Opinion

First, you listen

Dear Bob … I've just taken over as IT director in a medium size business (we have about 1,000 employees in all; my department has 75 of them). Things seem to be running okay, but I'm not sure, and worse

As the Macworld turns

Who cares about the iPod mini when there are servers to scrutinize?

IT in transition

Why this recovery differs from those that preceded it

Catching flies with honey?

Some experts suggest honey-pot technology might be right for the enterprise — but is it?

Despite some potential blemishes, Longhorn’s WinFS looks attractive

API and natural-language queries are a plus, but app compatibility and slow performance could be troublesome

The secrets of outsourcing success

From IM to on-site staff, communication is critical — and flexibility doesn't hurt

Reducing storage pollution

iSCSI storage arriving in 2004

Open source lock-in

A MySQL licensing change sends ripples through the open source community

CES grows fat, NAI slims down

A $5,000 chair? Why not?

Peeling the onion

Random thought: Most people don't peel the onion very far (a phrase I stole from one of R. A. Lafferty's books), which is to say they don't see very far beneath the surface of things, if at all. If you need evidence, read the letters t

Keeping a presentation on the rails

Dear Bob … I'm not a manager, but I interact with managers on a daily basis. My current big project is an online policy and procedures manual. I've worked through all the kinks and developed something that I think will really revolutioni

How to handle the good ole boys

Dear Advice Line, I've been working as a computer guru for a large organization for the past eight years. Mega-millions of dollars in revenue, with a mega-bucks budget for IT. The basic management style in place when I arrived eight years ago,

Engaging in worm warfare

2004 looks to be another Year of the Worm — but you can lessen the damage done by these nasty intruders with a little preparation

Standards make portlets portable

The freshly minted WSRP and JSR 168 standards bring new flexibility to portal development

Get a handle on portals

From integration to identity management, a well-deployed portal requires a carefully crafted technical strategy

The era of the PHPC

Personal high-performance computing, defined

Oracle brains drain; Microsoft CRM pain

Plus, a harem of tech support bimbos who aim to please

The new enterprise portal

The browser-based portal is fast becoming the enterprise UI and the nexus for a new breed of integration and app dev

InfoWorld’s constantly evolving content

Reader feedback continues to fuel the new InfoWorld

The year of the disk drive

New technologies spur growth

PocketPCs: Small, smart, and coming on strong

Formerly the also-ran of the PDA ranks, Microsoft's handheld platform has evolved dramatically

What, me vulnerable? Check your OS for surprises

Every OS has at least a few potential holes, so keep a wary eye

The Picturephone has arrived

Almost as good as being there: Apple’s iChat AV and iSight deliver powerful audiovisual communication of the fly

Global outsourcing demands a new mind-set

Managing across the hall is a lot different than managing across the ocean

Avoid worms with these seven steps

These basics will keep your enterprise from getting wormy — if you manage them properly

Security in a spam-filled world

It’s more than just an annoyance: Spam can be your worst security nightmare

More bad boss blues

Dear Bob … I've been thinking about what it takes to succeed as a leader. Besides competence and compassion, a third criterion has emerged in my organization: rapport with the big boss. A manager's star rises and falls according his stand

Love you too, Apple

What do you give the CEO who has everything? How about a little appreciation? I'm occupationally inclined to belittle Steve Jobs' emotional MacWorld keynote declaration of his company's deep affection for its customers. I might charact

If you remember just one thing

Dear Bob … I was recently promoted to my first leadership role, after having spent most of my career as an individual contributor. I've been reading leadership books to help me make the transition, but frankly, most of them don't provide

MacWorld Expo predictions, wish list

It's MacWorld Expo time again. And once again, it's time for me to go public with my utterly unfounded speculation. Er, analysis. A quick side note: I've been carrying a BlackBerry 7230, a Treo 600 and a Nokia 3650 together for a few

Big brother at the wheel

A story in The New York Times (free registration required) portrays GM's OnStar system as an enemy of personal privacy. From the driver's point of view, OnStar is a button on your visor. When you press it, your car's GPS location is s

Dancing on the storage chessboard

EMC goes for the checkmate

The year’s best products

Drawn from the more than 200 products we tested during 2003, these Technology of the Year Award winners represent the most innovative and effective solutions in their category

The Tweakomatic brings much-needed joy to the holiday season

Redmond delivers a nifty new package — a tool for easily modifying Windows and IE settings

A year of security trials ahead

You’re probably just going to hate 2004 if you’re not ready to face the security music

Platforms snap, crackle, and pop

Processors, operating systems, application frameworks — in stasis for many years — are on the move again

Enterprise apps extend their reach

Major vendors compete on integration and data management

Test Center Picks and Pans

Our first annual awards in celebration of curious developments and dubious achievements

App dev rides the virtual machine

Microsoft .Net, Java, PHP, and Flash runtimes drive Web app development

Databases get a grip on XML

Innovative solutions bridge the gap between data objects and documents

Best products of 2004 

Judging by the winners in this issue, 2004 should be a great year for IT

If our wishes were vendors’ commands

Products we needed yesterday but still don’t have

Tapping the outsource

Outsourcing has immediate bottom line benefits, but management issues warrant a close look

A tale of two cultures

XML messages mixed with XML documents might unite the GUI crowd with CLI fans

Thrills! Excitement! Business?

I’m too busy being excited about technology to think about how it’s used

2004 Technology of the Year Awards

At the sound of the tone…

So my previous timezone script needed a makeover. It seems that my client wanted their users to be able to take the thin client systems home. Since they boot embeddedNT and access an NFuse/CSG server, the raw connectivity would work without a problem

Free your programmers

Just a thought … Get your programmers away from their desks. The only systems that get used are the ones that help end-users do their jobs better. "Management information" has to be a byproduct, or it will be nothing more than garbage in/

Labyrinth of aggravation

In theory, it was simple. An older Compaq Proliant 1600R server with a Compaq SmartArray 221 RAID controller destined to be upgraded from Win2K/Exchange2K to Win2K3/Exchange2K3. Another Exchange server was brought up, mailboxes were moved, and we wer

Has security come to this?

There are many costs associated with security, or the lack of it. Sometimes that cost is to the spirit.