Project Management - Get's Things Done!

Bunker Roy: Learning at the Barefoot College

2012-01-23T19:49:00.000+01:00

Sanjit “Bunker” Roy is the founder of Barefoot College, which helps rural communities becomes self-sufficient. Full bio and more links

In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men -- many of them illiterate -- to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It's called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.

ALTER-EU: The Alliance for Transparency in Lobbying

2012-01-23T17:42:00.000+01:00

Clean up Brussels' Lobby Scene with ALTER-EU from ALTER-EU on Vimeo.

Short video clip explaining ways in which the Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (ALTER-EU) wants to clean up Brussels' lobby scene.

Good Communication Quotes

2012-01-22T16:16:00.002+01:00

1. "The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said." - Peter Drucker
2. "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." - George Bernard Shaw
3."Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people." - William Butler Yeats
4. "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak." - Epictetus

5. "Speak when you are angry -- and you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." - Laurence Peters
6. "In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do." - Stephen Covey
7. "The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them." - Stephen King
8. "Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language." - Walt Disney
9. "Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh
10. "The two words information and communication are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through." - Sydney Harris

11. "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing." - Rollo May
12. "Humor is the affectionate communication of insight." - Leo Rosten
13. "Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break." - Earl Wilson
14. "Communication is everyone's panacea for everything." - Tom Peters
15. "Two monologues do not make a dialogue." - Jeff Daly
16. "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something." - Plato
17. "Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot." - D.H. Lawrence
18. "Any problem, big or small, within a family, always seems to start with bad communication. Someone isn't listening." - Emma Thompson
19. "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway
20. "You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." - Scott Peck
21. "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." - Mark Twain
22. "That which we are capable of feeling, we are capable of saying." - Cervantes
23. "I have an answering machine in my car. It says, 'I'm home right now. But leave a message and I'll call you when I'm out.'" - Steven Wright
24. "Give me the gift of a listening heart." - King Solomon

10 Books Every Leader Should Read

2012-01-22T12:02:00.000+01:00

1. The Progress Principle by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. A masterpiece of evidence-based management. A strong argument for "the devil's in the details."

2. Influence by Robert Cialdini. A classic book about how to persuade people to do things, how to defend against persuasion attempts, and the underlying evidence.

3.Made to Stick Chip and Dan Heath. A modern masterpiece, an immediate classic. How to design ideas that people will remember and act on.

4. Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, this book is surprisingly readable. A book about how humans really think, and although it isn't designed to do this, Kahneman also shows how much of the stuff you read in the business press is rubbish.

5. Collaboration by Morten Hansen. He has another bestseller jointly penned with Jim Collins called Great By Choice. The best book ever written about what it takes to build an organisation where people share information, cooperate, and help each other succeed.

6. Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie. It is the best creativity book ever written, possibly the best business book ever written. Gordon's voice and love of creativity and self-expression, and how to make it happen despite the obstacles that unwittingly heartless organizations put in the way, make this book an essential read.

7. The Pixar Touch by David Price. You can read how Ed Catmull, along with other amazing characters, after amazing setbacks, weird moments, and one strange twist after another, realized Ed's dream after working on it for decades. Jobs was rarely rude or obnoxious in his dealings with people at Pixar because he knew they knew more than him, and even he was infected by Pixar's norm of civility.

8. Men and Women of the Corporation Rosabeth Moss Kanter. The classic book about the gender dynamics in organisations. This is the book that brought us the phrase "Homosocial Reproduction," the tendency of groups to bring in people who look and act just like them. This book is beneficial because it gets beyond gender to show how corporations really work, albeit in a not very flattering but instructive light.

9. Leading Teams by J. Richard Hackman. When it comes to the topic of groups or teams, there is Hackman and there is everyone else. If you want a light feel good romp that isn't very evidence-based, read The Wisdom of Teams. If you want to know how teams really work and what it really takes to build, sustain, and lead them from a man who has been immersed in the problem as a researcher, coach, consultant, and designer for over 40 years, this is the book for you.

10. Who Says that Elephants Can't Dance? By Louis Gerstner. Organisational change is difficult, especially in a huge and old established company. This book shows it isn't impossible and how one leadership team did it in one of the most iconic companies. People believe Apple is impressive but corporations come, blossom and then go. Let's see if Apple is still around in 25 years.

Hans Rosling and the Magic Washing Machine

2012-01-20T20:59:00.000+01:00

Hans Rosling states that the washing machine was indeed the greatest invention of the Industrial Revolution, enabling everything from economic development through electrical efficiency to intellectual growth by reallocating free time for reading.

An interesting parallel emerges when we examine Rosling’s talk in alongside Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: The washing machine is the antithesis of television, freeing up the same kind of “cognitive surplus” — excess human creative and intellectual energy — that, according to Shirky’s central argument, TV absorbed, a parallel that bespeaks the universal duality of innovation and the incredible potential of technology as a force of social change the polarity of which we get to choose.

Cufflinks That Double as a Wi-Fi Hotspot

2012-01-20T16:21:00.001+01:00

Yes, we all remember the endless parade of cufflinks that doubled as USB storage drives, if you missed it, it happened maybe four or five years ago.

But this is Y2K12, and there’s a new breed of high-tech cufflinks in town.

While one cufflink in the set of Polished Silver Oval Wifi and 2GB USB Cufflinks that Brookstone is selling indeed doubles as a USB storage drive

The other cufflink is an honest-to-goodness USB Wi-Fi hotspot. Why is this important?

Let’s say you’re at a wedding and the wireless router kicks the bucket. Just hook a laptop directly into the cable modem and then stick the Wi-Fi cufflink into one of the laptop’s USB ports.

In no time at all, you’ve got yourself a new wireless hotspot that all the guests can use to surf the web on their Wi-Fi-enabled devices.

This sounds like a boring wedding, but you just made it exponentially more interesting by being the guest with the Wi-Fi cufflinks, so there’s that.

The Wi-Fi cufflink requires software to be installed on the host computer, which you can download first or store on the other cufflink that doubles as a USB storage drive.

The cufflinks cost $250, but if you regularly purchase cufflinks, you probably have that kind of money in your cufflink budget.

Language and Communications: Are Words the best Solution?

2012-01-19T12:06:00.001+01:00

Why did language evolve? While the answer might seem obvious, as a way for individuals to exchange information, linguists and other students of communication have debated this question for years.

Many prominent linguists, including MIT’s Noam Chomsky, have argued that language is, in fact, poorly designed for communication. Such a use, they say, is merely a byproduct of a system that probably evolved for other reasons, perhaps for structuring our own private thoughts.

To provide evidence, these linguists point to the existence of ambiguity: In a system optimized for conveying information between a speaker and a listener, they argue, each word would have just one meaning, eliminating any chance of confusion or misunderstanding.

Now, a group of MIT cognitive scientists has turned this idea on its head. In a new theory, they claim that ambiguity actually makes language more efficient, by allowing for the reuse of short, efficient sounds that listeners can easily disambiguate with the help of context.

“Various people have said that ambiguity is a problem for communication,” says Ted Gibson, an MIT professor of cognitive science and senior author of a paper describing the research to appear in the journal Cognition. “But once we understand that context disambiguates, then ambiguity is not a problem, it’s something you can take advantage of, because you can reuse easy [words] in different contexts over and over again.”

Lead author of the paper is Steven Piantadosi PhD ’11; Harry Tily, a postdoc in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, is another co-author.

What do you ‘mean’?
For a somewhat ironic example of ambiguity, consider the word “mean.” It can mean, of course, to indicate or signify, but it can also refer to an intention or purpose (“I meant to go to the store”); something offensive or nasty; or the mathematical average of a set of numbers.

Adding an ‘s’ introduces even more potential definitions: an instrument or method (“a means to an end”), or financial resources (“to live within one’s means”).

But virtually no speaker of English gets confused when he or she hears the word “mean.” That’s because the different senses of the word occur in such different contexts as to allow listeners to infer its meaning nearly automatically.

Given the disambiguating power of context, the researchers hypothesized that languages might harness ambiguity to reuse words, most likely, the easiest words for language processing systems.

Building on observation and previous studies, they posited that words with fewer syllables, high frequency and the simplest pronunciations should have the most meanings.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia: Fear of Friday, the 13th, and 10 other unpronouncable phobias

2012-01-15T14:54:00.001+01:00

According to psychologists, people with paraskevidekatriaphobia have a "blind, unreasoning fear of Friday the 13th"

"Paraskevidekatriaphobia -- when you learn to pronounce it, you're cured!"

Here are 10 other phobias that you probably cannot pronounce:

1. Friggatriskaidekaphobia: also the fear of Friday, the 13th. It derives from the words "Frigga," which is the name of the Norse goddess for whom "Friday" is named and "triskaidekaphobia," which means fear of the number 13.
2. Kakorraphiaphobia: fear of failure.
3. Arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
4. Giraffeophobia: fear of sticking your neck out.
5. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia: fear of "666."
7. Psellismophobia: fear of stuttering.
8. Aichmophobia: a morbid fear of sharp objects.
9. Spheksophobia: fear of wasps.
10. Sesquipedaliophobia: fear of long words.

Typophile Film: Brent Jackson

2012-01-14T20:11:00.001+01:00

Typophile Film Festival 5 Opening Titles from Brent Barson on Vimeo.

Even though it’s been around for a few years, if you haven’t seen this wonderful video created for the 5th Typophile Film Festival by BYU design students, it really is an impressive piece of work, especially seeing as no CG effects were used in its production. Enjoy!

Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking

2012-01-13T19:54:00.001+01:00

The first book to reveal and dissect the technical aspect of many social engineering manoeuvres.

From elicitation, pretexting, influence and manipulation all aspects of social engineering are picked apart, discussed and explained by using real world examples, personal experience and the science behind them to unraveled the mystery in social engineering.

Kevin Mitnick: One of the most famous social engineers in the world. popularised the term “social engineering.”

He explained that it is much easier to trick someone into revealing a password for a system than to exert the effort of hacking into the system.

Mitnick claims that this social engineering tactic was the single-most effective method in his arsenal.

This indispensable book examines a variety of maneuvers that are aimed at deceiving unsuspecting victims, while it also addresses ways to prevent social engineering threats.

Examines social engineering, the science of influencing a target to perform a desired task or divulge information
Arms you with invaluable information about the many methods of trickery that hackers use in order to gather information with the intent of executing identity theft, fraud, or gaining computer system access
Reveals vital steps for preventing social engineering threats

Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking does its part to prepare you against nefarious hackers—now you can do your part by putting to good use the critical information within its pages.

Tour the Dark World of Social Engineering

Learn the psychological principles employed by social engineers and how they’re used
Discover persuasion secrets that social engineers know well
See how the crafty crook takes advantage of cameras, GPS devices, and caller ID
Find out what information is, unbelievably, available online
Study real-world social engineering exploits step by step

“Most malware and client-side attacks have a social engineering component to deceive the user into letting the bad guys in. You can patch technical vulnerabilities as they evolve, but there is no patch for stupidity, or rather gullibility. Chris will show you how it’s done by revealing the social engineering vectors used by today’s intruders. His book will help you gain better insight on how to recognize these types of attacks.”
—Kevin Mitnick, Author, Speaker, and Consultant

“Chris Hadnagy has penned the ultimate text on social engineering. Meticulously researched and teeming with practical applications, this brilliant book offers solutions to very real problems and ever-present dangers to your business — and even to yourself. Truly groundbreaking.”
—Kevin Hogan, author of The Science of Influence: How to Get Anyone to Say “Yes” in 8 Minutes or Less

Read More at Elite Professionals website

Top German cop uses spyware on daughter, gets hacked in retaliation

2012-01-11T12:54:00.000+01:00

Trojans—they're not just for hackers anymore. German police, for instance, love them; a scandal erupted in Parliament last year after federal investigators were found to be using custom spyware that could potentially record far more information than allowed by law. The story made headlines, but it lacked a certain sense of the bizarre.

Fortunately for connoisseurs of the weird, Der Spiegel revealed a stranger story in its magazine yesterday. According to the report, a top German security official installed a trojan on his own daughter's computer to monitor her Internet usage. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing—well, at least until one of the daughter's friends found the installed spyware. The friend then went after the dad's personal computer as a payback and managed to get in, where he found a cache of security-related e-mails from work. The e-mails, in turn, provided the information necessary for hackers to infiltrate Germany's federal police.

That was bad, but it got worse. The hackers got into the servers for the "Patras" program, which logs location data on suspected criminals through cell phone and car GPS systems. Concerned about security breaches, the government eventually had to take the entire set of Patras servers offline.

One moral of the tale: parents, think hard before taking technical measures against your own kids. There's a better than average chance that they—or their friends—know more than you do.

The Joy of Books - YouTube

2012-01-10T22:32:00.001+01:00

Last year, “crazedadman” and his wife reorganized a small bookshelf and recorded the project in an endearing stop motion film.

This year, they took things to the next level, spending “sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto.” The rest speaks for itself.

The Shrinking Cyberspace Environment

2012-01-10T12:13:00.001+01:00

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As William Gibson, the author who coined the word in his science fiction, put it, cyberspace was the cool “consensual illusion” experienced by billions of users of the world’s online networks, an unthinkably complex “graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system.”

His fellow author Bruce Sterling said, cyberspace was that mental plane where we go during a phone conversation. It was that strangely perilous and exciting realm where l33t hackers might be kings and revolutionaries, where new mega-fortunes would be won.

It seemed that way a decade and more ago, as multitudes started going online for the first time.

Today, both the word and the ideals it represented have fallen on hard times, for better or worse. Cyberspace, which once sounded like the digital Promised Land, has become the fabled lost continent of Netlantis.

The story of what happened to cyberspace may say something about how metaphors and jargon help us to grasp the potential of new technologies — and how they become obsolete.

Shrinking cyberspace

These thoughts came to mind not long ago when I chanced across the word while reading and realized how long it had been since I’d last heard it.

The word may have always seemed a little nerdy and embarrassing, but for a while during the late 1990s, it seemed almost inescapable in tech news stories and popular culture.

Given how ubiquitous computing and online communications have become, could cyberspace really have fallen so far out of favour?

To check whether my sense of the term’s disuse was accurate, I did some unscientific surveys of the word’s occurrences over the past couple of decades, starting with Lexis-Nexis searches through back issues of various newspapers.

(I had hoped to do broader, more collective searches across groups and categories of publications but my Lexis-Nexis service wouldn’t tabulate more than 3,000 hits at a time, which truncated the results.)

The pattern was obvious and fairly consistent. After scarcely appearing at all, “cyberspace” started to explode in late 1993 and 1994, coinciding with the introduction of the Mosaic web browser — the software that made the Web accessible and the Internet much more useful for most of the public.

The word faded, though, with the dot-com era (it may have started to go even earlier: coverage of the dot-com stock bubble may have slightly juiced up its numbers around 2000). It has weakly persisted or been in slight decline ever since.

A similar search for the use of “cyberspace” in books using Google’s Ngram Viewer yielded a similar pattern.

Hypothesising that writers might have started using “Internet” or “the Web” as replacements for “cyberspace,” I compared their usage as well.

The results don’t prove anything but they’re certainly suggestive: those other online terms grew robustly long after cyberspace dropped off.

Cyberspace’s bad fortunes at first seem perplexing. A billion more people are online today than at the word’s peak.

Second Life, massively multiplayer online role-playing games, low-cost virtual reality gear, and consumer-level motion-capture tech like Microsoft’s Kinect have made digital spaces into real places for tens of millions of people.

Why would “cyberspace” lose traction when the concept has more relevance than ever?

Verbal mission creep

Cyberspace started out as narrowly signifying only the representation of users’ experience while interacting with computer systems and data structures.

It didn’t even necessarily connote something as sophisticated as immersive virtual reality; early proponents of the term were happy to accept type interfaces as manifestations of cyberspace.

