Archive for December, 2010
Friday, December 24th, 2010
 By Allan Maurer
DURHAM, NC – I love my new wireless Kindle. It has a few drawbacks, like most digital devices, but by and large, if you’re a reader, sooner or later you’ll be buying an e-reader, and you could do worse than a Kindle.
The electronic “ink” technology is as easy to read—usually—as ink on paper. You occasionally need to adjust the way you hold it to eliminate minor—and I emphasize—minor glare. It doesn’t have back lighting, so you’ll need a clip on digital light if you plan to read it in the dark.
But because the device does not need any power to keep the page live while you read and lacks that back light, its battery lasts what seems like forever. I’ve gone a week without recharging and never got close to exhausting the battery.
It’s capacity—text does not take up much space—is enough to hold up to 3500 books. Mine has 270 digital books, including some hefty reference books, and has only used one-third of its 3 gig memory.
The six-inch size is too large to drop in a shirt or pants pocket, but drops into extra storage areas in most attaché cases and messenger bags. Google sells a leather case with a built in light that seems pricey at $50. I used an old automobile manual cover that fit it perfectly and protects it with a padded cover.
The wireless worked perfectly the first time and the only problem I had was that it dropped its wireless connection and then features—such as the one that keeps what you’re reading on top in the home page—stopped working. I called Amazon, which had me install updated firmware, but that didn’t help. Then, an online search took me to a Kindle blog post on the topic. Others had experienced a similar problem. It recommended unplugging my router and then plugging it in again, which I did.
Problem solved.
Includes browser and audio feature
Using the wireless browser, which is labeled experimental, can be a little awkward until you master moving around and typing in urls. But it worked instantly everywhere I tried it, from my home network to a McDonalds. Now when I go out for breakfast or lunch, I’ve got the New York Times, Washington Post, Raleigh News & Observer, TechJournal South or any other site right at my finger tips without needing to haul my netbook or pocket PC along.
It will also read books aloud, although I’m not crazy about the electronic voice, despite efforts to make it sound more human. You can chose a female or male reading voice. The audio is another “experimental” feature and my guess is that it will get better on future versions.
I love that the Kindle automatically opens to where I was last reading in a book. Not needing to hunt for bookmarks or guiltily dogear pages is a small but valuable feature. One thing I do not like is that navigating to deep chapters in books placed on the Kindle from other sources that the Kindle app (which is MobiPocket) is difficult.
The MobiPocket app on my Pocket PC lets me move around via the bar at the bottom, but that appears to be inactive in the Kindle, which has no touch screen features. Basically, that means if you upload a word or text doc to your Kindle, the only way to get to the back of the book is to click through page by page.
Lacks color
Other e-readers are offering color screens, but I don’t miss color on the Kindle. While I’m glad to have the web browser, I don’t plan on using it to do anything except read news and so on. While the lack of color isn’t important to me. It might be to some.
But to get color, you’re back to needing that LED screen, at least so far. If I want to read on an LED screen, I’ll use my netbook (and indeed, have read books on that, my pocket PC, and my regular computer screen). But after working with an LED screen all day and using one for other purposes as well most evenings, I really enjoy the low eye strain of reading on a Kindle.
The navigation controls, while not entirely ideal, are not so much trouble that they bother me and as I’ve gained experience using them, I barely notice their occasional short-comings. It allows you to place your ebooks in collections, a useful feature if you have as many as I do. It also lists all the titles you opened most recently if you prefer. I generally use that option.
Another experimental feature, the voice reader, a male or female electronic voice, is still a bit cold and unnatural sounding to me to use it with much pleasure, but nevertheless came in handy when I was riding in a car at night and didn’t have my LED light with me.
The ability to define any word easily and quickly while reading, to clip segments or make notes and save them to a My Clips file, is particularly useful to a student, writer, teacher or anyone else to whom reading is both necessary for work as well as pleasure.
I’ve bought several books and subscribed to a magazine and a blog, and Amazon delivers a new purchase in seconds. Amazon’s sample feature allows you to read a significant portion of a book—a couple of substantial chapters—before buying it. I’ve used that feature repeatedly. Once, the sample gave me everything I really wanted from a rare book that would cost $80 to buy. Several other times, I was sufficiently hooked to buy books I sampled.
One real plus with all e-readers that will allow you to put text, MS Word, and pdf files on your device, as Amazon does, is that you can now obtain a massive collection of fiction and nonfiction classics for free from the Gutenberg Project and other sources online, including Amazon itself and Google books. Here’s another place for classics that also has a nice selection of modern thrillers, mysteries and sci-fi that’s out of copyright: Munseys.
