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This Week in Tech: On Yo-Yo Dieting and Haute Couture Cell Phones

January 19, 2010 By

1. What Yo-Yo Dieting and the Recession Have in Common

The papers are saying that productivity is on the rise, that the fat officially has been cut from corporate America. Good news, right?

Depends on what you do next, says Gartner Blog Network’s Mark McDonald in a recent post. Productivity gains are “… a mathematical phantom, particularly if people remain on their current course and speed,” he writes.

“It is the equivalent of losing water weight at the start of a diet.”

That current course he’s talking about is the way many companies made it through the recession – by removing the costs (employees) without changing the underlying process or operation.

Says McDonald: “It is the equivalent of losing water weight at the start of a diet.” And, as any yo-yo dieter knows, you will gain that weight back quickly if you don’t change the habits that got you fat in the first place.

Read his post here.

2. What Recession?

Then there’s that whole other realm, the business of haute couture, which seems to be a barometer of nothing really, [Read more...]

Filed Under: This Week in Tech News, Worker Productivity Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What We’re Reading: The Mostly Ugly Edition

January 15, 2010 By

This week’s batch of stories deals with the good, the bad and the ugly. The good news is that the decline in tech spending may be history. The bad and the ugly: Google’s customer service. Read on…

The Good: Forrester says the Tech Spending Downturn is Over — Huzzah!

Support requests can be sent only through e-mail, to which Google can take up to 48 hours to respond. Yes, two days.

Computerworld magazine reports that the tech spending downturn is over, according to a report released by Forrester. The research firm predicts that IT spending in the United States will increase by 6.6 percent in 2010, after falling 8.2 percent last year.

Even if Forrester’s predictions are correct, it will not necessarily mean a full recovery, according to Computerworld. Spending for 2010 will still be less than in 2007 and 2008. What’s more, the mag warns of the possibility of a double-dip recession – that is, a growth spurt, followed by another decrease of 3 percent to 4 percent. Cross your fingers.

The Bad and the Ugly: Lessons in Customer Service from Google [Read more...]

Filed Under: This Week in Tech News Tagged With: , , , ,

IT in Twenty-Ten: What Will Come Easy and What May Not

January 6, 2010 By

You didn’t think you’d ever read the following: Reports are in and Windows 7 is proving easier to handle than its detested predecessor, Vista.

Coming up with a plan to manage the resulting IT hodgepodge will prove maddening for any CIO.

According to a recent article by Ina Fried in CNetnews.com, Microsoft is experiencing fewer support calls since it launched Windows 7 – about half of what it expected. It’s attributable in part to the new version’s higher quality, but also, writes Fried, to Microsoft’s efforts to increase the effectiveness of self-service with an experts’ forum called Microsoft Answers and its @MicrosoftHelps Twitter feed.

As if that wasn’t good enough news for Microsoft, here’s another report to add to the Windows 7 love fest: According to market research firm ChangeWave, Windows 7 satisfaction has stimulated corporate IT spending. [Read more...]

Filed Under: This Week in Tech News, Windows 7 Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Dog Ate My Homework: Lessons to Learn From the Bush E-mail Archiving Debacle

December 15, 2009 By

I’m sure it wasn’t intended as a humor piece, but this morning’s NPR radio report about the e-mail gaffe that occurred at the Bush White House in 2002 and 2003 was fine entertainment. In particular, this quote from Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy from 2007 made me laugh: “That’s like saying the dog ate my homework. Those e-mails are there. They just don’t want to produce them.”

While many companies do have admirable archiving systems in place, just as many firms leave the details up to chance, the honor system, and other faulty methods.

Although I have never tried to get out of an assignment by saying a dog ate my homework, I have fouled up plenty, and confessing was quite difficult in some cases. But, what I have learned over the years is that if you ask for help, you will commit fewer blunders and have less mess to clean up.*

Back to the government e-mail issue. According to an article by Computerworld’s Patrick Thibodeau, the whole mess stemmed from a Domino/Notes-to-Microsoft Exchange migration. The old archiving system was phased out, but the new one was never implemented. From that point on, Thibodeau explains, the government manually archived messages. The result was millions of “missing” e-mails. [Read more...]

Filed Under: FAIL, This Week in Tech News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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