But the slippery notion that it also represented a mind set — the place where the mind wandered while online — helped to guarantee the expansion of that definition.

Over the objections of purists and with the help of bemused and dazzled journalists, cyberspace gradually became loosely synonymous with both the Web and the Internet for many people.

And with that expanded definition came pronouncements that made the rise of cyberspace more mythic and millennial.

For some, it stopped being just a metaphorical construct: it became a digitized domain of pure thought and potentially infinite freedom.

John Perry Barlow, founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, spoke for all of them in his “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” which begins:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. … You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

The normal constraints and rules didn’t need to apply.

Read more of this article here: SmartPlanet

Unemployed? How Long Does It Really Take to Find another Job?

2012-01-09T18:09:00.001+01:00

One of the most nagging questions in job seekers' minds is how long it will take to find a new job. A survey of 600 job seekers conducted at the end of last month gives an indication of the length of time it's taking job seekers to find jobs in today's market.

Of the 600 job seekers polled, 77 percent were unemployed. The remaining 23% had jobs. Of the more than three-quarters who were unemployed, nearly half had been out of work for more than a year:

49 percent had been out of work for more than a year
8 percent had been out of work 10 to 12 months
5 percent had been out of work for seven to nine months
16 percent had been out of work for four to six months
20 percent had been out of work for one to three months

Of the nearly 50 percent of job seekers who've been unemployed for more than a year, 60 percent of those long-term job seekers have been out of work for two years and counting.

In a press release announcing the survey results, it was noted that some of the job seekers who've been out of work two-plus years are stay-home-moms and retirees hoping to return to the workforce.

When asked, both employed and unemployed job seekers how long they thought it would take to land a new job,

28 percent are confident they can find something new within 3 months
37 percent expect the job search to take four to six months
14 percent think it will take seven to nine months
12 percent anticipate the job search will take 10 to 12 months
10 percent believe they'll be looking for a new job for more than a year.

Overall, the majority of callers – 65 percent – felt they would find a job in six months or less. Is that a realistic assessment? In a healthy economy, a successful job search might take two to three months. In a tight job market, such as now, it is not unusual to see even high-quality candidates take four to six months.

Job seekers have reason to be more optimistic about the labour market and their chances of finding a new job this year. He notes that private sector layoffs are down and that hiring is on the rise.

Indeed, according to the unemployment report the U.S. Labour Department released last Friday, employment increased by 200,000 in December, and the number of unemployed Americans, along with the unemployment rate, continued to tick downward. The unemployment rate is now at 8.5 percent and 13.1 million people are counted as unemployed, down from 9.4 percent and 14.5 million a year ago.

Let's look at the numbers! Organisations need to hire nearly four million people every month just to replace the 2 million people who quit their jobs each month, plus the 250,000 to 350,000 workers who retire, transfer to new locations, or otherwise can't work, and the "hundreds of thousands" of others who get fired for cause.

Bungee Jump Failure followed quickly by First Responder Failure!

2012-01-08T20:21:00.001+01:00

A 22-year-old Australian backpacker says it is a "miracle" she is alive after her cord snapped during a bungee jump over the Zambesi River on the border of Zimbabwe and Zambia.

She survived the fall into the river but the rope got snagged on submersed rocks. Having freed herself from that situation she managed to swim to shore.

First Responders on the shore made a disasterous mistake of turning her onto her back, whereby the water in her lungs could not be exhaled easily and started to choke and effectively 'drown' her on land!

Always put casualties in the recovery position to maximise their chance of recovery.

Happily, this young lady survived but she was fighting against the odds to do so.

Sleep Infographic: What If You Don't Sleep Enough?

2012-01-08T19:49:00.003+01:00

To see the full Infographic chart click on the sample image.

How many times have you told yourself "... it's just sleep." but what happens to your health when you're not sleeping enough?

This infographic designed by FFunction for Zeo, a company that makes an electronic "sleep coach," is less of a real data visualization than a set of illustrated facts but those facts are pretty impressive.

For example, we seem pretty tired all the time and only 7% of people get the necessary eight hours of sleep at night but the effects of this might be more than inconvenient. They may be disasterous.

Getting less sleep is now associated with a 200% rise in cancer, a 100% rise in heart disease, and a 20% rise in the likelihood you'll be dead in 20 years.

UnfortunatelY, not only will you be less healthy, you'll also be fatter. People who sleep an hour more each day lose 14.3 pounds per year and 1 in 3 women find themselves too sleepy for sex!

Studies have shown that sleeping too little effectively puts the body on "high alert," creating increased stress hormones and chemicals associated with inflammation.

Social Media: Lessons from Dr Seus

2012-01-08T19:22:00.002+01:00

Dr. Seuss' rhyming wisdom provides social media lessons for all of us. Here are a few:

1. "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you." Be yourself on social media platforms and reveal your true essence. Don't try to be someone else. To this end, don't pass someone else's content off as yours.

Social media tip: Show who you are with your avatar and profiles. Include information that proves you're human.

2. "So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads." Great advice for social media where space is limited and participants are constantly bombarded with information. Keep your messages short and on target

Social media tip: Integrate your branding into your social media interactions through your language, voice and graphics. Dr. Seuss' tweets would sound like Dr. Seuss without needing identification.

3. "Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple." Given broad based use of social media, it's easy to forget your social media peers may not be native speakers of your language or may have a different understanding of the same event.

Social media tip: Be a social media resource and help others whenever and wherever possible. Support those around you.

4. "For a host, above all, must be kind to his guests." No place is this truer than on social media platforms where you should be polite and free of all scorn. Remember—you don't know someone's background, so err on the polite side.

Social media tip: Be generous in your advice and participation on social media networks and pay-it-forward.

5. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not." Dr. Seuss packed a lot of social media sense into a short phrase. In 2011, social media showed how people around the world could support others half a world away during the Egyptian revolution and the Japanese tsunami.

On social media platforms, everyone has responsibility to make their forums safe. There shouldn't be cyber bullying or other issues where real people are hurt by what's said without thinking.

Social media tip: Social media has social responsibility! Take a stand on social media where appropriate to make them safer for people in need or danger.

6. "Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." Dr. Seuss' words ring true on social media where it's important to be transparent. While this involves telling the truth, it doesn't mean divulging confidential information that would harm an individual or a business.

Social media tip: Help your employees by developing a set of social media guidelines so they know what's acceptable to say on social media networks when they represent your firm as well as when they're engaging as individuals. Be aware that privacy on many social media entities can be elusive.

7. "Oh, the things you can find if you don't stay behind!" Learn to be a social media extrovert and engage with others across a wide variety of interests.

Social media tip: Build a social media tribe to engage with. Pay-it-forward on social media platforms like question and answer sites and participate in group discussions such as Twitter chats.

What's your favorite Dr. Seuss quote and how does it relate to social media?

People who Became a Noun - Video

2012-01-07T18:06:00.000+01:00

This reminded me of a lovely illustrated children’s book called If You Were a Noun.

The TOOB! The New Gamers Immersive Domed Console - Video

2012-01-07T14:10:00.002+01:00

WHAT IS THE PLAN?
TOOB plans to manufacture and sell the world’s first affordable dome displays. TOOB has spent the last 2 years developing its 2nd generation product TOOB Earth.

WHAT IS TOOB Earth?
TOOB Earth is a 1.2 Metre (4ft) diameter half dome which when used with a standard projector fitted with a standard lens can project an image onto the inside curved surface giving the viewer the sense of being fully immersed in the content. Think IMAX/ OMNI MAX but in the home.

One of the key differentiator's is that the projector and screen are all contained within the same footprint meaning you no longer need to compromise on space.

TOOB Earth is the first in a range of dome products planned and will be the foundation for the world’s first consumer focused Gaming/ Simulation/ Film curved screen company.

Its uniquely patented design allows you to place your dome on any hard surface or on our GRAVITY-E adjustable stand.

Using the GRAVITY-E stand adds a further layer of flexibility as it then allows you to either use TOOBs brand new TSR/ TFX & M-spec simulation rigs

or use many existing racing or flight rigs which can be comfortably slide underneath. Or simply use the GRAVITY-E as a furniture piece in your room for watching stereo 3D movies.

CORPORATE
TOOB is well suited for the corporate environment and this is a great opportunity to get a TOOB and be one of the first to showcase TOOB Dome technology with your business.

TOOB's 007 reward shows how you can take a TOOB product and customise it with a unique brand or design.

In April 2011 TOOB attended the Gadget Show Live in Birmingham (UK) visted by over 40,000 tech hungry guests.

TOOB was so popular it increased footfall on our partners stand by thousands. The increased footfall generated more sales.

TOOB gave 1400 demos during the event. That guarenteed 1400 more potential customers + the 1000s of people that stoped to look at the technology.

(T.O.O.B. LTD acknowledges all rights, copyrights and trademarks of 3rd parties, the above image is an artists illustration only)

Unemployment: New Jobs are Taken by College Graduates

2012-01-06T19:55:00.000+01:00

To steal and expand upon a point Betsey Stevenson made on Twitter earlier, it's striking the extent to which employment growth over the past month and the past year was concentrated among college graduates.

In part that's just what you expect from a weak labor market. When workers arescarce, you hire underqualified people and try to train them.

When workers are plentiful, you hire the most qualified people around and count yourself lucky but polarization in the American job market is nothing new and we see a continuation of a trend that was visible across the growth of the aughts.

A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation - Slideshare

2012-01-06T16:55:00.001+01:00

Heineken U-code - YouTube

2012-01-06T16:24:00.001+01:00

QR codes have been getting a good bit of flak recently as a fad that are mostly used by brands and marketers but ignored by consumers. There have been some pretty silly uses but this latest campaign from Heineken is actually a very smart and social way for them to be used at a music festival.

The idea is that everybody attending can have their own QR code printed and stuck to them which when scanned gives information about them and what they like doing. A bit like their social media profile but in the real world.

As they say in the video music festivals are all about meeting new people and the QR codes were a way for shy people to do this without others thinking that they were freaks although it does involve holdingout your phone and physically scanning somebody.

While it is a smart idea in terms of breaking the ice it works even better for Heineken as a brand as it turns festival goers in to walking billboards for the company.

Apple iPhones Outsell Android Smartphones

2011-12-31T15:14:00.001+01:00

The Apple Inc. iPhone reportedly outsold Android devices at AT&T corporate retail stores by a whopping 7.8-to-1 ratio between Dec. 1 and Dec. 27.

According to The Mac Observer, those AT&T stores sold about 981,000 iPhones during the period, accounting for a heavy 66 percent of the turnover.

By comparison, the same stores sold about 126,000 Android devices over the period, accounting for a light 8.5 percent of the turnover.

The report noted that even basic flip and slider phones did better than the Android devices, as the same stores sold about 128,000 of those dinosaurs.

Research In Motion Ltd. -- makers of the BlackBerry line of smartphones -- finished third in sales, as AT&T moved only about 74,000 of them. Microsoft Windows Phone 7 phones reportedly did even worse.

Dalai Lama Discusses Women's role in Global Peace - Video

2011-12-29T10:25:00.000+01:00

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is asked to sum up his feelings, at the end of the morning session at the Peace Summit in Vancouver, BC, Canada. The moderator is Sir Ken Robinson.

The influencing machine: Brooke Gladstone - Video

2011-12-29T10:16:00.001+01:00

An animated short from the book "The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media" written by Brooke Gladstone and illustrated by Josh Neufeld. For more information, go to: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/the-influencing-machine/

Also read more on Books and Graphic novels here Brain Pickings

Facebook: Subscribe Button for Web sites

2011-12-27T11:48:00.000+01:00

Facebook has added a 'Subscribe' button for third party websites.

The Subscribe button was already available to pages since September and now this feature is already available for user profiles and websites. In a blog post written by Facebook developer Stoyan Stefanov, the Subscribe button is a "social plugin any site can add to give visitors the option to subscribe to contributors in one click."

Stevanov also described how this feature works stating that "the Subscribe button for websites works just like the button on Facebook; once clicked the user will begin seeing the public posts of the person they have subscribed to in his or her News Feed. The subscribe action is also shared -- allowing others to subscribe directly via the News Feed stories, and further increasing viral distribution."

Facebook Has Subscribe Button for Web sites - International Business Times

Google+ Photos to Have 'Find My Face' Recognition

2011-12-27T11:46:00.001+01:00

Google announced that their social networking site, Google+, would incorporate a new feature that would make facial recognition technology available for pictures that will be uploaded in Google+.

This new feature is dubbed as "Find My Face" and it is described as a feature wherein "Google+ can prompt people you know to tag your face when it appears in photos."

Users can still have control over which tags that they would accept or reject as well as opting to turn off this feature in their Google+ settings. Matt Steiner, an Engineering Lead for Google wrote in his blog post regarding this new additional feature for Google+.

Steiner also added that this feature would be "rolling out in a few days" and feedback regarding this feature would be appreciated.

Read More here: Google+ Photos

Social Media and Data Analytics: Where the Demand is in 2012

2011-12-27T11:44:00.000+01:00

Smartphones and tablet computers may continue to dominate the tech world next year but the big money may be harvested from one lesser known segment of the industry - data analytics.

Analytics for one, according to Agence France Presse (AFP), gives companies clear picture on how to utilise their advertising funds, which run to billions of dollars as the current year.

"Analytics is really the core of what will be happening in everything from medical research to advertising," freelance tech analyst Rob Enderle was reported by AFP as saying on a report Friday last week.

The services' energy is very much focused on understanding emerging trends and patterns that influence customers' behaviours in determining their choice of products, Enderle said.

"Big analytics toward the end of the year became the big term and into next year it will be the big term," Enderle told AFP.

Enderle believes that data analytics will play crucial roles in various fields where the power of computer-aided analysis would be most welcome and useful - from advertising, medical breakthroughs and political exercises.

Daniel Goldstein: The battle between your present and future self - Video

2011-12-22T21:54:00.000+01:00

Every day, we make decisions that have good or bad consequences for our future selves. (Can I skip flossing just this one time?) Daniel Goldstein makes tools that help us imagine ourselves over time, so that we make smart choices for Future Us.

Jerusalem and Google Street View - No Hiding Place

2011-12-21T13:17:00.000+01:00

A Google Street View tricycle captures scenes of Jerusalem's Old City

Picture: CHINE NOUVELLE/SIPA / Rex Features

Donkervoort GTO - Dutch supercar

2011-12-21T10:03:00.001+01:00

The new Donkervoort GTO uses the 2.5-litre five-cylinder turbo from the Audi TT RS and, despite being the firm's largest-ever car, still weighs just 700kg - half the weight of a VW Golf.

The Caterham-style car a hefty 150mm wider and 350mm longer, says the firm, to accommodate Audi's longitudinally-mounted five-cylinder engine.

This motor has also been lightened by 30kg, again to aid weight distribution and handling.

Lewis Mumford on the city - YouTube

2011-12-21T09:05:00.000+01:00

Before the end of 1961 the New York publishing company Harcourt, Brace and Co. had the first edition of Lewis Mumford's highly successful book The City In History ready for publication. Two years later, in 1963, the National Film Board of Canada funded the production of six documentaries, each lasting 27 minutes, for a series entitled Mumford On The City. The closing titles confirm that the material for the films, based on The City In History, was prepared by Mumford himself.

Read more here

Kaleidoscope Draw Package: Polly for the iPad

2011-12-20T08:33:00.000+01:00

Poly™ from Jean-Christophe Naour on Vimeo.

The Rising Cost of Weapons and Ammunition

2011-12-19T21:31:00.000+01:00

Via: Ammo.net

Lego’s latest design research: What girls want

2011-12-19T20:26:00.002+01:00

Legos are perennially hot toys. It’s evident in their sales figures, with revenues skyrocketing 105 percent since 2006 (stated in the privately held company’s 2010 annual report).

In 2010, Lego achieved more than $1 billion in U.S. sales for the first time.

