Microsoft

Sought-after IT jobs — lawsuit-filing not among them

IT jobs are down this year. Mix that lack of employment opportunity with an exceptionally tough job market (the average national unemployment rate is up to 9.4% as of July 2009), and you get some pretty frustrated individuals. One such individual is taking her frustrations to the next level and suing her alma mater.

Trina Thompson graduated from New York’s Monroe College in April with a bachelor’s degree of business administration in information technology. As of July 24, the still-unemployed Thompson filed a lawsuit against the office of career advancement for not helping her find a job.

On top of full tuition reimbursement, Thompson is also suing for an additional $2,000, “for the stress I have been going through looking for a full-time job on my own,” she wrote in her lawsuit.

There are a lot of well-qualified professionals struggling to find a job, and if the IT business admin IT positions are few and far between (as in Thompson’s case) what are the positions IT managers are looking to fill? Continued »

Microsoft releases code to the Linux community — and?

When Microsoft (historically not a fan of the GPL) announced this week that it would release 20,000 lines of device driver code to the Linux community (meant to enhance the performance of Linux when virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V), there were some raised eyebrows.

The code donation was certainly “a break from the ordinary,” according to the official Microsoft press release, in which a Microsoft official said the move was due in part to the current economic climate, to help companies consolidate their hardware and software. Continued »

Recession or not, we can still give thanks for technology

Years ago, writing a “grateful” journal was all the rage. Helps to keep things in perspective (at least, that’s what Oprah told us). So, given that it’s been such a tough year for business, I thought I’d step back and see what I could find to be thankful for. Here’s my list.

5. I’m thankful for the idea of a Microsoft-free world (not that it would ever happen.) But, finally I see business ready for some changes in the technological hierarchy, experimenting with open source applications and operating systems. Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are fiercely competing with Internet Explorer – and are holding their own. It may be a long road, because legacy programs die hard, but the possibility is on the horizon.

4. I’m thankful for GOOGLE and its ability to just keep getting it right. The search engine giant with incredible apps (for both business and pleasure) introduced the G1 Google phone this year. Google is taking on Apple and Microsoft with browsers and search engines – and is now competing in the mobile device ring, welcoming open source applications. I must also thank the company for providing us with small-talk topics (“So, have you tried out the new Google Goggles?”) and connecting us with our peers on GTalk.

3. I’m thankful that we had a real example of how Web 2.0 and social networking could change the world. We saw the impact social networking and the Web generation had when it came to the election. Text messaging, Facebooking, blogging and Twittering were used by the masses to connect and promote – creating quite a stir and forever changing the way candidates campaign. From online health records to wikis, we are using the Web to manage our lives and keep us informed.

2. I’m thankful we’re all more aware of security risks. This year we’ve experienced everything from the San Francisco network lockout to concerns about VoIP and unified communications. The Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2009 warns us of an even rockier future – estimating that 15% of online computers will be botnet-affected this year. There are no rose-colored glasses for looking at security – we know the risks.

1. I’m thankful that despite the economy, technology continues to flourish and companies continue to innovate. Even though budgets are getting cut and IT innovation is becoming more difficult, people are making it work. Costs can be cut by moving to green IT, virtualization and SaaS applications. Not too shabby

If my glass-half-full approach didn’t satisfy your appetite, check out this year’s list of tech turkeys compiled by Rachel Lebeaux, associate editor of SearchCIO.com.

Microsoft hosts midmarket CIOs – Vote for the biggest CIO challenge

A midmarket CIO’s challenges are many, and I’m always amazed by the stories I hear when I’m out on the road meeting many of you.

This week I touched down in Redmond for Microsoft’s US Midsize Business CIO Summit, an invitation-only event for about 400 midmarket CIOs. It’s a press-free conference, but I was privileged to be a speaker and thus join the technology glitterati on site.

My conversations covered a lot of topics, but what I’ll share with you here is a sampling of the folks I met. If you think your job is tough, consider those of these CIOs – then I’ll ask you to vote or share your story of trying circumstances.

- The CIO for a firm that conducts clinical trials. He has five staff in the U.S. and 25 in Europe. Based on the West Coast, he had just spent over a week on the road, first in London and then in Russia, then came directly to the conference. At home he’s on calls early in the morning and late in the evening, syncing up with staff around the world. Challenges? Language, culture. … He absolutely wasn’t griping about the travel or the hours (he didn’t even look tired!) and I know he’s hardly alone in living such a global lifestyle. But to me that seemed the most challenging part.

- The CIO who was hired to bring a food distributor into the 21st century. The company had all sorts of aging or aged systems – but the hard part was when this maverick CIO announced capabilities he wanted to roll out to the employee base. The CEO told him that sales reps were not going to use computers. Period.

- The CIO who had endured several offshoring contracts (some negotiated by his parent company), all with ill effects. In one case, employees at a provider hacked into his systems; in another, a key offshore contact left for another firm just after completing his Oracle training in the U.S. Meanwhile, he grappled with undeveloped infrastructure – he couldn’t get a switch for a new plant he was building — and bureaucrats who promised fixes and then didn’t deliver.

