Stories by Mark Gibbs

Opinion: Collaboration technology: Just a lot of noise?

A colleague recently discussed the problems of collaboration technologies in a column and observed that "Technology is developing faster than our skills to deal with it. We're always on and always connected. But are we always better off? Are we more productive, or simply busier dealing with more messages and more distractions? Share your thoughts with me."

Swiss army knife treats for tool lovers

We love tools, whether they are hardware or software. We suspect it is something to do with that Tim Allen guy thing. Anyway, a few tools have landed on our desks with a delightful thud and we decided we needed to share them.

They are out to get you

Yep it is true and you aren’t paranoid. At least not in the aliens-are-about-to-abduct-me-is-that-a-black-helicopter-Kennedy-was-assassinated-by-the-Mafia-or-was-it-LBJ kind of way.

What a surprise! Novell rethinks itself

WOW. The SCO Group just announced it is dropping the suit against IBM and refunding the money it took in the Linux licence blackmail scheme. And it apologised for being so annoying and said Darl McBride would be driven out of town on a rail after being tarred and feathered.

Snake oil for Web site protection

The other day I received a pitch for an "Internet Wealth and Success" seminar. This was quite a package. A limit of 130 attendees, a staff of 27 (all proclaimed to be Internet marketing gurus although I have never ever heard of any of them ... maybe I don't get out enough), and a price tag of $3,997 per person (but book early to avoid disappointment).

Opinion: Business-process insanity

A colleague who we'll call Mr. X ordered a computer from Dell. A few days later he noticed a Dell ad in PC World offering a nearly identical machine for $300 less.

Testing Web services interoperability

Testing Web services is a tricky task because of the currently limited choice of tools. In an effort to fill the gap the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I), an open industry effort set up to promote Web services interoperability across platforms, applications, and programming languages, has released a set of utilities to monitor and analyze Web service data exchanges.

Solutions to spam

There are three system architectures for handling spam: At the desktop, at the mail server, or outsourced.

Storage appliances and the latest on RAID

As Server Message Block support has been in the news recently, it's a good time to discuss storage appliances that offer this service. The advantage that these devices provide is the ability to add storage to your network painlessly and cost-effectively.

Rotten to the core

"We are in the process of rebuilding our ethics program and understand that there is still more work to do." - Michael Capellas, Chairman and CEO, MCI

Sharing with Samba

Recently, we threatened to discuss Samba, the open source freeware implementation of the Server Message Block protocol. Well, it was no idle threat. Here we go . . .

Choreographing the Web services dance

Wouldn't it be great if we had a way of managing the sequence of business processes that use Web services so that "the flow of tasks, the order in which they need to be performed, the type of data shared and how other partners are involved ... [and] coordinate the various activities that occur within a business process, in order and at the right time for completion"?

Systems for megalomaniacs

"CRM projects are notoriously complex, often over budget and frequently disappointing. . . . Research firm Gartner (Inc.) says that through 2006, more than 50 percent of all CRM implementations will be viewed as failures from a customer's point of view."

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