Lego has also been praised as an innovative company, one that has re-designed its toys and strategy over the years to obvious financial success. So what’s next?

In the December 19 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, Brad Wieners goes behind the scenes at Lego’s Danish headquarters to uncover the design tactics behind Lego’s newest goal: to appeal to girls.

As Wieners reports, a new line of 23 products called Lego Friends, aimed at girls 5 years old and above, will hit American stores on January 1, after European debuts in France on December 15 and in the U.K. on December 26.

The idea to hold off after the holidays in the U.S. was to offer more display space than the toy line might receive during the Christmas shopping season.

Here’s how Lego determined how to come up with what it hopes is a set of products that will be as appealing to girls as earlier Lego blocks and figurines have been to boys, according to Wieners’ insightful and detailed report:

The company relied more on “cultural anthropology” than traditional focus groups, reflecting the successful process Lego used in 2005-2006 to design new Legos to appeal to contemporary boys

Lego searched for leading internal product designers and sales and marketing staff within the company, then assigned these top performers to work with outside design consultants

The design and strategy teams then worked in small groups to observe and interview girls and their families over a timeframe of numerous months, conducting research in the United States, the U.K., Germany, and Korea

Lego found that

Girls like “harmony,” or “a pleasing, everything-in-its-right-place sense of order”; warm, welcoming colors; and precise detailing on toys

Yes, little girls enjoy role-playing as their favored style of play

Girls like to construct, but in a style that differs from that of boys. Boys like to build to build what they might find on a photo on a toy box, kit-style. But girls like to tell stories and re-design their constructions as they create them.

Boys play with figurines in the third-person, while girls project their identities on their toys

The result of Lego’s latest research is a set of curvy, versus angular female figurines, along with new blocks in pretty, pastel shades.

They’ll be packaged so that girls don’t feel pressure to create a scene as if they’re playing with a boy’s model kit.

The 29 new characters, which represent nine nationalities, come with Lego-written biographies.

The mini-dolls are imagined to live within a community called Heartlake City to help encourage–and appeal to–the storytelling process.

While other toy manufacturers are likely to keep in mind Lego’s new, gender-based research for their own future designs, it’s likely that they will also be watching how the public reacts to the new line.

Wieners points out that although there have been critics of Lego’s perceived inattention to girls’ tastes in the past, there are already skeptics who question the design strategies of creating obviously “feminine,” and arguably stereotypical, feminine toys–even if the research backs up that girls around the world very well may want them.

Why Does Asian Food Taste So Different?

2011-12-19T08:43:00.002+01:00

This graphic shows the backbone of the flavor network: "each node denotes an ingredient, the node color indicates food category, and node size reflects the ingredient prevalence in recipes.

Two ingredients are connected if they share a significant number of flavour compounds, link thickness representing the number of shared compounds between the two ingredients.

Read more: Asian Food

BCI updates business continuity dictionary

2011-12-16T12:44:00.001+01:00

The Business Continuity Institute has published an update (Version 2) of its Dictionary of Business Continuity Management Terms. Edited by Lyndon Bird, the dictionary provides a comprehensive glossary of business continuity terms.

Definitions given in the glossary include terms from the BCI’s GPG2010 and the BS 25999 standard, with some additional comments in some cases ‘to improve clarity and understanding’.

Other definitions are consolidated definitions from various source documents.

View the Dictionary of Business Continuity Management Terms Version as a PDF.

Banking: Social Media Challenges

2011-12-16T12:40:00.001+01:00

Financial institutions (FIs) should integrate social media approaches into their marketing and customer service processes.

Most FIs are fairly clear that engaging customers, building brand awareness, and building brand affinity are why they’re involved with social media.

Engagement may be the objective, but “engagement” isn’t accomplished through persuasion.

10 rules: Ethics for IT consultants

2011-12-16T09:31:00.000+01:00

Applying a set of ethical rules to business matters can protect you, your employer and your clients. In times of trouble or doubt, they will help you determine right from wrong.

However, you could just apply the big rule of rules: 'Treat your clients as you want to be treated', but in business, you often need specific guidance. We hope the following rules will serve you well.

1: Be honest
You could lie about your strengths, your background, your expertise, and even the hours you spend on a project. It might be the largest temptation you face because there are so few auditing features in place. The client has to take a leap of faith when hiring you. Don’t violate that trust for any reason, especially not to keep the job.

2: Say no when necessary
Clients hire you for your opinions, your experience, and your knowledge. Giving them anything less violates their trust and will eventually bite you back, hard. The client might not act on your advice. A disagreement might even lead to a parting of the ways, so it’s difficult to speak up when you disagree, but you must.

3: Wait when necessary
On the other side of No 2 is Timing, or knowing when to wait. It’s unethical to push your point of view beyond discovery. It’s your job to present what you’ve learned and make your best recommendation. It’s not your job to force your recommendation.

4: Concentrate on the client at hand
When charging a client, you belong to that client. Take their perspective. Don’t troubleshoot another client’s problem; don’t even think about another client’s project. If you must take a call from one client while at another client’s facility, be discreet. Never say, “I’ve got to take this call” and turn your back on a client in their own facility! If possible, turn your cellphone off during these conversations. “Give me a minute to turn off my cellphone so we’re not disturbed,” goes a long way.

5: Lock the backdoor on your way out
Developers like to code a backdoor that no one else knows about. It’s a failsafe method for gaining access when all normal routes fail. When you leave a project, provide documentation for locking or even destroying your backdoor. You have no ethical reason for maintaining it.

6: Maintain confidentiality
Due to specialisation, some consultants have multiple clients in the same field. There’s nothing inherently unethical about it. There are lots of IT projects that aren’t competitive, so providing those skills to competitors won’t put them at risk. Two firms fighting to be the first to market a specialised phone app won’t both hire you as a developer but both might hire you to update their disaster preparedness plan.

To protect yourself and your clients, provide full disclosure when working for competitors. In addition, be extremely careful when contracting proprietary details, there’s a fine line between tying your hands and protecting each client’s interests.

7: Respect management’s confidence
Just as you shouldn’t violate confidentiality between clients, you shouldn’t spread confidential information through layers of the same company. When the client shares confidential information with you as part of the discovery process, don’t share that information with others in the company. For instance, if you learn from the CEO that the company is preparing to outsource its customer service department, you can’t warn your best friend, who works in customer service.

8: Don’t stir the pot
Every company has its own drama. Stay out of it. The only views your client is paying you for are those that support your IT position. Keep to your consulting views and leave all the personnel drama to the folks in Human Resources.

9: Report unethical behavior
If, during the discovery process, you learn that the manager in charge of your project is doing something unethical or illegal (related to the company), you have an obligation to report your findings (not your suspicions) to someone in a position to intercede. However, it may be just as unethical to exclude the manager in question from the process. Call a meeting to present your evidence but invite the manager, too. Take the high road and then find another job, because you can’t survive this one.

10: Don’t create a dependency
Don’t covertly create a dependency just to maintain a relationship or cashflow with a client. A project might yield a new maintenance or support contract, but it must grow from need and mutual agreement, not pretense or trickery.

Windows Phone SMS attack - YouTube

2011-12-14T20:57:00.000+01:00

Attackers can send a maliciously-crafted SMS to a Windows Phone, causing it to reboot and disable messaging functionality. "The flaw appears to affect other aspects of the Windows Phone operating system too," reported WinRumors.

"If a user has pinned a friend as a live tile on their device and the friend posts a particular message on Facebook then the live tile will update and causes the device to lock up." WinRumors and Khaled Salameh, the researcher who discovered the vulnerability, are in the process of disclosing the flaw to Microsoft.

"At this stage there doesn't appear to be a workaround to fix the messaging hub apart from hard resetting and wiping the device."

Social Media and Influence Measurement

2011-12-14T20:08:00.000+01:00

Google: Behind the numbers [infographic]

2011-12-14T18:52:00.001+01:00

From: BusinessMBA.org

Making the Invisible Visible - YouTube

2011-12-12T16:01:00.001+01:00

Find out more and take action at: http://www.amnesty.org/arts

Making the Invisible Visible is an Amnesty International street art project highlighting the plight of six individuals who have suffered human rights abuses.

The project is a unique collaboration between German street art collective Mentalgassi and creative team Lisa Jelliffe and Kirsten Rutherford from Wieden + Kennedy London.

The installations use special lenticular fence posters. Launched in London last year to highlight the case of Troy Davis, this year the campaign can be seen in 26 locations across 6 European cities.

Each installation depicts a close up of an individual's face. The image is invisible from front on, only becoming visible to those approaching the fence. A plaque on each site alerts passers-by to an Amnesty International website where they can take action in support of each of the individuals featured.

Thanks to Ghosting Season for their track 'Dead Man's Switch' available here: http://ghostingseason.bandcamp.com/track/dead-mans-switch

UK Rich & City Elite Fund Cynical Tory Party

2011-12-12T13:23:00.000+01:00

Never in the history of political party funding have so few bought so much political influence for so little says GMB

Total donations to the Tory Party in the third quarter of 2011 were £2,891,436 according to the recent figures published by the Electoral Commission. The donations from companies and individuals linked to finance, hedge funds, private equity, property and other city activities were £1,684,708 according to a new GMB analysis of the data. This is 58.3% of the total.

Rich & City Elite Fund Tory Party

Brain Technology can improve their visual performance

2011-12-12T13:17:00.002+01:00

Scientists discovered that brain technology can help people learn new things and it doesn’t require much concentration at all.

In theory, if a person were to use the new method, he could look into a computer screen and learn a new language.

ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratory and Boston University researchers used brain technology to help people improve their visual performance in areas such as memory, motor, and rehabilitation.

For example, if a person wants to be a good athlete, then his brain pattern should align to those seen in a professional through real-time feedback. Or if a person needs to be treated after an accident, his brain patterns could be changed to match the baseline. That’s all in theory for now, but the study shows promising results.

To do this, a person could look at computer screen to obtain a specific activation pattern in their brain. Furthermore, this study found that the subjects improved their performance without actually being aware of what they were learning.

Wait? Really? The experiment used decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to improve the subjects’ ability. The subjects also participated in neuro-feedback training so they could match their brain activity to the desired visual performance.

The study was published in the journal Science.

“So we have to test if the method works in other types of learning in the future,” ATR’s professor Mitsuo Kawato said in a statement. “At the same time, we have to be careful so that this method is not used in an unethical way.”

Things to do while waiting for SAP ROI - Make a Snowflake from paper - YouTube

2011-12-12T12:24:00.000+01:00

Recommended paper size: Hexagon with a side length of 10cm (approx. 4in)
Resulting model: Hexagon with a side length of 5cm (approx. 2in)

This video describes how to fold the origami snowflake designed by Dennis Walker. Dennis's video is also accessible to you.

Dennis' website: http://www.origamidennis.co.uk/
More origami: http://www.happyfolding.com

Things to do while waiting for SAP ROI - Make a Christmas Tree from paper - YouTube

2011-12-12T12:16:00.001+01:00

Save money and have fun making your very own attractive, chic and unique Christmas decorations. There are lots of attractive recycled papers and materials available from arts, crafts and stationery shops or you can use any nice patterned papers, catalogues or magazines you come across too.

The good news is when they start to look a little tired, or you decide you want new colours / patterns, the old ones can simply be recycled and you can quickly and easily make replacements. Enjoy!

Twitter's redesign open for comment

2011-12-12T10:12:00.000+01:00

This week, Twitter announced a "major" redesign of its popular micro-blogging service, in a move aimed at attracting new users and big brands with a simpler, more intuitive interface and more opportunities for companies to show off their stuff. The new look will be rolled out in the coming weeks across Twitter.com, Twitter apps, and TweetDeck. (Watch a video demonstration here.) Here, four things you should know:

1. Is it easier for new tweeters?
Twitter's message to "newbies" here is "try it, you'll like it," says Stephen Shankland at CNET. Twitter execs say the big empty text box on the old site was alienating for first-time users, so now the emphasis is on helping newcomers find content that interests them. The new interface has several friendly tabs, and potentially confusing concepts like hashtags have been re-branded for new users with less threatening action verbs, like "discover." "The new version of Twitter is a faster, simpler way to stay close to everything you care about."

2. Is it friendlier to brands and advertisers?
Companies will be able to launch customised, branded pages and show embedded multimedia. Twitter says it's aiming to be "an even more compelling destination" for companies. Experts caution that Twitter must be careful that it doesn't "compromise users' experience" by getting too cozy with businesses. "It may make Twitter's members feel that its commercial interests are being put ahead of their own," says one digital consultant.

3. Is Twitter approaching the Facebook look?
The branded pages "look like a blatant borrowing" from Facebook, says Paul Sloan at CNET. And that's not the only part of the redesign reminiscent of Mark Zuckerberg and Co. While photos used to be a pain to tweet, they now handily appear as part of a tweet — sound familiar? "A big part of Facebook's appeal — and something that keeps users coming back and sticking around — is that it's an easy place to share and store your photos." Now Twitter is, too. New profile pages are also very Facebook-like. This "redesign sends a clear message to the social networking universe: Facebook, we're coming for you,"

4. Are Conversations easier to follow?
"One of the more annoying things about the old Twitter design was the inability for users to follow conversations easily." No longer. Under the redesign, conversations and comments pile up beneath the original post, another Facebook look-alike move.

Do-it-yourself iPhone Projector - YouTube

2011-12-12T09:18:00.000+01:00

The first person to invent a DiY projector by someone named Dylan who tags himself as a Household Hacker. The video shows how to make your own version of iPhone projector.

Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance: See five years of Kiva lending

2011-12-08T19:28:00.000+01:00

Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance from Kiva on Vimeo.

Kiva, a micro-finance site, lets people around the world lend small sums of money to help small businesses get off the ground, particularly in the developing world.

Since starting in 2005 more than 685,000 people have received loans through Kiva. The majority of those loans appear in this video.

Samsung: Amazing Screen Technology - Flexible AMOLED - YouTube

2011-12-07T12:12:00.000+01:00

Samsung has released a video purportedly showing a prototype of its flexible screen tablet computer in action. We found it on YouTube and embedded it below. Have a look, as a faceless pair of hands goes globetrotting, unfolding a tidy screen to take happy pictures, translate languages, conjure up menus (or something like that – it’s hard to tell!) and pull other rabbits out of a chirpy hat, all to enthusiastic Korean narration.

The busy production is hardly convincing – the product has a mock-up sense about it - but nevertheless it gives a good idea of what one of these things might look like. Presumably the screen will use OLED (organic light emitting diode) technology. OLEDs are natural light sources, available today in rigid form. But they should soon emerge in flexible varieties, auguring radical changes in architecture, construction, and IT as designers build light sources into the fabric of houses, furniture, skyscrapers, you name it. As we reported last month, Samsung hopes to deliver flexible screen phones in early 2012, followed by bendy tablet PCs.

Internet Access versus Population

2011-12-07T12:06:00.001+01:00

With this map you can visualize the global digital divide.

It shows more than 80,000 populated places in blue and about 350,000 locations of IP addresses in red.

White dots indicate places where many people live and many IP addresses are available.

The IP address locations are taken from the GeoLiteCity database by MaxMind.

The database of populated places is taken from geonames.org. The visual style is largely inspired by Eric Fischer's wonderful Flickr-vs-Twitter maps.

Also, here you can find a high resolution version and the separate layers for population and internet addresses.

Virologist Develops Highly Contagious and Lethal Strain of H5N1 Bird Flu Virus

2011-12-07T10:57:00.001+01:00

A molecular virologist at Erasmus University in the Netherlands has engineered a new H5N1 bird flu virus so lethal that it would kill 59 percent of those infected.

Dr. Ron Fouchier and his team, who used ferrets as test subjects, found five genetic mutations to the virus. Based on these mutations, they were able to develop a new H5N1 strain that became airborne and infected ferrets in different cages.