Do you relate to any of these experiences or have your own story of obstacles to share? Vote below for the one that seems most challenging and feel free to offer advice to the CIOs in question.

I’m a PC, and I don’t necessarily like Microsoft

After the annoyingly strange Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates commercials promoting Microsoft, a new batch of adverts surfaced featuring the slogan “I’m a PC.” It goes something like this: Microsoft employees and users are meshed together in a montage of “I’m a PC and I [fill in stereotype of your choice here]” in a battle against Apple’s commercials portraying a PC negatively. Because, as they say in the ads, a PC is not a stereotype. But grouping all PC users in as Microsoft supporters is not?

Well, I’d like to go out and say I’m a PC, but I can’t give Microsoft all the credit in that decision.

By the way, why is Microsoft able to benefit from the term PC? Last time I checked, PC stood for personal computer and Wikipedia defines that as “any computer whose original sales price, size and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator.” So regardless of the operating system, aren’t we all using PCs?

Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t I just as much as PC user with my Linux operating system as you are with your Mac operating system? And, no, I have not forgotten that MS-DOS was the catalyst making the personal computer a reality. But nowadays, Windows is just one of the operating systems that make our PC world go ‘round.

Do you automatically associate being a PC user with Microsoft Windows? If so, is it because we’ve been trained to think PC = Microsoft? Maybe. Look at the constant barrage of ads we’re faced with. It happens every single day with everything. We automatically call all tissues Kleenex, gelatin of all brands is Jell-O and no one flinches when asked to “Xerox it.”

Is Microsoft playing into our ad vulnerability? Worse, are we falling for it? Let me know what you think.

Microsoft reclaims ‘I’m a PC’; ditches Gates/Seinfield

As quickly as they started, the Microsoft/Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates ads have ended. Phew.

The nonsensical ads left viewers scratching their heads and Seinfeld with quite a heavy pocket. The comedian reportedly earned $10 million for the commercials in Microsoft’s attempt to connect with its target audience.

But who is Microsoft’s target audience? It may not be the twentysomethings … but choosing 54-year-old Seinfeld as the funny man may be meant to attract the “thirty- and fortysomething business community” Marc Ippolito, president of Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing, told Computerworld.com. The Wall Street Journal reported Microsoft turned down Will Farrell and Chris Rock because it didn’t want to seem like it was catering too much to the younger market.

Well, maybe Gates doing the robot will gain audience appeal and Vista will get another shot – if the robot’s not dead yet, Vista certainly can’t be either.

In an interview with Computerworld.com, Microsoft spokesman Frank X. Shaw confirmed the plan to have “two teaser ads” (no — the weird Seinfeld/Gates ads weren’t cancelled, this was all planned). The next leg of Microsoft’s attempt at revitalizing the slogan “I’m a PC” includes celebrities (Eva Longoria and Pharell Williams among them) as the company works overtime to overcome the stigma Apple attached to being a PC.

What won’t you have to see again? Seinfeld asking Gates for a Microsoft product that makes computers “moist and chewy like cake.”

In a world without Microsoft…

Earlier this week on searchCIO-Midmarket.com I wrote about IBM’s pitch (with partners) for a “Microsoft-free desktop.”

It seems a little far-fetched. Then again, we got an email yesterday from an IT director outlining how he very much is trying this, albeit not necessarily using IBM.

All said, it got us to thinking here: What if Microsoft never existed? You know, like in It’s A Wonderful Life. How would the world be different?

A few ideas (thank you to Colin Steele at SearchITChannel.com for pitching in here):

Steve Ballmer would be a used-car salesman.

Justin Long wouldn’t be famous (thank God).

Redmond, Wash., would be best known as the bicycle capital of the Northwest.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut would be missing its best joke. We won’t link to it here (it’s pretty violent, for a cartoon), but it has to do with Windows and there’s this cool little video site called YouTube.…

Antitrust would still be most synonymous with Standard Oil.

Failures (who think they are actually geniuses) wouldn’t say things like “Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.”

We wouldn’t have Xbox. (Wait. So what?)

No lame “hot male” jokes.

Oh, who am I kidding? We’d probably all be out of a job.

Google’s Chrome: Not your average Web browser?

Microsoft’s IE is facing some serious competition. With Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Opera Software ASA’s Opera and recently Google’s Chrome, it seems Microsoft is falling back a bit. Computerworld reported Microsoft lost almost a full percentage point in the market share during the month of August. Recently launched Chrome, has already picked up one percent of the market in 24 hours.

Chrome has a privacy mode and a combination address-and-search bar. It also runs each tab as a separate process to prevent a single site to crash the browser. But what makes it special? Firefox and Safari have privacy modes (IE 8 Beta 2 also boasts a privacy setting dubbed “porn mode” by bloggers) and the address-and-search bar is nothing new… so what’s the appeal?

Chrome could turn into far more than a Web browser.

