Last Stories of the Year (December 26, 2007)
Getting toward the end of the year, and I'm getting ready to close out my 2007 updates. Two stories to add to the mix first: Changing Risk: Enter the CRO, talks about companies' increased reliance on chief risk officers to basically tell them what they don't know. On the careers front, I round up some recent statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor for Dice.com: "IT Job Growth Seen Through 2016."
Live from England (December 6, 2007)
Once again, the end of the year looms and I have less to show for it — in terms of website updates or photo gallery additions — than I'd hoped. Cue the 2008 New Year's resolutions?
Partial defense: Recent relocations. I'm now largely based in England, though also have a home base in Pennsylvania. Will be back and forth, though at the moment I'm trying to come up to speed on British culture and to not overindulge in cream teas.
New Story on Software-as-a-Service (December 5, 2007)
Will on-demand applications, such as Google Apps, a browser-based productivity suite, kill Microsoft Office? I look into the growing use of these applications in the business world, and their increasing adoption by small and midsize organizations.
Best Practices Report: Studying 56 Intranet IAs (November 22, 2007)
Released today, the "Intranet Information Architecture (IA)" report,
based on case studies of 56 intranets' IA design, span two volumes and 1,293 pages. The report details numerous IA best practices, including how to structure your intranet, how to create a highly usable navigation system, and the process of shepherding the information architecture from design to delivery.
The report features IAs from such organizations as:
- American Electric Power (AEP)
- BT Global Services
- Capital One
- Carl Zeiss AG
- Cisco Systems, Inc.
- City of Edinburgh Council
- Halliburton
- IMS Health
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
- McDonald's Corporation
- PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)
- Purdue University College of Engineering
- United States Postal Service (USPS) Accounting
- Vodafone
Written by Amy Schade, Jakob Nielsen, and myself, the report includes 744 unique screenshots, and spans 1,193 pages — the longest report Nielsen Norman Group has published to date. (Think of it as a substantial amount of supporting evidence for all of the intranet analysis contained therein.)
Want additional information? Jakob's Novebmer 26, 2007 Alertbox summarizes the report findings. You can also purchase the full report on intranet IA.
Surviving the Workplace of Tomorrow (October 19, 2007)
Why are so many of today's corporate workspaces so poorly designed? In "Surviving the Workplace of Tomorrow," written for Dice.com, I talk to a number of workplace design, interaction, and collaboration experts to discuss the current state of office architecture and design, and the need for improvements, especially as so-called knowledge workers increasingly collaborate with others despite geography, or even corporate boundaries.
Security Tips for SMBs for bMighty (September 13, 2007)
My latest feature, "10 Ways to Mitigate Your Security Risks," runs today in bMighty, a new publication from CMP Media focused on the IT concerns of small and midsize businesses. For the story, I asked a number of security experts this question: Given the relatively limited amount of time and resources the average SMB can apply to solving its security concerns, what are the top 10 steps they should take?
Fun With French Food (September 9, 2007)
For those of you into France, French food, or both, check out "A Q&A with Clotilde of Chocolate & Zucchini," which my friend and Fodor's editor Jennifer Paull recently conducted with Clotilde Dusoulier, patroness of the "Chocolate & Zucchini" blog and author of the eponymously named cookbook. (As the name implies, she goes out of her way to locate unusual yet interesting food combinations.)
While I haven't had a chance to check out her book, which was released this past spring, I hear it contains not just an array of recipes but also the skinny on "mouthwatering recommendations for eating in Paris." In addition, her recipe for hazelnut-thyme biscuits is reportedly excellent by itself, and even more delicious when paired with champagne. (Then again, what doesn't pair well with champagne, non?)
End of Summer (August 30, 2007)
The summer is almost gone, and I have few updates to show for it. I've been working on a fair number of reports recently, and not quite as much journalism, though the balance is beginning now to shift back.
First up: A new story for Dice on the software development front, titled "10 Ways to Write Cleaner Code." Which pretty much says it all.
Next, finally a photo update: a couple of shots from a visit to my grandparents' farm in Indiana. Always a pleasant way to spend the summer.
Digital Forensics Against Data Breaches (June 19, 2007)
Attacks against servers that result in people's personal information or confidential information being compromised have become commonplace. Even so, a few organizations manage to plan ahead, defend against many breaches, and respond well when they are breached. The majority of organizations, hwoever, don't get it right. Cue the recent loss of 50 million credit numbers at TJX Companies, which didn't notice the breach for at least three years, then downplayed its significance, even as it learned how much it underestimated the magnitude or duration of the problem.
This month, the IT Compliance Institute runs my story on how companies can prepare for the inevitable data breach. Learn the tools and processes you need in place now to control data-breach damage, perform digital forensics, and gather the evidence required to recover and reduce risk.