The increased rate of infection indicates the new strain can potentially become as contagious as a normal cold. The H5N1 virus, which originally only affected birds, crossed over to humans in 1997 and first struck in Asia.

It eventually spread all over the world until it killed more than 300 people. Considering the 59 percent mortality rate of the new H5N1 strain, many fear that it would result in a pandemic on a global scale.

Read more Virologist Develops Highly Contagious and Lethal Strain of H5N1 Bird Flu Virus

There's no such thing as Root Cause? Discuss!

2011-12-05T16:30:00.002+01:00

Continuous improvement enables better decisions with better data, which drives better business performance — as long as you never stop looping the Decision-Data Feedback Loop, and start accepting that there is no such thing as a root cause.

Read the full article here: No Such Thing as a Root Cause?

Social Media: Listening and Online Reputation Monitoring 2011 report

2011-12-02T09:54:00.001+01:00

Today marks the publication of Econsultancy's 2012 Online Reputation and Buzz Monitoring Buyer's Guide, containing profiles of 15 leading vendors and advice for companies trying to choose a tool and to get the most from the technology.

The report follows separate research we published in November which shows that an increasing number of companies are paying for reputation monitoring software.

According to the State of Social Report, published in association with LBi and bigmouthmedia, the proportion of companies using paid-for technology for reputation monitoring increased from 16% in 2010 to 25% in 2011, including 17% who also use free tools for social listening.

Social Media: How will it change your company's raison d’être

2011-12-02T08:53:00.002+01:00

Social Media and close coupled customer contact is increasing the delta between what our customers THINK can be done, and what can REALLY be done.

As a company, this delta is an important factor to take into consideration. The fact is, companies have been profiting from operating in their own space-time dimension for decades – it’s the arbitrage of an inefficient market.

We have accepted things like “please allow 48+ hours for a response” because we could not penetrate the system or affect the process; we lacked the power to find out.

Now, however, the differential response times between companies are exposed for all to see, and some companies are willing to share their own benchmarks for response times. Unfortunately, in most cases these are unattainable, especially for companies that are not structured around real-time response.

You cannot have a real-time response strategy if your staff responders are not empowered in real-time and your employees cannot be empowered in real time unless the entire company moves around that pivotal point.

However, the difficult question your company must ask, is not how your company can make this change towards being pivotal; rather, it needs to ask whether it should make this change.

Business is all about constraints, and economics the study of scarcity. Resources applied to customer services do not magically appear because we wish them to; Lavoisier’s principle of mass conservation is as true for corporate resources as it is for chemistry (though, Lavoisier was beheaded)

In short, using a quote from the US Marines; your business has to pick the hill it wants to die on.

You can read more of this article at BrandSavant

World's First Mobile Phone (1922) - YouTube

2011-12-02T08:20:00.000+01:00

A couple of years ago, British Pathé uncovered some striking footage from 1922 showing two women experimenting with the first mobile phone. A spokesman for the archive said: ”It’s amazing that nearly 90 years ago mobile phone technology and music … was not only being thought of but being trialled.”

“The phone even has a lid which makes it the first flip-phone we are aware of, although it is probably not going to win any design awards.” He added, ”We would be delighted to hear from anyone who can tell us anything about the film, from where it is shot to who the women might be or even about the phone itself.”

For another gem from the British Pathé archive, don’t miss The King’s Speech (1938), which gives you a glimpse of King George VI making a speech to open an exhibition in Scotland — the same king that became the subject of the 2010 Academy Award-winning film.

UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011 - Final Version Published

2011-12-01T19:43:00.000+01:00

After a consultation period which ran from 22 March to 17 June 2011, the Department of Health has now launched the final version of the UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011.

The plan aims to create more flexibility and clearer communication between all parties involved in the Government response to a pandemic.

The UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011 sets out the main phases of a pandemic and the likely scenarios under the following conditions:

Low impact
Moderate impact
High impact.

In each scenario there a four clear sections:

Nature and scale of the illness – what defines the need for the pandemic to have reached this level i.e. widespread disease;
Key healthcare delivery – specific actions and guidance for healthcare providers;
Impact on the wider society – considerations on how this may be affecting the local community; and
Public messages – reassurance and specific information for the general public.

The plan builds on the guidance from 2007 and lessons learnt from the H1N1 (2009) influenza pandemic, and the latest scientific evidence.

The document is broken down as follows:

1. Introduction
2. The challenge of pandemic influenza
3. The strategic approach to pandemic preparedness
4. Key elements of pandemic response
5. Communication and public engagement
6. The health and social care response
7. Whole of society response
8. Further information.

Section 7 (Whole of society response) contains general business continuity information and provides details about the assumptions that organizations should make when developing pandemic preparedness strategies.

Organizations are told to consider the impacts of staff absence and the impacts of interdependencies. If organizations are planning to increase the proportions of staff that work from home as a business continuity measure they are advised to ‘discuss this with their telecommunications providers well in advance to allow them to put the necessary hardware and software in place’.

Assumptions include:

The UK Government does not plan to close borders, stop mass gatherings or impose controls on public transport during any pandemic.
Organizations should work on the assumption that most of their staff will not have access to vaccines.

Read the document as a PDF.

Human error is the biggest cause of IT disasters

2011-12-01T19:31:00.000+01:00

A survey to analyse the key factors that cause major SME IT incidents and service failures. The findings show that human error accounted for 47 percent of incidents, followed by server failures at 29 percent and power and communications provider failure at 15 percent. Fire, flood or ‘Acts of God’ accounted for 9 percent of outages.

Human error can include anything from placing a server under an air conditioner - that then leaks, to classic finger trouble - where operators irretrievably break a server and don't have a backup. Other impacting factors identified included a second disk failure - after its mirror has previously failed and not been fixed, or issues, such as deployment failures or bugs in custom code.

Survey results show that human error causes the highest occurrence of service failures, whilst incidents like fire and flood are understandably less common, but do still occur. It was also found that quite a lot of incidents, which initially appear to be related to pure hardware or software failure, actually have an element of human error involved with them.

Power and communications failures proved to be reasonably common but are often quite short lived, and because most companies don’t have a recovery service that can get them working again very quickly, they tend to just tough them out.

A key problem for companies is predicting how long the service is likely to be out of action and then deciding when it’s worth trying to initiate a recovery process.

The key message from the survey results is, perhaps that prolonged outages do happen and are more often caused by the every-day rather than the rarer fire, flood or acts of God.

Many smaller and medium sized companies who have limited IT support, have less ability to respond quickly and effectively to an IT outage. It is therefore advised that they consider the risks of a prolonged IT outage carefully, and look to develop and implement a fully managed disaster recovery (DR) service from a specialist provider who can guarantee to restore their systems within an acceptable period of time.

Carrier IQ RootKit on SmartPhones - YouTube

2011-12-01T15:43:00.001+01:00

So, it seems that there is a rootkit hidden in millions of Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, webOS and even iOS handset that logs everything we do.

The rootkit belongs to a company called Carrier IQ and it seems that it has low-level access to the system that allows it to spy on pretty much everything that you do with your handset.

On the face of it this seems like an extremely serious breach of security, privacy and trust was discovered by 25-year-old Trevor Eckhart.

Here’s a video showing how everything, including text messages and encrypted web searches, are being logged. It’s truly horrifying.

More information about Carrier IQ. If youd like to talk about it, post below, tweet with #CIQ or if you have a board discussion about it post the URL here. I will be doing NO moderation.

While your out there thank the @EFF for letting me continue :)

Why are you looking at CarrierIQ for information and not HTC? Look at how many devices have Carrier IQ hidden. HTC is just including 3rd party software. They have privacy policies everywhere for their programs, this is not just an HTC/Android issue.

Visit androidsecuritytest.com/ for more info.

The Meeting of Minds

2011-11-30T18:23:00.002+01:00

Today we are presenting a fascinating new paper by a team of psychologists, including Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom and Lisa Feldman Barrett and here the scientists frame the mystery they want to solve:

Do people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove a sweater? This seems absurd: How could removing a piece of clothing change one’s capacity for acting or feeling? In six studies, however, we show that taking off a sweater—or otherwise revealing flesh—can significantly change the way a mind is perceived. In this article, we suggest that the kind of mind ascribed to another person depends on the relative salience of his or her body—that the perceived capacity for both pain and planned action depends on whether someone wears a sweater or tank-top.

To understand why sweaters and tank-tops influence the kind of minds we perceive, it’s important to know about the different qualities we imagine in others. In general, people assess the 'minds' of others and it doesn’t matter if it’s the “mind” of a pet, an iPhone or a perceived deity. This assessment is aligned along two distinct dimensions.

Firstly, we grade other peoples' minds in terms of agency, Whereby Human beings have lots of agency but goldfish less so. Secondly, we also think of other peoples' minds in terms of the ability to have experience, to feel and perceive.

The psychologists suggest that these dual dimensions are actually a duality, and that there’s a direct tradeoff between the ability to have agency and experience. For example, if we endow someone with lots of feeling, then they probably have less agency, and if someone has lots of agency, then they probably are less sensitive to experience.

In other words, we automatically assume that the capacity to think and the capacity to feel are in opposition. It’s a zero sum game.

This work also raises important philosophical questions. Ever since Descartes, it’s been suggested that people are natural dualists, dividing the world into an immaterial realm full of souls and a physical world full of objects.

This simple framework, however, appears to be a bit too simple. Instead, the psychologists propose that humans are actually Platonic dualists, following Plato’s belief that there are two distinct types of mind: a mind for thinking and reasoning and a mind for emotions and passions.

What’s surprising is how easily we switch between these different mental capacities. All it takes is a peek of skin before a thinker morphs into a feeler.

London's Tower bridge: Vintage Image

2011-11-29T12:43:00.001+01:00

Never before seen photograph of the construction of Tower Bridge being constructed have been unveiled after a stash of hundred-year-old photos were found in a skip.

The 50 sepia pictures, dating back to 1892, reveal in incredible detail the ingenuity behind one of the capital's most popular tourist destinations.

The discarded pictures, which were retrieved by a caretaker who was looking after a building being turned into flats in 2006, have spent the last five years in a carrier bag underneath his bed.

The 59-year-old, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that after the occupants of the Westminster office building moved out, the album and a number of documents were thrown into a skip outside.

He said: "I took the ledgers to the Tower Bridge Museum because I thought they might have some historical value. I told the man at the museum that I had also found some photos but he told me they already had plenty of those.

I didnt know what to do with them so I wrapped them in some brown paper and put them in a bag under the bed." We will have a gallery of the images on the Telegraph site later today.

Picture: David Willoughby / Barcroft Media

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory - YouTube

2011-11-29T12:16:00.001+01:00

Daniel Kahneman's most sustaining and fascinating facets are the notions of the experiencing self and the remembering self, underpinning the fundamental duality of the human condition — one voiceless and immersed in the moment, the other occupied with keeping score and learning from experience.

I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.” ~ Daniel Kahneman

Kahneman spoke of these two selves and the cognitive traps around them in his fantastic 2010 TED talk:

Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.

Using good governance to control cloud risks

2011-11-18T10:08:00.000+01:00

Cloud computing provides organizations with an alternative way of obtaining IT services and offers many benefits including increased flexibility as well as cost reduction. However many organizations are reluctant to adopt the cloud because of concerns over information security and a loss of control over the way IT service is delivered.

These fears have been exacerbated by recent events reported in the press including outages by Amazon and the three-day loss of Blackberry services from RIM. So what approach can an organization take to ensure that the benefits of the cloud outweigh the risks?

To understand the risks involved it is important to understand that the cloud is not a single model. The cloud covers a wide spectrum of services and delivery models ranging from in-house virtual servers to software accessed by multiple organizations over the Internet. A clear explanation of this range is described by NIST. This document describes the five essential characteristics that define the cloud, the three service models and the four deployment models. The risks of the cloud depend upon both the service model and the delivery model adopted.

When moving to the cloud it is important that the business requirements for the move are understood and that the cloud service is selected meets these needs. Taking a good governance approach, such as COBIT, is the key to safely embracing the cloud and the benefits that it provides:

Identify the business requirements for the cloud based solution. This seems obvious but many organizations are using the Cloud without knowing it.
Determine the cloud service needs based on the business requirements. Some applications will be more business critical than others.
Develop scenarios to understand the security threats and weaknesses. Use these to determine the response to these risks in terms of requirements for controls and questions to be answered. Considering these risks may lead to the conclusion that the risk of moving to the Cloud is too high.
Understand what the accreditations and audit reports offered by the cloud provider mean and actually cover.

Why do Americans Use Social Media?

2011-11-15T19:54:00.000+01:00

Two-thirds of online adults (66%) use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn. These internet users say that connections with family members and friends (both new and old) are a primary consideration in their adoption of social media tools. Roughly two thirds of social media users say that staying in touch with current friends and family members is a major reason they use these sites, while half say that connecting with old friends they've lost touch with is a major reason behind their use of these technologies.

Other factors play a much smaller role: 14% of users say that connecting around a shared hobby or interest is a major reason they use social media and 9% say that making new friends is equally important. Reading comments by public figures and finding potential romantic partners are cited as major factors by just 5% and 3% of social media users, respectively.

The survey was conducted Apr. 26-May 22, 2011. Read the full report for more information about the degree to which different age and ethnic groups value social media.

See the full report for more details, including differences among age and ethnic groups when it comes to what they value most in social media.

The times they are a changin' - YouTube

2011-11-15T16:09:00.002+01:00

There are two types of bosses: the one that changes as a continuous learning experience and understands the motivation of the others, those who do not (yet).

And in these two basic attitudes one can also reflect the success with their employees. It can be simplified to identify the following two types of managers:

Those who accept change as something continuous vs. those who see it as a one-time task.
Those who see their success as something temporary vs. those who strive constantly to maintain it.
Those who believe that anything is possible vs. those who think their future depends on the past.
Those who allow change vs. those who hide behind operating procedures, to keep everyone under control.
Those who see life as a permanent and lasting learning experience vs.. those who think they have reached their "target" and will no longer move.
Those who keep their teams alive and alert to changes vs. those who allow their teams to "doze off".
Those who view change as an impetus for dialogue, and a potential insight to see improvement vs. those who see change and dialogue as intrusive, annoying and /or bothersome.
Those who radiate energy and personal motivation vs. those that show fatigue and negative emotions.
Those who think they can gain something vs. those who are afraid of losing something.

Mistakes in Not Making Mistakes

2011-11-15T14:08:00.005+01:00

The past year seems to have yielded various waves of content celebrating making mistakes. Advancing the “failure at the heart of innovation” theme seems to have become a cause célèbre for the creativity and innovation set.

Celebrating mistakes as part of innovation was the topic of a July Innochat on Twitter on innovation failure and, most recently, a Wall Street Journal article on “Better Ideas through Failure.”

I grew up with a clear perfectionist streak (or whatever term you would use to suggest whatever is deeper, wide, and more permanent than a “streak”), I wrestle with a gleeful attitude toward failure.

Yet between Kathryn Schulz’s TED talk “On Being Wrong” and recognition of my own experiences where learning from something that did not succeed as planned has led to much better future results, openness to errors clearly has its place in creativity and innovation.

However, I think celebrating mistakes in and of themselves is an easy banner for behaviours that don’t come easily to many people or many organizations, for that matter.

It’s not so much organizations are celebrating failure as the willingness to move forward on efforts before everything is figured out and an appreciation for learning when something doesn’t go right.

Being Bad at Making Mistakes
What really needs to happen in an organization to benefit from an apparent willingness to celebrate and reward failure?

Instead of listing behaviors for celebrating mistakes (which I started to do but failed to complete), it’s much easier to list mistakes individuals and organizations make at making mistakes.