Designed to improve upon the way browsers handle JavaScript (used by Google’s spreadsheet and word processing programs), Chrome may turn into a much stronger platform – incorporating word processing, e-mail and photo editing. An all-in-one browser!

But being chock-full of all these added goodies is making Chrome look a little gluttonous. According to Craig Barth, chief technology officer at Devil Mountain Software Inc., Chrome is a pig. A memory hog, to be exact.

Researchers say Chrome uses more memory than IE 8. Pair that with an older PC and you can expect some slow performance. But can you blame a snail for being slow if he’s carrying his house on his back? Chrome is carrying quite a load (segregated-tab capabilities? JavaScript equipped?) so memory consumption is no surprise. But at this point, what’s more important for the user seeking a solid Web browser?

With so many companies using IE, will they be ready and willing to switch to Chrome? Chrome is raw and pure—built from scratch by Google (and not the descendent of an ancient Microsoft design… what was it, again? Mosaic?). But IE is well-known, understood and pretty much everyone knows how to use it. Because so few ready to retrain their staff and test their application compatibility, IE may remain on top of the business browser world.

But who knows? The shiny newbie may win out. After all, Chrome was just launched! Let’s see where they stand after a month – at least.

IE 8 brings Web-surfing privacy and peace of mind (for users, anyway)

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) will have a new privacy setting. The new setting, dubbed “porn mode” by bloggers because it effectively erases all evidence of sites you’ve visited, was officially confirmed earlier in the week by Microsofts’s program manager, Andy Zeigler.

Zeigler sums up the change as one that gives users the choice to disclose private information, as opposed to being forced to through browser settings that save cookies, browsing history and the like. He mentions a few specific cases for needing the added privacy, such as purchasing a gift for a loved one online without ruining the surprise or feeling comfortable enough at a public Internet kiosk to do your personal banking.

Zeigler states in his blog that when developing IE 8, Microsoft took a look at the concerns users had with IE 7. Privacy stood out as a main concern – “the so-called, ‘over-the-shoulder privacy,’ or the ability to control what their spouses, friends, kids and co-workers might see” as well as the “so-called ‘3^rd-party’ content on websites, some of which can gather data about how you browse the web.” People just didn’t want others seeing which sites they visited.

When enabled, Microsoft’s “InPrivate Browsing” tool will switch off cookies, browsing and search history and will automatically clear the cache at the end of the browser session. It also eliminates auto-complete and the storing of other form data.

How different is this really from Apple’s Safari browser and Mozilla Firefox’s security features? Microsoft may be just stepping up its game a bit, considering Mozilla now holds 19% market share. But there are some differences worth mentioning. When activated, the “InPrivate” icon is more obvious than similar privacy tabs and icons in Mozilla and Safari and IE 8 brings better support for W3 Web standards.

For those of us who are looking for more privacy, it sounds like a great thing. No longer tracked by cookies! But what about the companies who use these tracking devices to improve ad-targeting? Well, click-throughs may see a drop. And the specifically-tailored ads directed towards you and based on your Web-searching habits will also be diminished — possibly hurting sales. This may not sound too pertinent as of now, but it makes me curious. How will marketers be able to target Web surfers? I can’t help but wonder what they’ll be forced to come out with next. Will it be more invasive than what we’re faced with now?

And what does this mean for you and your employees? If you don’t employ web filtering so employees are free to visit sites all over the web, are you going to be more concerned over what the guy in the corner desk is really looking at when you’re assuming he’s getting his work done?

Will it have an effect on office culture? Even if employees are free to browse the Web, will their YouTube downloads or (or whatever it is they may download!) hog noticeable amounts of bandwidth and get the bandwidth police after them? One more thing to constantly be looking out for?

As if that’s the biggest worry…

Seinfeld vs. Justin Long? Please, let’s get someone with some funny.

Can we all agree that Jerry Seinfeld was never the funny one?

For all his quirks and humorous relationships, Jerry was always the straight man to his consistently hilarious compatriots. Good at standup without being great and seemingly averse to ruining his image in movies, Seinfeld got himself a load of cash and has played it safe ever since.

So why does Microsoft think Jerry will be the pitchman to take down those pesky Apple ads that portray Microsoft as old, square and malfunctioning.

Never mind for a minute that Justin Long – who plays the Mac in those commercials – is not funny or cool at all. Never mind that John Hodgman - who portrays the PC – is actually quite hip, at least by hipster standards.

Mind for a minute that Seinfeld isn’t going to fix Microsoft’s woes. Especially if he actually appears in commercials with, get this, Bill Gates, as The Wall Street Journal is reporting.

So who should be Microsoft’s pitchman? Not that he’s much younger, but I suggest long-gone MTV VJ Jesse Camp. Or maybe Ted Nugent. Or, since he already showed Justin Long up, how about John Mayer?

Really, Microsoft should hire anybody who can convincingly look in a camera and say: “Seriously folks, Justin Long is a dweeb. Buy Microsoft.”