As a small-business person, you might bemoan the fact you don't have 24/7 IT support like your larger-scale competitors. Don't panic. You can solve many of the most common computer problems yourself. Here are some snafus you can tackle on your own, thanks to the advice of the support staff at several major hardware and software vendors:
Rebecca Paddock needed a way to prepare for her move from a test engineer job to a systems engineer position. So, inspired by the 100-day plans US presidents historically use when they first take office, she developed a list of tasks to tackle.
Chief Technology Officer Arvind Thapar wants to bring new green technology to his company, but his proposed initiative -- installing wind turbines to generate power -- is decidedly outside the usual realm of IT.
Managers'reality check: Your top workers can almost always get another job, even in a shaky economy.
The statistics were telling: 15 per cent to 20 per cent of neurosurgery patients developed infections in the drains that neurosurgeons implanted to draw away fluids, a complication that not only threatened lives, but also led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment costs annually.
HP saw potential in used water bottles. Hewlett-Packard found a way to turn those old bottles, along with other types of recyclable consumer plastics, into ink-jet printer cartridges.
Warning: Your keyboard could be a danger to you and the environment.
Given the murky economic outlook, budgetary efficiency is an increasingly important part of every IT leader's job. In fact, according to "The State of Enterprise IT Budgets: 2008," a March report from Gartner, 75 per cent of enterprises say improving the efficiency of IT is a critical or high priority.
As an IT professional, you know the basic rules of office politics, the simple do's and don'ts that govern life at work. Adhering to these standards -- the ones that tell you to be proactive and a team player -- will help you keep your job. If you really want to advance, though, you need to know which types of information your boss relies on you to provide.
What do Xerox printers, Fenway Park, green creatures and an executive zipping around with a personal jetpack have in common? Are you stumped? You might not be if you had an avatar.
In the information biz, more isn't necessarily better. Though full disclosure and transparency are buzzwords today, that doesn't mean your boss wants to hear about everything going on in the office. In fact, there are some things your CIO definitely doesn't want to hear, and if your career is going to thrive, you'd better know what they are.
Frank Brady expects to celebrate a significant milestone in June: His Medical Missions for Children charity will treat its 30,000th child that month.
CIO Ron Kifer wants to ensure that the outsourcing providers he hires are aligned with his own company's objectives. But Kifer uses more than the usual questions that examine whether the work can be delivered on time and on budget. He looks at social and ethical factors, too.
The sales department's performance is measured on revenue, not on data protection. So it's no surprise that salespeople focus on closing deals, not security holes. As a result, they sometimes sacrifice security for convenience. They log onto Wi-Fi hot spots in airports to work on presentations despite the risk of being hacked. They carry reams of information, some of it propriety, on their smart phones. They transfer deal details on USB drives. Although companies have done much to address the challenges of this frequently mobile population, there's still more work to do.
Human resources departments typically have some of the biggest collections of sensitive data in any organization. But even if companies have corporatewide security measures in place, HR staffers are particularly vulnerable to data leaks because of their departments' vast holdings. The nature of the HR job, which requires nearly constant collecting and sharing of data, presents further challenges.