Thinking through the personal perfectionist demons I’ve had to try (and still try) to slay, here are eight mistakes that can shut you off from productive failure:

Being afraid of fear
Not being able to manage or tolerate ample levels of risk
Becoming easily embarrassed – either personally or organizationally
Failing to properly frame and learn from experiments
Being uncomfortable with unanswered questions
Doing a bad job of making assumptions which allow you to keep making progress
Focusing too strongly on too much detail
Not being able to fix things as you go

To read the full article visit the Innovation Excellence website

UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011 published

2011-11-15T09:36:00.000+01:00

After a consultation period which ran from 22 March to 17 June 2011, the Department of Health has now launched the final version of the UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011.

The plan aims to create more flexibility and clearer communication between all parties involved in the Government response to a pandemic.

The UK Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Strategy 2011 sets out the main phases of a pandemic and the likely scenarios under the following conditions:

Low impact
Moderate impact
High impact.

In each scenario there a four clear sections:

Nature and scale of the illness – what defines the need for the pandemic to have reached this level i.e. widespread disease;
Key healthcare delivery – specific actions and guidance for healthcare providers;
Impact on the wider society – considerations on how this may be affecting the local community; and
Public messages – reassurance and specific information for the general public.

The plan builds on the guidance from 2007 and lessons learnt from the H1N1 (2009) influenza pandemic, and the latest scientific evidence.

The document is broken down as follows:

Assumptions include:

The UK Government does not plan to close borders, stop mass gatherings or impose controls on public transport during any pandemic.
Organizations should work on the assumption that most of their staff will not have access to vaccines.

Read the document as a PDF.

Communications: 60 Hudson Street, Manhatten, NY

2011-11-15T08:48:00.000+01:00

Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors from Ben Mendelsohn on Vimeo.

We keep thinking and reading about the Internet as a cultural phenomenon, but what about its palpable physicality? In 2010, it was estimated that the world produced over one thousand exobytes of new data, or one trillion gigabytes.

Most of it doesn’t stay put — instead, it travels through the world’s servers, but where exactly does it go? That’s precisely what Ben Mendelsohn set out to answer in Bundled, Buried & Behind Closed Doors, a fascinating short documentary for his masters thesis at The New School.

The film takes us inside 60 Hudson Street in Lower Manhattan — a deceptively nondescript building that houses one of the world’s major nodes of the Internet. The rest…well, you’ll have to see for yourself:

"It’s really vital to remember that the Internet is physical. The Internet can be touched, it is material and it exists — because so much of the rhetoric surrounding current concepts of ‘cyberspace’ suggests that it’s somehow just this sort of magic, etherial realm that exists ‘out there’ almost on its own.” ~ Stephen Graham, Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University"

Replace Windows Explorer with a free, feature-rich file manager

2011-11-14T19:50:00.000+01:00

Bill Detwiler exmaines five free file managers that might make IT pros and power users dump Windows Explorer.

The average Windows user would probably never consider using a file manager other than the one built into the operating system–Windows Explorer. But, TR Dojo viewers aren’t average Windows users. They like to optimize, customize, and just plain tinker with their computers, especially the operating system.
Well, during this TR Dojo episode, I discuss five, free file managers that you can use instead:

Where Do Good Ideas Come from - YouTube

2011-11-13T11:36:00.000+01:00

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?

With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward.

Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines.

Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

Spotting an Ineffective Leader

2011-11-08T19:59:00.000+01:00

It’s important to realize that just because someone is in a leadership position, doesn’t necessarily mean they should be. To put it another way, not all leaders are created equal.

The problem many organizations are suffering from is a recognition problem – they can’t seem to recognize good leaders from bad ones. In the text that follows, we address how to spot ineffective leaders pointing out a few things that should be obvious, but apparently aren’t:

Poor Character: A leader who lacks character or integrity will not endure the test of time. It doesn’t matter how intelligent, affable, persuasive, or savvy a person is, if they are prone to rationalizing unethical behaviour based upon current or future needs they will eventually fall prey to their own undoing…
Lack of Performance: Nobody is perfect, but leaders who consistently fail are not leaders, no matter how much you wish they were. While past performance is not always a certain indicator of future events, a long-term track record of success should not be taken lightly. Someone who has consistently experienced success in leadership roles has a much better chance of success than someone who has not. It’s important to remember unproven leaders come with a high risk premium.
Poor Communication Skills: Show me a leader with poor communication skills and I’ll show you someone who will be short-lived in their position. Great leaders can communicate effectively across mediums, constituencies, and environments. They are active listeners, fluid thinkers, and know when to dial it up, down, or off.
Self-Serving Nature: If a leader doesn’t understand the concept of “service above self” they will not engender the trust, confidence, and loyalty of those they lead. Any leader is only as good as his or her team’s desire to be led by them. An over abundance of ego, pride, and arrogance are not positive leadership traits. Long story short; if a leader receives a vote of non-confidence from their subordinates…game over.
One Size Fits All Leadership Style: Great leaders are fluid and flexible in their approach. They understand the power of, and necessity for contextual leadership. “My way or the highway” leadership styles don’t play well in today’s world, will result in a fractured culture, and ultimately a non-productive organization. Only those leaders who can quickly recognize and adapt their methods to the situation at hand will be successful over the long haul.
Lack of Focus and Follow-Through: Those leaders who lack the focus and attention to detail needed to apply leverage and resources in an aggressive and committed fashion will perish. Leaders who do not possess a bias toward action, or who cannot deliver on their obligations will not be successful. Leadership is about performance…Intentions must be aligned with results for leaders to be effective.
Not Forward Looking: No vision equals no leadership. Leaders satisfied with the status quo, or who tend to be more concerned about survival than growth won’t do well over the long-run. The best leaders are focused on leading change and innovation to keep their organizations fresh, dynamic and growing. Bottom line – leaders who build a static business doom themselves to failure.
Disconnected from the Market: Leaders not attuned to the needs of the market will fail. As the old saying goes, if you’re not taking care of your customers, someone else will be more than happy to. Successful leaders focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty. They find ways to consistently engage them and incorporate them into their innovation and planning initiatives. If you ignore, mistreat, or otherwise don’t value your customer base, your days as a leader are most certainly numbered.
Not Invested: Leaders are fully committed to investing in those they lead. They support their team, build into their team, mentor and coach their team, and they truly care for their team. A leader not fully invested in their team won’t have a team – at least not an effective one.
Not Accountable: Real leaders are accountable. They don’t blame others, don’t claim credit for the success of their team, but always accept responsibility for failures that occur on their watch. Most of all, leaders are accountable to their team. I’ve always said that leaders not accountable to their people will eventually be held accountable by their people.
Not Focused: Leaders who are not intentional and are not focused, will fail themselves and their team. Leaders who lack discipline will model the wrong behaviors and will inevitably spread themselves too thin. Organizations are at the greatest risk when leaders lose their focus.
Lacking Vision: Poor vision, tunnel vision, vision that is fickle, or a non-existent vision will cause leaders to fail. A leader’s job is to align the organization around a clear and achievable vision. This cannot occur when the blind lead the blind.

The moral of this story is leaders need to be honest, have a demonstrated track record of success, be excellent communicators, place an emphasis on serving those they lead, be fluid in approach, have laser focus, and a bias toward action. If these traits are not possessed by you or your current leaders, you will be in for a very rocky road ahead and a less succesful future.

8 Great Twitter Tools That Will Get You Tweeting

2011-11-08T14:13:00.000+01:00

Here are some twitter tools that will make you more efficient and get you Tweeting like a Pro:

1. Buffer – Tweet With Better Results

Whenever you are reading an article, and not quite sure, whether Tweeting it right now was a good idea. It might have been very early in the morning or late at night. By putting all your Tweets into a Buffer, they will be posted for you at the optimal times, well spaced out over the day. You can add Tweets your Buffer right from the article with the browser extensions with just one click.

Pro Tip: What helps a great deal is that Buffer provides you with analytics for each Tweet that you post. You will learn about the number of clicks, retweets and reach right inside the App.

2. Twylah – Give Your Tweets A Longer Life

As a matter of fact, a Tweet’s life is only very limited. If you want to prolong its life, Twylah is a wonderful way to do it. The App automatically displays all Tweets from your stream on a beautiful Twitter Brand Page for you. It will give your followers a chance to learn about the topics you are Tweeting without having to study your Twitter stream beforehand.

Pro Tip: Twylah also offers you to send a “Power Tweet”, which will allow you to post a Tweet to a Twylah page. This page is surrounded by a lot of other relevant content and has shown to increase engagement with a Tweet considerably.

3. MarketMeSuite – Your Powerful Social Media Dashboard

Only recently the paid-only MarketMeSuite has opened up its service to be free for everyone. It boasts a ton of great features that make it well worth giving a go. You can create reply campaigns, pull in RSS feeds and compare the Klout score of the users you are interacting with you. On top, you can also collaborate with other’s through the App’s multiple user setting.

Pro Tip: What we like best about MarketMeSuite is that all its features are explained in comprehensible videos as soon as you sign up for it.

4. Tweriod – Find Out Your Best Times To Tweet

Ever wondered which times of the day would be the best for you to Tweet? Look no further as Tweriod, as the App gives you a wonderful analysis of when you will be able to reach most followers. The App takes into account how well your Tweets have performed at various times and when your followers used to Tweet the most.

Pro Tip: What we like best about Tweriod is that the algorithm excludes Twitter Tools which schedule or auto-tweet as this obviously means your followers aren’t online.

5. Twilert – Google Alerts For Twitter

This is an App we suggest you might give a go if you are trying to monitor a brand or search term on Twitter continually. Similar to Google Alerts, Twilert can set up any term and then be notified about any activity on Twitter about it. This was particularly helpful if you can’t spend too much time on Twitter each day, yet need a daily digest email to be informed.

Pro Tip: If you give it a go, take a look at the great filtering options ranging from mood, languages and date filters.

6. TweetWally – Turn Tweets Into Blogposts

Similar to an App called Storify, TweetWally is a wonderful solution to bring life back to your Tweets. You can take your own stream, do a search or follow a hashtag and make beautiful collections of any Tweets you find valuable. This can be very useful if you are following an important event, conference or else.

Pro Tip: Once you have made your collection you can easily embed all Tweets as a blogpost and offer it as an innovative piece of content for your readers.

7. ParrotFish – Get More Insights Into Tweets On Twitter.com

ParrotFish from Embed.ly labs is a wonderful productivity tool to save you a lot of time. It displays all links from Tweets you come across with rich text preview. This means you can read up on the post from the link, before clicking through. We found this to be a great way to stay focused on reading news and not get distracted by clicking on posts which aren’t worth my time.

Pro Tip: The Chrome Extension also comes with a functionality to save items to Instapaper directly from Twitter.com, we believe this is a huge efficiency boost.

8. TweetLevel – Connect with the right people on Twitter

Whilst building your network on Twitter, it is often key to make those people you engage with relevant and impactful for your niche. TweetLevel offers a wonderful solution to search other Twitter users by a number of different parameters. For example you can search by influence, trust, engagement or popularity. It then makes it very easy for you to follow and start talking to these people right from the App.

Pro Tip: On top of users, you can also search by topics and key words. This will give you a wonderful display of graphs and pie charts around this topic.

These are the top 8 Tools that will help you the most to put Twitter to work. They all allow you to do things faster and more efficiently, yet they still require you to be active and not on auto-pilot.

Gary Ennis @nsdesign explains why BT Care are not using Twitter correctly - Youtube

2011-11-04T13:03:00.000+01:00

Gary Ennis from www.nsdesign.co.uk gives a fast and furious intro to social media. November 2010, Glasgow Event organised by www.6degreesnet.com

‘Lean startups’ can happen anywhere

2011-10-30T17:31:00.000+01:00

Lean Startups and the entrepreneurial energy that fuel them, aren’t just limited to lone visionaries in garages or spare bedrooms.

In today’s hyper-competitive global economy, large organisations need to have startups under their roofs to survive and thrive.

A couple of decades back, some visionaries were floating the idea of “intrapreneurs,” motivated innovators within organisations that pull together ideas and resources to make new things happen.

In his latest book, Eric Ries, creator of the Lean Startup methodology, builds upon this idea, and outlines the 5 key principles that should make up the foundation of any lean startup effort and, tellingly, the key takeaway is that startups can happen anywhere, at anytime:

1. Entrepreneurs are everywhere. Ries argues that startups are everywhere, which he defines as an “institution designed to create new products and services under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” Groups of people working within Fortune 500 corporations or large government agencies, could meet the definition of a “startup.”

2. Entrepreneurship is management. Ries argues that “entrepreneur” should be a job title in all companies, regardless of ages and sizes.

3. Validated learning. The main purpose of a startup is to learn about customer needs. Run frequent experiments to see what ideas stick, and more importantly, which do not.

4. Build-measure-learn. A successful startup needs to operate within a continuous feedback loop. This loop consists of turning ideas into products, measure how customers respond, and “learn whether to pivot or persevere.”

5. Innovation accounting. Startup leaders still need to focus on the “boring stuff.” : measurement, milestones, and prioritisation of work. “This requires a new type of accounting for startups, and the people who hold them accountable.”

While startups may seem chaotic and more driven by passion than management, sensible and accountable management is still needed but the bottom line is that it can and will happen anywhere and everywhere.

5 questions to improve your results!

2011-10-29T18:35:00.000+02:00

Here are 5 great questions to help your business thrive in any economy:

How many leads am I generating each day from my website / blog? Our sites should be a constant source of highly targeted sales leads. If your site is not currently generating as many leads as you can handle, you need to fix that immediately. I’m constantly amazed how many business owners pester people for leads at networking events, when their website or blog could be generating high quality leads for them every day.
How easy would it be, for someone to write a manual, which explained how to do my job? Whilst every human being is of equal value, those in business with the highest commercial value do work that matters, which can’t be neatly explained in a manual.
What am I doing, to ensure that the next 12 months will be better than the last 12 months? If business hasn’t been good over the past year, we need to change our direction. It’s way too easy to mistake movement for progress and end up working hard, doing the wrong things. If hard work alone were the secret to success, our grandparents would have been millionaires.
If my business was perfect in every way, what would it look like? Write your answer down in as much detail as possible. Include everything, from; the type of projects you would be working on, your profit figure and the length of your working day, to the number of hours you would work each week and the location of your business. The clearer a picture you can build of your ideal business, the easier it becomes to direct your current business into that image.
If my business were to stop trading on Monday, how easy would it be for my clients or customers to replace me? This is similar to question 2, but is focused on the unique value of your business. The easier it is for people to replace us as providers, the more volatile our client list will be and the harder we will find it to attract new clients.

Institute of Risk Management issues new guidance on risk appetite

2011-10-27T22:02:00.001+02:00

The Institute of Risk Management (IRM) has published new guidance on the subject of risk appetite and tolerance aimed at helping organizations better understand the risks they take when pursuing their strategic objectives.

IRM's guidance document has been endorsed by the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators, The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and Alarm, the public risk management association.

IRM Deputy Chairman Richard Anderson, the main author of the report, explained: "Risk appetite today is a core consideration in any enterprise risk management approach for organizations of all types, yet there is little widespread understanding about what it means and how it can be applied. In the light of the explicit requirement in the UK Corporate Governance Code for boards to understand the nature and the extent of the risks that they face, IRM decided to take the lead on drawing together some practical guidance on the subject, aimed at board members as well as risk professionals.

We are particularly pleased that other respected professional bodies are supporting our work - risk is everyone’s business and a common understanding and approach helps us work together to address this challenging area."

Anderson continued, "Our underpinning precept is that organizations can only progress by taking those risks that they need to embrace and managing down those that they wish to avoid.

Our recommended approach to risk appetite, based on the wide experience of our members and also benefitting from an extensive consultation exercise earlier this year, is intellectually rigorous as well as highly practical.

We think we have managed to outline a process which should be proportionate to an organization's risk management maturity, capability and culture and, most importantly, supported by appropriate data.

Nevertheless, we do not think that this is the last word on the subject in such a fast-moving environment and we are extremely interested in receiving feedback on this work."

