bottom line: All are still alive and kicking. I’m sure this year’s crop of young ‘uns are hoping for a similar result 12 months from now.