Kudos to the Buddhists (May 25, 2007)
See the Summer 2007 issue of Tricycle Magazine for an article by Pagan Kennedy called "Man-Made Monk," which is accompanied by one of my photos of Pagan.
Tips for Controlling Procrastination (May 21, 2007)
Do you procrastinate on the job? You're not alone. Experts estimate 90% of us procrastinate on a regular basis, and roughly 20% of us do so chronically. If it's any consolation, experts say the average college students spend roughly one-third of their day procrastinating.
So what can we do about it? Learn strategies for managing procrastination in "Ten Procrastination Avoidance Techniques for Techies," a piece I wrote this month for the technology jobs board Dice.com. And for more information, see Procrastinus, a site maintained by Piers Steel, an industrial psychologist and University of Calgary professor who studies causes of procrastination, and who spoke with me for the article.
Security, Business Threats, and Psychology (April 10, 2007)
Working the corporate psychology angle: my latest piece for IT Compliance Institute examines our ability to respond rationally to business threats. Namely, how do human proclivities influence our perceptions of, and therefore reactions to, information security and business risks, and what can we do to mitigate our unrational tendencies?
While researching the piece, security guru Bruce Schneier's in-progress essay "Psychology and Security" (also quoted in the story) was invaluable. I don't often get to work (always fun) psychology angles into my writing, but for a story in a similar albeit somewhat dated vein, see this online reprint of "The Procrastination Principle," my Software Magazine 1998 feature which examined what our innate psychological tendencies meant for companies' approach to solving their year 2000 code-level date problems.
New Pagan Kennedy Non-Fiction Book De
buts (March 13, 2007)
Five years in the making, Pagan Kennedy's new book, The First Man-Made Man: The Story of Two Sex Changes, One Love Affair, and a Twentieth-Century Medical Revolution, is now out. I shot Pagan's photograph for the dust jacket.
The book tells the true story of the first female-to-male sex change.
To quote from the blurb:
In 1950, Michael Dillon, a scion of British aristocracy, guarded an astonishing secret about himself. Born Laura Dillon, he had endured the world’s first female-to-male sex change in late 1930s and 1940s. Now bearded and broad-shouldered, with a pipe tucked into his pocket, he could saunter into any gentleman's club without drawing a second glance. But Dillon lived in terror of discovery — if word got out, his story would be trumpeted by tabloid newspapers all over the world.
For more photographs of Pagan, see my photo gallery, which includes some recent super-saturated color stills from a local cafe.
New Susan Eaton Non-Fiction Work Debuts (February 10, 2007)
Susan Eaton's The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial debuted last month — the culmination of more than four years of reporting and writing. I shot Susan's photograph for the book jacket. (Looking for more images of Susan? See my photo gallery.)
In The Childeren in Room E4, Susan explores the state of our public schools — 40 years after forced desegregation — by primarily focusing on one classroom. To quote the blurb:
With our nation's urban schools growing more segregated every year, Susan Eaton set out to see whether separate can ever really be equal. An award-winning journalist, Eaton spent four years at Simpson-Waverly Elementary School, an all-minority school in Hartford, Conn. Located in the poorest city in the wealthiest state in the nation, it is a glaring example of the great racial and economic divide found in almost every major urban center across the country.
Check out this Algonquin Books author's spotlight for more information.
Profiling Mutant Malware (January 30, 2007)
The IT Compliance Institute today runs my story on the rise of mutant malware — code that arrives via email or over the Web which can defeat the latest antivirus and anti-malware detection and eradication measures. Find out who’s building the better mutant, what’s being done to stop more "evolved" malware, and how to protect yourself.
The Year's Ten Best Intranets (January 15, 2007)
Released today, the "Ten Best Intranets of 2007" report from Nielsen Norman Group reviews the designs and usability of the world's ten best intranets of the year.
What are the leading intranet trends of 2007? To quote report co-author Jakob Nielsen:
This year's winners emphasized an editorial approach to news on the homepage. They also took a pragmatic approach to many hyped "Web 2.0" techniques. While page design is getting more standardized, there's no agreement on CMS or technology platforms for good intranet design.
Here are the ten best-designed intranets for 2007:
- American Electric Power (AEP), United States
- Comcast, United States
- DaimlerChrysler AG, Germany
- The Dow Chemical Company, United States
- Infosys Technologies Limited, India
- JPMorgan Chase & Co., United States
- Microsoft Corporation, United States
- National Geographic Society, United States
- The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), United Kingdom
- Volvo Group, Sweden
The report, which I co-authored with Kara Pernice Coyne and Jakob Nielsen, clocks in at 373 pages, and includes 215 screenshots. Jakob's current Alertbox rounds up more report findings. You can also purchase a copy of the report.