The IRM paper Risk Appetite and Tolerance is available for free download at http://www.theirm.org/publications/risk_appetite.html

Managing cloud risks

2011-10-27T22:01:00.001+02:00

Adopting cloud computing may save money, but how does it change risk? The cloud allows the procurement of IT services from both internal and external suppliers to be optimized because the services are delivered through the Internet in a standard way.

The cloud is not a single model, but covers a wide spectrum from applications shared between multiple tenants to virtual servers used by one customer and hosted internally.

The key benefit of a cloud approach is one of scale; the cloud provider can potentially offer a better service at a lower cost because the scale of their operation means they can afford the skilled people and state-of-the-art technology necessary to deliver a secure service.

In general, a large cloud provider is likely to provide a better and more secure IT service at a lower cost than a small to medium sized enterprise could provide itself.

While the public cloud offers applications shared by multiple customers, the private cloud provides applications and infrastructure that are dedicated to a particular organization.

It allows organizations to outsource the management of their IT infrastructure while retaining tighter control over the location and management of the resources.

The price to pay for this is that the costs are likely to be higher than for a public cloud because there is less potential for economy of scale, and resilience may be lower because of the limit on service resources available.

The information security risks associated with cloud computing depend on both the service model and the delivery model adopted. The specific risks depend on the organization and their individual requirements.

The common security concerns across this spectrum are ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the services and data delivered through the cloud environment.

The approach to managing risks from the perspective of the cloud service user is one of due diligence - ensuring that the requirements are clearly understood, the risks are assessed, the right questions are asked and the appropriate controls are included in the service level agreements.

The principal information security related issues that organizations adopting cloud computing need to address are summarized below. Because of the wide spectrum covered by the cloud, their priority will depend on the cloud model adopted and the individual circumstances:

- Ease of purchase: anyone can buy access using a credit card. Your organization may already be using a cloud service without a proper assessment of the risk.

- Service contracts: those offered by cloud providers are often ‘take it or leave it’ and may contain less onerous obligations on the provider than a normal SLA. Key issues include: who owns the data, and how difficult would it be for you to get it back?

- Compliance: identify the business requirements for compliance with laws and regulations and ensure that the cloud provider is able to answer how they will meet these needs.

- Service location: identify the legal issues that relate to the jurisdiction of the geographic location of the cloud provider, the service and the data, and ensure that service contracts address these issues.

- Data security: identify and classify the business data that is involved and specify the security requirements for this data in terms of confidentiality, integrity and availability.

- Availability: identify the service availability requirements and assure that the provider is capable of meeting these.

- Identity and access management: specify the business needs for identity management and access control and assure that it will be delivered securely.

- Insider abuse of privilege: confirm that the cloud service provider has processes and technology to properly control privileged access.

- Internet threats: determine the level of protection needed against Internet-based threats and ensure they the steps to be taken both by the cloud provider and internally are adequate.

- Monitor: Within the cloud service, meet the business and legal requirements of the client while separating the data relating to different clients.

Taking a good governance approach, such as COBIT, is the key to safely embracing the cloud and the benefits that it provides. COBIT provides guidance to:

- Identify the business requirements for the cloud-based solution. This seems obvious but many organizations are using the cloud without knowing it.

- Determine if the functionality is currently provided by an existing internal service. If so what are the options?

- Determine the governance needs based on the business requirements. Some applications will be more business critical than others.

- Develop scenarios to understand the security threats and weaknesses. Use these to determine the risk response in terms of requirements for controls and questions to be answered. Risk IT: Based on COBIT provides an ideal framework for this.

- Understand what the accreditations and audit reports offered by the cloud provider mean and actually cover.

Cloud computing can reduce costs by providing alternative models for the procurement and delivery of IT services.

Many organizations have already adopted an outsourcing approach to internal functions that are not core and this approach naturally extends to IT.

However, they need to consider the risks involved in a move to the cloud and good governance provides a way for this.

For more information, visit www.isaca.org/cloud for a free ISACA white paper.

What makes a great risk manager?

2011-10-27T21:58:00.002+02:00

Active Risk, conducted a major survey of risk professionals in mid-2011.

Phase One analysis, based on over 250 completed responses from around the globe, has shown some surprising results and provides important advice for organizations implementing enterprise risk management programmes.

As demands placed on risk professionals increase and evolve, this new research has given an insight into the types of individuals organizations need in their risk team to produce the best chance of meeting corporate and project risk objectives.

The research also provided an understanding to the training and development required to grow and retain risk professionals; strategies to improve the effectiveness of communications between risk managers and other departments such as sales, finance, contracts and projects and the actions necessary to reduce stresses on the risk team.

Risk professionals completed an online psychometric survey based on the well-established DISC profiling methodology and received a confidential personalized profile report in return.

The cumulative results were used to identify the main personality types active in the profession. Three groups emerged.

The largest percentage (60 percent) represented ‘Technicians’ with the characteristics for accuracy and logical action traditionally associated with risk managers.

More surprisingly over 30 percent of those who responded to the survey emerged as ‘Evangelists’ who are optimistic and inspiring leaders.

This new breed of risk manager could prove instrumental when imbedding a corporate risk culture.

Finally, just under 10 percent of risk professionals who took part in the survey were ‘Drivers’ with determined personalities more usually associated with sales professionals.

To participate in the confidential survey and to download the Phase One summary report, go to www.activerisk.com/risksurvey

NIST: New Guidlines for Conducting Risk Assessments

2011-10-27T21:57:00.002+02:00

Risk assessment is the topic of the newest special publication from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments (NIST Special Publication 800-30, Revision 1), an extensive update to its original 2002 publication, is the authoritative source of comprehensive risk assessment guidance for federal information systems, and is open for public comments through November 4.

Overall guidance on risk management for information systems is now covered in Managing Information Security Risk: Organization, Mission, and Information System View (NIST SP 800-39), issued last March.

The updated SP 800-30 now focuses exclusively on risk assessments, one of the four steps in information risk management.

Information risk assessments help organizations:

Determine the most appropriate risk responses to ongoing cyber attacks or threats stemming from man-made or natural disasters;
Guide investment strategies and decisions for the most effective cyber defenses to help protect organizational operations (including missions, functions, image and reputation), organizational assets, individuals, other organizations and the US nation; and
Maintain ongoing situational awareness of the security state of an organization's information systems and the environments in which those systems operate.

The guidance in the revised publication has been significantly expanded to include more information on a variety of risk factors essential to determining information security risk, such as threat sources and events, vulnerabilities and predisposing conditions, impact, and likelihood of threat occurrence.

The publication describes a three-step process to help organizations prepare for risk assessments, successfully conduct risk assessments and keep assessment results up to date.

Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments also describes how to apply the risk assessment process at the three tiers of the risk management hierarchy outlined in Special Publication 800-39.

Sample templates, tables and assessment scales for common risk factors are provided for users to adapt to their own organizational risk assessments based on the purpose, scope, assumptions, and constraints of the assessments.

Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments (Special Publication 800-30, Revision 1) may be downloaded from here. Please send comments to sec-cert@nist.gov by Nov. 4.

Social engineering risks explored

2011-10-27T21:56:00.001+02:00

Check Point has published the results of a new survey revealing that 42 percent of UK enterprises, and 48 percent internationally, have been victims of social engineering attacks, experiencing 25 or more such attacks in the past two years at a average cost of over £15,000 per incident.

The survey report, ‘The Risk of Social Engineering on Information Security’, shows the most common sources of social-engineering threats are phishing emails (47 percent) and social networking sites (39 percent).

The survey found that new employees (52 percent) and contractors (44 percent) were cited as the most susceptible to social engineering techniques, emphasising that hackers target staff that they suspect are the weakest security links in organisations, using social networking applications to gather personal and professional information on employees to mount spear phishing attacks.

According to the global survey of over 850 IT and security professionals, 86 percent of businesses recognise social engineering as a growing security concern.

A majority of respondents (51 percent) cited financial gain as the primary motivation of attacks, followed by competitive advantage and revenge.

The highest rate of attacks was reported by energy and utility organizations (61 percent) with non-profit organisations reported the lowest rate (24 percent), reinforcing gain as the key reason for attacks.

“Although the survey shows that nearly half of enterprises know they have experienced social engineering attacks, 41 percent said they were unsure whether they had been targeted or not.

Because these types of attacks are intended to stay below an organization’s security radar, the actual number of organisations that have been attacked could be much higher. Yet 44 percent of UK companies surveyed are not currently doing anything to educate their employees about the risks, which is higher than the global average,” said Terry Greer-King, UK managing director for Check Point.

Further findings from the survey report are:

The threat of social engineering is real – 86 percent of IT and security professionals (80 percent in the UK) are aware or highly aware of the risks associated with social engineering. Approximately 48 percent of enterprises globally (42 percent in the UK) surveyed admitted they have been victims of social engineering more than 25 times in the last two years.
Social engineering attacks are costly – Survey participants estimated each security incident costing anywhere between $25,000 and over $100,000, including costs associated with business disruptions, customer outlays, revenue loss and brand damage. 36 percent of UK respondents cited an average incident cost of over $25,000 (£15,000).
Lack of proactive training to prevent social engineering attacks – 34 percent of businesses do not have any employee training or security policies in place to prevent social engineering techniques (4 percent in the UK).
Financial Gains are the primary motivation of social engineering - Financial gain was cited as the most frequent reason for social engineered attacks, followed by access to proprietary information (46 percent), competitive advantage (40 percent) and revenge (14 percent).

While social engineering techniques rely on taking advantage of a person’s vulnerability, the prevalence of Web 2.0 and mobile computing has also made it easier to obtain information about individuals and has created new entry points to execute social engineering attacks.

Greer-King added: “An organization’s employees are a critical part of the security process as they can be misled by criminals, or make errors that lead to malware infections or unintentional data loss. Many organizations do not pay enough attention to the involvement of users, when, in fact, employees should be the first line of defence. A good way to raise security awareness among users is to involve them in the security process and empower them to prevent and remediate security incidents in real time.”

Read the report (PDF).

Cultural effects on risk perception

2011-10-27T21:55:00.000+02:00

A new Chatham House paper, ‘Cultural Dialogue in International Security: New Thinking for Europe and America’ has highlighted how the perception of risk changes from culture to culture.

Written by Alexis Crow, the paper says that risk perception is highly subjective and therefore culturally specific: what may be considered a risk in one country may not be in another.

The paper explains how, in the context of attempts to develop dialogue in international security, it is important to understand a culture’s risk appetite.

Although not aimed at business continuity managers the paper provides some useful background information which may help when managing cross-border business continuity management systems.

Read the document (PDF).

Our security paradigm is out of date

2011-10-27T21:53:00.001+02:00

At a recent Cloud Security event, the president of the UK & Ireland chapter of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA UK & Ireland) said that the perception of security as a concept is out-dated.

According to Des Ward, the current focus on complying with the myriad of assurance frameworks is taking focus away from the obligations placed on organizations to identify and manage the risks to their information assets; which, in turn, places an inordinate and inappropriate burden on external service providers to satisfy the concerns of organizations with no common terms of reference.

“The discussion following my presentation was very interesting as it highlighted that, whilst security in the cloud services environment is clearly a concern for many IT security professionals, there is still a lack of assurance within the external supply chain as whole,” said Des Ward, President, CSA UK & Ireland.

“What this tells me is that, whilst the message on security is getting through to businesses, there is no consistent language to determine whether the service provider will operate the controls to a level that assures the client that their risks are managed appropriately.

This proves to me that the current security mindset is little more than managing risks to achieving compliance rather than empowering organizations to understand the controls required to manage the risks to their information.”

“It is important”, says Ward, “to understand that all organizations in the UK and Ireland, on both sides of the public/private sector divide, have an explicit obligation under law to ensure that personal and corporate information is managed in a safe manner.

“The current compliance overload over the past four or five years has led to an inordinate focus on managing risks to compliance rather than understanding the risks to information – and this focus has meant that we look to overuse of technical controls to show due diligence to ensure that when a breach occurs, that penalties will not be levied; it is not designed to reduce the likelihood of breaches themselves,” he adds.

“This approach is, in my humble opinion, unsustainable, as it does not look to the implementation of the controls and fails to address the business risk management issue that exists in most organizations.

This is turn has no more benefit to the business than placing money in the shredder.” he explained.

“A classic case of these issues”, he says, “was the ICO's recent engagement with Lush after the cosmetics retailer suffered a payment card breach; although the outcome was favourable for all concerned, the key lesson to be learnt is that the current compliance boundaries can now be crossed by another interested party.

What stops the ICO from looking beyond the compliance scope of PCI and entering its own jurisdiction which is the entire business?

“The current lack of corporate information governance in today's businesses will soon result in increased penalties and I feel that this case will be a tipping point; despite the clamour for more prescription from assurance frameworks, my own experience is that many implementations of the PCI DSS are tightly scoped and shows there is little appetite for additional level of prescription that comes with little more benefit than a licence to undertake business on the internet.

This proves to me that the current focus on compliance risk management as we know it is nearing an end, and something else is required to assist organizations to understand and manage the risks to their information going forward.”

BlackBerry downtime illustrates reputation risks of social media

2011-10-27T21:51:00.001+02:00

The risks of using social media for critical service announcements were highlighted yesterday (10th October) when BlackBerry posted notices of downtime on various social media channels.

BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were unable to use email, BBM and various other services due to a major fault. To inform users of the incident, Blackberry chose to utilise social media, posted a message stating:

“Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues. We're investigating, and we apologise for any inconvenience.”

This basic message resulted in a stream of abuse and negative comments, with 2,500+ messages being posted on Facebook alone.

The incident shows that companies need to think very carefully about whether unrestricted social media is an appropriate medium for customer service information.

If organizations decide to go down this route, it is critical that messages are not just posted and left; they must be monitored and customer care employees must proactively engage with customer responses.

The Financial Turmoil and Business Continuity

2011-10-27T21:49:00.000+02:00

‘Eurozone at tipping point’, ‘Greece may be forced to default’, ‘Is the euro doomed?’ The headlines alone make you want to pull the covers over your head.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, tells the BBC: “This is the most serious financial crisis at least since the 1930s, if not ever.”

He then went on to call for a calm reaction to the crisis; which led to a few wry smiles!

If the financial crisis does get appreciably worse or, heaven forbid, the euro were to fail, what does this mean for business continuity professionals? Because, call the eurozone meltdown what you like, it’s certainly a crisis: and crisis is what we do isn’t it?

Contingency planning makes us all gaze into a crystal ball from time to time in an attempt to predict what might happen so we can plan accordingly and provide contingencies. But inevitably: ‘All plans imply an attempt to impose the values of the past...on the future.’

So it doesn’t mean we always get it right. But if the world’s economy or ‘just’ the eurozone does take a serious dive then at some point organizations are going to look to us to help get them out of this mess.

So what can we, as business continuity professionals, do to help: and how can our specialist knowledge be leveraged to help those trying to overcome the financial crisis?

We have a responsibility to understand as much as we can about the financial situation, but clearly it’s not our job to solve it.

For that there are leaders and governments; though some might argue it is just such people and institutions that got us into the crisis and of course within companies, particularly banks, there are experts assigned to investments, governance, auditing and PR who are trying to mitigate risk.

We stray into those fields at our peril. But what about the aftermath of a crisis? Many predict that inflation will go through the roof and this could spark further looting or civil unrest on the streets.

There could also be lengthy utility failures, fuel shortages, disruption to public transport and pressure on supply chains.

Perhaps staff won’t be able to travel to work or prefer to stay at home to look after their families. The fallout from these kinds of problems has our name written all over them.

The job of the business continuity professional is to identify risks and impacts to critical processes.

For each critical process we have to identify ways of providing a structure that enables these processes to be performed during or in the wake of a crisis.

Once the resources needed to perform these actions are identified this can form the basis of a plan, which can then be tested to see whether core critical processes really can continue to operate in extreme circumstances; and it doesn’t get more extreme than the uncharted territory that we would enter should the European banking system or the euro fail.

