Small Business

Shhh... ACMA preps URL 'block' page

In a recent discussion with Senator Conroy’s media advisors, I was given the privilege of being politely declined any more information about the composition of the proposed URL 'block' page or what options people have to check if their Web site is caught up in the filter.

By Rodney Gedda | 16 June, 2010 10:29

Tags: ACMA, censorship, Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE), internet filter blacklist, Stephen Conroy

Paperless office? Ha! How about a paperless life?

The invention of the PC was supposed to usher in the "paperless office," a completely digital workplace without paper memos, forms, files or records. But that vision was ruined by another invention -- the printer. Now offices have more paper than ever.

By Mike Elgan | 03 March, 2009 09:21

Tags: paper waste

Storing your data in their cloud

Although it may seem like your computing life is all e-mail and browsing, computer users still create files, documents, spreadsheets, boring presentations and all manner of other stored information. Which brings me to the question: Where do you store your data? And are you ready to store your data online in a service hosted by a third party provider?

By James E. Gaskin | 07 November, 2008 09:34

Tags: cloud computing

Get more work done with less e-mail

Here's a statistical downer: there will be around 40 trillion inbox-clogging spam e-mail messages delivered this year. Experts know this because there were 30 trillion spam messages last year. With this much hay in the stack, it's hard to find those message needles, and that's why some smart companies are looking beyond public e-mail.

By James E. Gaskin | 24 October, 2008 08:41

Tags: antispam, email, wikis

Will the financial meltdown slow IT innovation?

You might hate Wall Street -- and who doesn't this week, but if you work in IT you owe the Street a vote of thanks because the fat cats in financial services have been a major driver of technological innovation.

Bill and me: My interview with Bill Gates

Bill Gates Q&A with Network World May 15, 2000

Facing the Sundance reality

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in every industry, if you define "interesting" as the kind of thing that a practitioner of the space will jump for joy at the prospect of reading.

CRM: not just for the big end of town

For the mid-market, an integrated CRM solution improves business productivity at a low total cost of ownership.

Why SMBs cannot afford to ignore BPM

Quite simply, business process management (BPM) allows a small business to grow. What most SMBs don't realize is that BPM and putting business processes in place is extremely important and perhaps even more critical for them to adopt than larger businesses.

Firefox 3 First Look

I've loved Firefox since version 0.93. It was so much better than Internet Explorer and the other alternatives that I couldn't imagine using anything else. But, then Firefox's memory leaks went from annoying me to ticking me off; I started having real stability problems with it on both Windows and Linux; and security holes started appearing far more often. I was about to switch to Safari on Windows and MacOS and Konqueror on Linux, when Mozilla got serious about not just fixing, but rebuilding Firefox. Now, Firefox 3 release candidate 1 was released early. Based on my quick look at it, I may end up sticking with Firefox after all.

Silence your servers: It's quiet, it's green, it's the rack o' my dreams

When I refer to my lab, I use the term loosely. It's a 10-by-10-foot working space whose smooth walls channel the sound from every device with a fan straight into my ears. I share that room with every server I use and test. Of these, an 8-core Xserve is the only box that stays on 24/7, and I wish I could say I've gotten used to the noise. I haven't. While the Xserve idles at a pleasant noise level, as soon as any computing load kicks in, the fans spin up. When they do, they find a frequency resonant with the part of my brain that tells me that if I value what's left of my hearing, it's time to leave the room. The necessity of working with rack servers that get louder with each generation has made noise the primary governor of my workflow.

Conference reflects maturation of the storage market

Every Storage Networking World conference tends to serve as a gauge on the mood of the market and provides indications of trends and directions in the storage industry, and last week's in Orlando, to me at least, reflected a storage market that is transitioning to a mature phase, where new developments are likely to be more incremental - evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Sweet new service backs up while it syncs

A company called Sharpcast last week rolled out a new service that syncs your data across PCs, Macs and phones. That sounds simple enough, but the service, called SugarSync, and it's believed to be the first of its kind.

MIDs, UMPCs and what mobile users really want

I guess calling them MIDs is better than calling them unlaptops, or smart nonphones, but not by much.

Bandwidth costs, real and virtual

Being a pundit, like being in love, means never having to say you're sorry, right? Wrong. Besides, that's got to be one of the dumbest lines in history -- from what I can tell, loving someone means acknowledging your mistakes early and often, and making reparations as best you can.

Leopard Server vs. Windows Server

Comparing any Mac OS release with Windows is often like comparing aphids and orangutans. That is particularly true when looking at Apple's Mac OS X Leopard Server and Microsoft's Windows 2003 Server. Although they ultimately provide very similar features -- directory services, file and print services, various Internet services, and so forth -- the two platforms seem to be designed from completely different mind-sets.