Unravelling a financial crisis may be way outside our skill set, but our business as usual is business as unusual and crisis our stock in trade.

Perhaps it’s a good time to review business continuity plans in the light of the societal impacts that could occur.

Social media risks explored

2011-10-27T21:46:00.000+02:00

Social media poses significant risks to European businesses, according to a survey by the Federation of European Risk Management Associations in cooperation with the Institute of Risk Management (IRM).

Risk professionals from both organizations were asked which three cyber risks they thought were the greatest threats to business in general and to their own organizations. A total of 186 replied to the online survey during August and September 2011.

For business in general, reputation risk from social media was cited as a material risk by nearly 50 percent of respondents and loss of confidential information through social media by 20 percent.

These concerns ranked social media along with non-malicious operational IT risks, theft of customer information and malicious interference with IT systems as the greatest cyber threats to business in the eyes of the risk professionals.

The emphasis shifted somewhat when it came to respondents’ own organizations. More than half put operational, non-malicious IT risks among the top three, followed by 43 percent who mentioned theft of customer information.

However social media risks were next with 42 percent who included them among the biggest exposures to their own organization with 21 percent concerned about loss of confidential information through social media.

In response to additional questions to FERMA members, one-third of 36 responses said they had already been concerned by a denigration attack. One-quarter of the 98 responses said their company had suffered an attack on confidential information.

Other findings from the surveys:

- Risk managers are widely involved in managing cyber risks in addition to IT security; over 80 percent of the responses confirmed this.

- Most organizations have a policy for their employees on the use of social media (65 percent) or are in the process of implementing one (14 percent).

- Most organisations either map their cyber risks (53 percent) or are in the process of doing so (31 percent).

Ten early warning signs of fraud in organisations

2011-10-27T21:44:00.000+02:00

Awareness of the signs and a sound approach to countering them can often deter many opportunistic incidents of fraud.

The list is as follows:

1. ERRATIC REPORTING: This sign is just as applicable to suppliers and contractors as it is to internal departments and functions within the organization. Erratic, incomplete, late or excuse-laden management reporting is often a classic sign that something is wrong. One of the possibilities is the existence of fraud. Further investigation will reveal that lip service and increasingly tenuous explanations are given assertively to thwart follow up activity. Common excuses used are often the frequent occurrence of IT failures, technology compatibility issues between different company systems or international systems. It is also often the case that once reports are complete there are typically delays in them reaching those who need to review the data.

ACTION: Insist on up-to-date reporting, within a set timetable and then build this into the internal GRC (governance risk and compliance) systems. Wherever appropriate adopt an enterprise-wide approach to technology to help with systems issues.

2. APPARENT PROCESS LAZINESS: A weakening of anti-fraud and data security systems can happen naturally, over time; and is normal – especially when things get busy. This occurs where precautions and risk-avoidance measures get by-passed or ignored in practice as time goes by. This could just be the natural adjustment of systems to the practicalities of working life and busy peaks, or it could be deliberate and sinister. However, with the seemingly right processes in place, top level management are often lulled into a false sense of security that they are actually being used, whilst the fraudster is busy at work getting around them.

ACTION: Make sure you implement the suggestions of your internal compliance managers and organize appropriate training to reinforce attitudes and practise. Ensure that the control processes, especially in tendering, purchasing, invoicing and customer controls and identifications are ALWAYS kept strong, managed and regularly reviewed. Where systems/processes are under pressure when used in practise, introduce a review process – and then adapt them promptly.

3. ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND THE DESIRE TO DUMP DATA: A major indicator can be the act of deletion or pressure on staff to delete, remove or otherwise dump past records following a restructure, a new division launch, a JV or acquisition. An excuse of, “Oh I’m sorry those files were destroyed.” should be cause for alarm. It will be an even bigger problem where international operations are involved as it’s far harder to find or recreate evidence in a foreign territory.

ACTION: Take care to establish and log where paper documents are and when they should and should not be stored. Identify who is in control of the system processes and who is responsible for and has ownership of the records. They are not always the same person of course. Ensure that scanning, and indexing works properly and that no-one can intercept/edit documents. Also ensure that storage capacity is enough and controlled properly. Where acquisitions and mergers are concerned, ensure that all documents are available and stored appropriately and securely, especially those that relate to IP protection, IP development records, audit trails and staff contracts. In particular, if you are acquiring a business make sure that you have indemnities/penalty clauses built into the acquisition agreements that relate to the availability of data, logs, audit trails and so forth.

4. DATA INCONSISTENCIES OR ABSENCE IN THE ARCHIVES: Whether it is archive data or cross reference checks that are missing or wrong; factual inconsistencies will also occur naturally. The cheats who seek to defraud an organization will use the possibility to explain such inconsistencies and hide their fraud.

ACTION: Make sure that all files are electronically stored, with appropriate back-ups as part of your compliance systems and that no-one has the access to any files that include a delete capability. It is also worth having internal or external auditors sample check key files from time to time as a part of the audit programme. In addition arrange for the HR department to make it a gross misconduct issue to destroy data without recorded approval from above. This may not deter the fraudster but if nobody else is doing it the fraudster is more likely to be spotted at an early stage.

5. AUDIT-TIME DELAYS: Excuses, confusion or wild goose chases when disclosing to auditors, be they internal or external, can be a telltale sign too. We need to remember though that the audit team is not there to find fraud, rather to ensure that the correct processes are in place that will deliver appropriate protection.

ACTION: Ensure that everyone treats audits as important and make sure that they are completed on time and properly, and with appropriate audit skills. Where there have been delays or difficulties investigate why this was the case by drilling down into the detail. Make sure that the business critical and financial exposure areas take a priority and act upon all failings both quickly and completely; with follow-up audits if necessary.

6. BEHAVIOURAL ANOMALIES: These can range from acute defensiveness and resistance to attending review meetings, through to blaming strategies or even aggression when specific questions are asked about processes or figures. These behavioural anomalies have probably already been noticed through the assessment process or by HR staff. Research shows that internal fraudsters are most likely to be either ‘youngsters who cut across the processes and systems’ or ‘middle aged executives with the authority and a gripe’.

ACTION: Get HR more closely involved. Then if you still have concerns about such people upon closer inspection, all the relevant files need to be pulled and checked, or you might even consider a private investigator to look deeper into the processes used by such high risk people.

7. GOSSIP MONGERS IN OVERDRIVE: Staff whispers and rumours “that all is not right” should always be taken seriously. These are, however, so often overlooked by senior management.

ACTION: Listen, take all such rumours seriously and investigate the reality.

8. TWITCHY NON-EXECS: Good non-execs provide a considered, independent and external perspective. Often they bring in specific expertise from outside the board’s immediate experience and their skills can vary from financial knowledge through to IT. When their comfort factor ‘goes south’ or when they have a ‘bee in the bonnet’ about something that does not add up or make sense, they often have good reason to worry. So must you.

ACTION: It is always good for the business to maintain a fresh supply of new thinking, new approaches and new concerns. Thus if non-execs have concerns about particular issues, one should fund their thinking by allowing them to bring in the appropriate specialist experts that can investigate matters more deeply.

9. UNOFFICIAL IT WORK: Technical staff working around the enterprise conducting unsupervised IT activity, often outside normal hours can also be a worrying sign, both from a risk and a cost perspective. Not every company is large enough to have a full IT department that might spot such issues through system audit trails. This is more common in smaller organizations where some are working more to help themselves than to help the organization that is paying for their IT equipment and the software they use.

ACTION: Do the IT security staff look and think further than just password expiry issues? Make sure that someone is on the look-out for data-theft, IPR theft, time theft (people spending all day on Facebook etc.), or simple theft of IT assets. Make sure you have a proper asset register and IT audit system in place.

10. SCAPEGOATING: Where people are given a title but without actual responsibility, it can effectively cover up what is going on with those who do have responsibility or power in a situation. The fraudster’s hope is that should the balloon go up the scapegoat takes the blame, at least long enough for records to be destroyed and evidence removed.

ACTION: Make sure that you have strong and cascaded accountabilities. Ensure that people know what they should be doing, and that they are doing what is required of them. Make sure that everyone is contributing to the business objectives. Make sure HR is involved in creating or reviewing job specifications.

The Cloud± Service level agreements

2011-10-24T15:26:00.000+02:00

Most discussions about cloud computing center on technology, software, or whatever exciting new service happens to be in the spotlight, but a lot of the times people forget about one of the most basic elements of the cloud: service level agreements. How will it perform?

Moving to the cloud means you're buying an outsourced service. Therefore, looking at computing from a service perspective, the first concern on the minds of both customers and companies should be the service level agreement, as well as the components of the service and it's fancy technological elements.

If you think of entering a cloud computing agreement in the same terms as entering a relationship. Before the cloud, customers and companies had a long distance fairly remote relationships, with only the occasional brief but passionate encounters, normally at the deployment stage, followed by long periods of waiting for new events; patches and updated versions.

Whereas, on the cloud, everyone is living together, in a symbiotic way, with no time apart. In this model, the most important thing is to avoid clashes and annoying others so much that they move out.

The service level agreement has always been the key to this. Establishing the ground rules, so everyone knows what may or may not be done and including, what level of annoyance each party will tolerate.

Availability

An important thing to realise is that the perception of quality in a service is relative to the needs of customers. I don’t mind if the electricity doesn’t work in my home while I am at work, but if the power goes out when I am sitting down to watch some TV, I will hate the power company.

The same goes for cloud services. If you give 99% availability, but the 1% failure always happens in the middle of the business day, customers will quickly abandon your service, despite it being within the agreed level.

The flip side of this coin is that most of us don’t really need that 99.995% availability; we need 100% availability whenever we decide to use the service. Since most usage habits are pretty predictable, a company offering a cloud service (especially software) can optimise itself so that offline periods fall outside peak usage times.

The cloud enables companies to easily and closely monitor usage patterns, so if you find out that people only use your cloud-based solution on the first five business days of each month during business hours (this could be a payroll application, for instance), you better make sure that your servers can handle the peak load and that you have round-the-clock support during this time.

At the same time, you can probably save money (and pass these savings on to clients) by reducing your capacity and having less support people the rest of the month.

Performance transparency

Another very important thing to remember is that a service level agreement is only as useful as the capacity of the user to monitor it. Transparency is key here.

If you are using a service, any service, you must have a simple way not only of checking if the service is online or offline (like flipping a switch to check if the power is on), but also to monitor whatever metric was established on the agreement.

If you are building a cloud service, remember to include a “control panel” so that your customers, the press, a regulator or ombudsman and even the competition can quickly see your status.

Remember always that transparency creates trust and tolerance: the most stressful thing about a traffic jam is not knowing what is going on and for how long it stretches.

So, if you are building a cloud service, or moving your company’s existing software to the cloud: think first about the service level your customers want and think again as to what you can offer, and from that you can build your new service.

Don’t simply say, “I’m on the cloud, I’ll be available 24×7″ and avoid frustrations on both sides. If you are purchasing a cloud service, make sure that you are not demanding nor paying for more availability than you actually need.

Good Luck, and I hope it will be silver linings all the way!

Why your coworkers may not trust you

2011-10-24T14:05:00.000+02:00

According to a recent Civility in America 2011 survey, two out of three employees report that their performance has declined due to workplace incivility and bad manners. They also cite a “critical need” for training in manners and civility.

Most employees think that a breach of trust must be severe or even scandalous to take a toll on their relationships with co-workers. We all now that little breaches of trust over time are a big deal. Like death by a thousand paper cuts, they kill productivity, performance, and morale.

Here are seven reasons your co-workers might not trust you and show how to avoid the most common mistakes:

1. You withhold trust in others

Trust is a two-way street. If you want people to trust you, you need to trust them. For starters, avoid micromanaging. Instead, give your co-workers the latitude to put their full talents to work.

2. You fail to acknowledge effort

When a co-worker goes above and beyond for you, how do you respond? Do you take a moment to personally recognize his effort? Or do you just say “Thanks” in a perfunctory email and move on to the next task?

3. You miss deadlines

Life happens and you miss a deadline here and there. No big deal, right? Wrong. Every time you don’t deliver, you betray trust because your co-workers were depending on you.

4. You arrive late for meetings

When you consistently arrive late, your co-workers feel that you’re wasting their time. They also feel that you’d only be willing to do that if you think your time matters more than theirs.

5. You don’t admit your mistakes

By admitting your own mistakes, you not only acknowledge your humanity but also allow your co-workers to acknowledge theirs. As a result, communication opens up, mutual trust is built, and people feel free to take smart, creative risks.

6. You spin the truth

Do your co-workers know that they count on you to tell the truth or do they just assume you’ll tweak it? Tell it like it is. Spin never passes the sniff test anyway; people see it for what it is and, sooner or later, lose trust.

7. You behave badly

Be aware of your behaviour. Instead of berating a co-worker for missing a deadline, for instance, calmly ask how and why things got off track. Understand what that person needs from you in the future.

Meet the Entrepreneurs - Seema Pabari's TiffinDay

2011-10-23T10:38:00.000+02:00

A major life change caused Tiffinday's Seema Pabari to radically rethink her life. The result? Some of the most delicious food you'll ever taste.

All prepared and delivered in an eco-conscious, trash-free way by a company with a sustainable, triple bottom line who believes in growth with a healthy, sustainable social model.

Adobe WebCam privacy invasion flaw in Flash - Fixed?

2011-10-21T21:04:00.000+02:00

Adobe has fixed a privacy invasion flaw in Flash that allowed remote spies to turn on a computer user’s webcam via a rigged web site.

The vulnerability, discovered and documented by researcher Feross Aboukhadijeh, is a variation of the clickjacking technique and could be used to turn on a webcam and microphone direct from a web site without the user’s knowledge or consent.

In this video, Aboukhadijeh documents the attack scenario:

Adobe says the issue is now fixed:

Adobe is aware of a report describing a clickjacking issue related to the online Flash Player Settings Manager. We have resolved the issue with a change to the Flash Player Settings Manager SWF file hosted on the Adobe website. No user action or Flash Player product update are required.

If, like me, you are paranoid about these kinds of bugs activating your webcam, do the smart thing and put a sticky over the camera. Matter solved.

BYOD: ‘bring your own device’ How will it impact your company

2011-10-21T20:22:00.002+02:00

In case you haven't heard, the Bring Your Own device to work strategy is doing the rounds in the more enlightened corporate IT world and is a very attractive option for Developers, Administrators and other IT geeks of that ilk.

That aside, as a non-geek, BYOD will require serious attention to the infrastructure and support policies within your organisation.

The one really good reason not to let employees use their own smartphone, notebook or tablet at work, is because it creates an IT management nightmare.

Firstly or blatantly, there are inherent security and regulatory compliance risks. Unless you have complete control or have great faith the responsibility of IT geeks to protect their own assets.

Even if you restrict and /or allow certain products or technologies that people can bring and use, it will be next to impossible to make sure everyone keeps their machines updated with the proper OS and application patches.

If you use the argument that BYOD will save the company money on assets, their maintenance and their depreciation, you may be disappointed. Many businesses supporting BYOD expect employees to buy and support devices at their own expense but the boundary between the BYOD asset an dthe infrastructure and security policies behind that may be blurred.

Consequently, there is a high risk of holes opening up in your Securoty, DMZ and Firewall. The money not spent on assets may have to be diverted to protect the infrastructure and will require the development of new IT management policies. Can you say your organization is BOYD ready?

To simplify small and midsize businesses (SMEs) should be prepared to sense BYOD and it's impact in the following ways.

#1: Your technology upgrade cycles will be shorter
Most smartphones are turned over every one or two years, because of carrier contracts. That means employees will be exposed to new features more quickly and be able to keep up with business enhancing features made available on open platforms e.g. Skype, Social media, etc.

#2: You will need to consider supporting or including more devices, not fewer
Even if your company chooses not to let employees bring their own smartphones, consumer tablets or notebooks into their work setting, it will need to consider adding more devices to the menu that allows people to work whilst travelling. Consider this an evolution of your corporate benefits or perks strategies. People should be able to choose their own device for work, even if they don’t own them outright.

#3: You need to rethink how you distribute applications
Thanks to Apple, most of us have become really familiar with the idea that you can download pretty much any application you need from searchable store. Over time, employees will come to expect the same from our IT team. Updates and upgrades will be enforced through alerts, much like the store concept.

#4: You need to raise your game on mobile security
Mobile malware and antivirus software packages exist, but they haven’t been widely used. If you allow people to bring their own mobile device, that needs to change. What’s more, your organisation will need to govern what data can and cannot be downloaded locally. That’s especially true in certain industries, especially healthcare or financial services where the Data Protection Act is very pertinent.

#5: You need to rethink the concept of mobility.
IDC expects the number of mobile workers worldwide to surpass 1.2 billion by 2013. Why would you provision someone with a desktop computer, even if it is a person who traditionally works in a back office position, if there is a chance that he or she might need greater flexibility in the future?

Forrester Research predicts that up to 60 percent of information workers will need to work in some location outside their office during the average workweek. Does that number fit well with your asset projections for notebook computers, media tablets or smartphones in your organisation?

Bring Your Own Device to work certainly has an allure and attraction from an financial asset management perspective and as a motivator for Developers and IT Geeks but have we thought this all the way through and are we, and our organisations really ready to adopt this strategy.

How Many (non-UK) Slaves Work for YOU?

2011-10-20T13:44:00.001+02:00

Methodology:
How did SlaveryFootprint.org come up with the total number of slaves working for me?

MY TOTAL SLAVERY FOOTPRINT represents the number of forced labourers that were likely to be involved in creating and manufacturing the products I buy.

This is determined based on information regarding the processes used to create these products as well as investigations of the countries in which these stages of production take place for known slave labour (within these specific processes.)

This number is compiled from multiple individual product scores (see below).

To create individual scores, SlaveryFootprint first chose to investigate slave labour usage in the supply chains of more than 400 of the most popular consumer products. SlaveryFootprint used the following definitions of slave labour:

How do we define Slavery? (Forced Labour):

Anyone who is forced to work without pay, being economically exploited, and is unable to walk away.

Note: Forced Labour, also known as involuntary servitude, may result when unscrupulous employers exploit workers made more vulnerable by high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption, political conflict, or cultural acceptance of the practice.

Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, but individuals also may be forced into labour in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labour, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited as well.

After investigating the slavery usage in individual product components, based on the most common places in which they are mined, grown or made, we assigned scores to each of these 400+ products.

These scores were based on a complex algorithm that determines the minimum number of slaves (forced laborers) used to produce each product. This algorithm is graphically represented in the diagram below:

Product Score

Represents the likely number of forced labourers that have been involved in creating the product at some stage in the process of production. Slavery must be known to exist to a significant degree in some stage of production.

Source Score

Represents the probability that each source is produced in a country using slave labour in its production to a significant degree.

Manufacturing/Assembly Score

Represents the probability that the final product is manufactured in a country using slave labour to a significant degree.

Weights, Measurements, and Reports

Each score therefore represents the likelihood of slavery used in production. This likelihood was developed from investigations and research drawn from the following sources:
The five main reports used were:

1. US Department of State “Trafficking in Persons Report 2011” The most comprehensive worldwide report on the efforts of governments to combat severe forms of trafficking in persons.
2. US Department of Labour (DOL) “List of Goods Produced by Child Labour or Forced Labour 2010” A list of goods from countries that the Bureau of International Labour Affairs has substantiated used of forced labour or child labour its production.
3. International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) “Committee of Experts Reports 2011-2003” The US Committee of Experts undertakes investigations of government reports on ratified conventions. The Committee's role is to provide an impartial evaluation of violations of international labour standards.
4. Transparency International‘s “Corruption Index 2010” This index is used to measure and quantify the levels of public sector corruption in 178 countries around the world.
5. Freedom House “Freedom in the World 2010 Combined Average Ratings – Independent Countries” The Freedom in the World 2010 survey contains reports on 194 countries and 14 related and disputed territories. Each country report includes a narrative on the following information: population, capital, political rights (numerical rating), civil liberties (numerical rating), status (Free, Partly Free, or Not Free), and a 10-year ratings timeline.

Additionally, SlaveryFootprint utilised published data pertaining to forced labour issues. This included vetted data drawn from a variety of international sources. The following inclusion criteria were used:

Drawn from ONE Internationally credible source with expert review i.e. ILO, International Office for Migration, World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Security Council
Referenced in at least TWO multi-national reliable sources i.e. CNN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International
Reported on by at least THREE disparate and unrelated local news sources i.e. The Guardian, Swedwatch, Jakarta Post, Enough Project

Note: This data set will continue to be expanded based on emerging research and the results of further investigations that meet the aforementioned inclusion criteria.

Qualifications

To ensure peer review and confirmation of these data sets and their sources, methodology, and results, SlaveryFootprint convened experts on the issue from government, academia, non-government organizations, leading think tanks as well as independent experts.

Creating a Composite Score

To combine individual product scores into one composite score assigned to an individual, a survey was developed to assess and quantify an individual’s consumption.

To make this survey both meaningful and time-effective, iterative processes of inherent assumptions were utilised based on focus group assessments.

Assumptions were based on defining factors inclusive of, but not limited to, age, sex, domicile, and family size. Composite scores were quantified based conservative estimates.

Note: Slavery Footprint 1.0 is not based on specific brands or manufacturers.

For more information about SlaveryFootprint's methodology, scoring or organisation email info@slaveryfootprint.org or visit the SlaveryFootprint website.

Salary Negotiations: An HR View

2011-10-20T09:29:00.002+02:00

As employees, we become nervous and concerned when entering salary negotiations but, as with all negotiations, it is good to know where the HR person is coming from. It always helps if you're both speaking the same language.

First of all, it’s not every company that tries to make their personnel derisory offers. All HR personnel want motivated and balanced teams, therefore individual satisfaction with your salary offer is important to them and is a big motivator for the coming year.

In one instance we have had HR personnel speaking about 'percentiles.' This is a very common way of talking about company finances and investments but employees may be less aware of it's significance in salary negotiations. The key factor is to ascertain that you are both on the same page and when it comes to stats, that may be awkward.

Your View of Salary Band

If, during the negotiation you are told they you are currently below the 50th percentile and you will be advanced closer to the 75th percentile, would you be pleased to accept this?

From your side, you will have in your mind a graph similar to the one above, making the 'logical' assumption that the salary band is divided from 0% to 100%. But that may not be the case in the HR stats world you are facing.

Your HR representative is looking at a different picture entirely.

We have had enquiries where HR personnel talk about percentiles but that is not normally the term used. HR would normally use the term “compa-ratio” and describe it around a midpoint on a salary curve. That midpoint is label as 100%. It’s the exact same graphical shape, except it is statistically 'labelled' differently. See below:

HR View of Salary Band

So, when a 'deceptive' HR person says you are getting paid at 75%, she wants you to think in terms of the first graph, believing you are getting more money than 75% of the people who do similar jobs.

This sounds OK, doesn’t it? The reality is, a compa-ratio of 75% means you’re getting paid less than the average person in the job. Not so good.

Salary compensation isn’t an exact science. A lot of it is pure guess work and gut feeling. Some companies do arrange salary surveys, but commonly, no two jobs are identical, even across organisations.

When, determining what salary band to slot a particular job into, a lot depends on what the manager is willing to pay for the positions and what's left in his budget. Unfortunately, Job Descriptions are often written or re-written, to fit a certain salary, not the other way around.

Additionally, most companies don’t allow your salary to be much more than 105% of midpoint anyway. You are never going to get 125% of “midpoint,” set your mind to it, that's just not happening.

Your potential for raises are also determined by your percentile. If you’re at 75% and have a fantastic performance rating, you probably believe you can expect a big raise. However, if you’re at 100% and have an even better performance rating, you may end up with a tiny raise. All this is because of that little bell curve and it's intransigent labels.

On principle, HR don’t want you going over 100%, so you won’t get a big raise no matter how fabulous you are. You have come to the point whereby to get a good raise, you have to get promoted into a different salary band, which is a whole different ballgame.

So, in reality, 75% is not a great place to be but in that position you’re nearing the top of what can be expected in that job, and you still have room for an increase in salary.

As a rule if you are given an updated salary offer, ask, “What is my compa-ratio?” and if they say, “You’re at 100%!” ask, “Is it possible for this job to be upgraded?” Because while you may be happy with the salary, you also know that come next year, you're getting no rise.

So, whilst you have the HR person's attention, ask about re-grading the job. They may roll their eyes and say no or they may say they will consider it but from your side, request a note be made in your file that you are reaching the ceiling and would like to advance your position. Worst case, you will sound ambitious.

NB: Negotiating salary is all about proposal and rejections: trying and taking risks. Sometimes offers are firm on salary. Sometimes they are not.

Sometimes companies will move more on benefits and other factors. Things like vacation, commuting and work schedules, which may be more important to you than a few dollars more.

Hopefully you can now enter the salary negotiations arena a little better armed. Good luck!

Paris Blocks Escalation of Rooftop Radiation

2011-10-19T16:10:00.002+02:00

The Mayor of Paris has halted construction of additional cellular phone towers to the city’s roofs this week, according to Le Monde

The City established a pact in 2003 with mobile service providers to allow certain companies to construct cellular towers on municipal buildings within stated limits.

The decision to stop construction of the towers coincides with the end of the city’s contract with the mobile service companies.

Paris is the only city in France to have an agreement with cell phone companies which limits the exposure of electromagnetic waves to two volts per meter over 24 hours.

The mayor has accused the French Telecom Federation of allowing exposures of up to 15 volts per meter, levels that some reports deem unhealthy.

The European Environmental Agency reported in 2007 that health risks are associated with electromagnetic waves, though the threshold of a “dangerous” level remains highly contested worldwide.

Some advocacy groups like Ecoforum, based in the south of France, insist that levels above 1.5 volts per meter pose health risks.

In a public test at the beginning of this month in Marseille, Ecoforum’s president, Hugo Espinoza, tested emissions with a smart phone that registered eight volts per meter.

Despite the uncertainty of any imminent health risks, the 186 current cellular towers which spike the skyline of Paris may soon be removed.

Deputy Mayor Mao Péninou told Le Monde, “We are also looking at legal options for the facilities currently in place. They are no longer serving as experiment sites, so we will see how we can legally dismantle them.”

While Parisians can rejoice in the improved visual aesthetics of removing the cellular towers, the discussion on cell phone use continues in France.

Last Saturday, the French Association of Environmental health launched a new study in the south of France to study the effects of the waves in social housing structures.

Researchers hope to re-evaluate the safety French volt exposure limits, which remain higher than other European countries.

Politicians Peddling Fear and Terror

2011-10-19T14:38:00.001+02:00

Why did the approval ratings of President George W. Bush, who was perceived as indecisive before September 11, 2001 soar over 90 percent after the terrorist attacks?

Because Americans were acutely aware of their own deaths. That is one lesson from the psychological literature on “mortality salience” reviewed in a new article called “The Politics of Mortal Terror.”

The paper, by psychologists Florette Cohen of the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island and Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College, appears in October’s Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science.

The fear people felt after 9/11 was real, but it also made them ripe for psychological manipulation, experts say. “We all know that fear tactics have been used by politicians for years to sway votes,” says Cohen. Now psychological research offers insight into the chillingly named “terror management.”

The authors cite studies showing that awareness of mortality tends to make people feel more positive toward heroic, charismatic figures and more punitive toward wrongdoers.

In one study, Cohen and her colleagues asked participants to think of death and then gave them statements from three fictional political figures.

One was charismatic: he appealed to the specialness of the person and the group to which she belonged. One was a technocrat, offering practical solutions to problems.

The third stressed the value of participation in democracy. After thinking about death, support for the charismatic leader shot up eightfold.

Even subliminal suggestions of mortality have similar effects. Subjects who saw the numbers 911 or the letters WTC had higher opinions of a Bush statement about the necessity of invading Iraq. This was true of both liberals and conservatives.

Awareness of danger and death can bias even peaceful people toward war or aggression. Iranian students in a control condition preferred the statement of a person preaching understanding and the value of human life over a jihadist call to suicide bombing.

But primed to think about death, they grew more positive toward the bomber. Some even said that they might consider becoming a martyr.

As time goes by and the memory of danger and death grows fainter, however, “morality salience” tends to polarize people politically, leading them to cling to their own beliefs and demonize others who hold opposing beliefs—seeing in them the cause of their own endangerment.

The psychological research should make voters wary of emotional political appeals and even of their own emotions in response, Cohen says.

“We encourage all citizens to vote with their heads rather than their hearts. Become an educated voter. Look at the candidate’s positions and platforms. Look at who you are voting for and what they stand for.”

Thinking of Creativity - Hold a meeting - Cartoon

2011-10-19T14:36:00.002+02:00

UK NHS Privatisation and the Corporations Driving it

2011-10-19T13:14:00.002+02:00

iPhone keylogger: Snooping on desktop typing

2011-10-18T18:32:00.002+02:00

Security researchers have discovered they can detect the vibrations caused by using a computer keyboard and read off what is being typed simply by placing a smartphone with a keylogging app on the desk nearby.

Patrick Traynor and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta were able to use the motion sensors inside an iPhone to read keystrokes from a keyboard 5 centimetres away with up to 80 per cent accuracy.

The sensors don't recognise the vibrations of particular individual keys, but for consecutive pairs of keystrokes they can tell whether the keys are on the left or right of the keyboard and how close together they are.

This information is then matched to a dictionary to recreate the typed word. For example, the word "canoe" breaks down into four pairs: "CA", "AN", "NO" and "OE". The first pair is classified as left-left-near, the second is left-right-far, and so on.

The resulting patterns aren't unique to a particular word, but they are good enough to reconstruct a message when you already know something about its contents.

The team tested their algorithm on a dictionary of 799 words such as "mayor" and "ballot" gathered from news articles about an election in Chicago.

The algorithm provided its best guesses for matching patterns to words, identifying the correct word as a first guess 40 per cent of the time and as one of the top five guesses 80 per cent of the time.

"Context can help us figure out what was really typed when mistakes are made," says Traynor – and a human attacker could fill in the blanks by making their own guesses.

Microsoft PocketTouch - YouTube

2011-10-18T16:00:00.001+02:00

The second presentation innovation Microsoft has announced, is called PocketTouch and it is aimed at making smartphones receptive to touch gestures through fabric, such as a pocket, purse, or jacket.

The idea is that sometimes people want to quickly interact with a smartphone without having to pull it out. Microsoft refers to PocketTouch as an “eyes-free” solution. Here’s the description:

PocketTouch enables a rich set of gesture interactions, ranging from simple touch strokes to full alphanumeric text entry. Our prototype device consists of a custom multitouch capacitive sensor mounted on the back of a smartphone.

Similar capabilities could be enabled on most existing capacitive touchscreens through low-level access to the capacitive sensor… Our results suggest that PocketTouch will work reliably with a wide variety of fabrics used in today’s garments, and is a viable input method for quick eyes-free operation of devices in pockets.

PocketTouch are evolutionary steps of a larger effort by Microsoft Research to investigate the unconventional use of touch in devices to extend Microsoft’s vision of ubiquitous computing.”

It’s terrific to see Microsoft innovating on multitouch since it’s obviously a critical element of the future of computing. However, Microsoft Research has a track record of showing off lots of cool stuff that never comes to market.

They need to follow the lead of IBM’s prolific research devision, which is much better at commercializing and productizing its best innovations — or at least maybe IBM only shows off stuff that has a reasonable path to becoming a real product. Still, in this case, it looks like Microsoft has a couple innovations that aren’t just cute ideas.