The Kindle software, essentially identical to Mobipockets, can also be used on a PC and assorted other mobile devices.
Amazon grumbles
I’ve heard some rumblings in the digital community about Amazon’s digital rights policies and their pressure on publishers to keep best seller prices under $10 for digital editions, but my guess is that Amazon is so much the dominant book seller now, it will continue to be a dominant player in the e-reader market, not something I’m as comfortable saying about the Barnes & Noble Nook, Sony’s entry or other devices.
The NOOK also uses E-Ink technology and allows you to lend the books you buy. I read recently that someone even downloaded the mobile game “Angry Birds” and played on a color Nook. From what I’ve read and heard, it’s likely to be a strong player, especially now that it offers competitive pricing (with the least expensive model only $149. Although you have to be concerned about the state of Borders’ survival, considering its financial difficulties, lately.
While those other readers offer some enhanced features and clearly have their fans, I’d bet money that the Kindle stays right up there in the e-reader wars.
Tags: Allan Maurer, Angry Birds, e-readers, Kindle review, Nook, WiFi Kindle review
Posted in Hardware, Reviewed | 5 Comments »
Friday, December 24th, 2010
 Maribeth Kuzmeski By Maribeth Kuzmeski
No matter what industry or profession you’re in, there are tons of ways to win over your customers and create brand loyalists who keep coming back.
Below are a few easy-to-implement ideas that will help you turn any customer into a fan for life. And though these tips address specific professions and businesses, keep in mind that great customer service translates across industries. Carefully consider each of them and think about how you can modify them to improve the service you provide your customers:
Offer flexible office hours. If you’re an attorney, financial advisor, or other professional whose clients are small business owners or any other busy business-type, you might consider offering to meet with them on evenings or Saturdays rather than during regular business hours. In doing so, you show them that you understand the time they spend with their business is essential and make it easier for them to do business with you.
Handle problems quickly. This is especially important for hotels and other hospitality services. Understand that your guests don’t need you when everything is going as planned. It’s when something goes wrong that they need great customer service to right their proverbial ship. When you’re presented with a guest’s problem, provide solutions on the spot.
“For example, if a busy guest’s luggage zipper breaks, what can you do to help?” says Kuzmeski. “Well, you might offer a coupon for a new piece of luggage from the hotel’s store. Keep spare luggage on hand for guests with a problem. Or simply offer to tape the luggage shut to ensure it makes it home safely. Figure out what you can do to get it right when something is going wrong for your guests, and they will keep coming back.”
Show them what you’ve got…before the big day. If you are a caterer, baker, florist, wedding planner, or any other professional who helps plan the most important or special days of your clients’ lives, always give them an unexpected taste of what you have to offer before the big day. For example, a wedding caterer might show up at the bride’s house a week before the wedding with a sampling of hors d’oeuvres. Or a florist might send the happy couple a bouquet of flowers two weeks in advance. By doing so, you show your clients that you care about them and also give them a preview of the great service you’ll provide on the big day.
Offer friendlier skies (and waiting rooms). Many people today view airports, and flying in general, as the places where all great customer service goes to die. In fact, often you can walk up to a ticket counter or onto a plane and never even have the airline employee make eye contact. If you work for an airline, know that many travelers today would just like to be acknowledged. Show your customers you’re happy they chose to fly with you. The same holds true, of course, for any business in any industry.
“Medical office reception areas can also sometimes be low on great customer service,” says Kuzmeski. “Their busy employees usually have to look at a computer most of the day, and they are trying to cycle patients through as quickly as possible. But by doing something as easy as making eye contact and smiling, you can begin to alleviate a sick patient’s stress—or in the case of the airline, a passenger’s travel worries.”
Fix it first. This one goes out to anyone who has ever gotten their freshly dry-cleaned clothes back only to find that a button has broken off of their favorite blouse or dress shirt. Or who has gotten their car back from the repair shop only to have another problem a week later. If you are a dry cleaner, fix the button—at no charge—before your customers pick up their clothing items. By doing so, you eliminate what could become a huge inconvenience for them and ensure they won’t have any qualms about bringing their next round of dry cleaning to your business.
For car repair shops, contact your clients if you see that there is something else wrong (or that could soon be wrong) with their car. Ask if they would like for you to go and ahead and fix it and offer a discount on your labor time. It is a great way to build goodwill in an industry where there is a lot of competition.
Provide worth-the-wait service, without the wait. For doctors, hospitals, veterinarians, or other medical service providers, a wonderful way to win the love of your patients is to ensure short wait times and flexible appointment times. For example, one hospital ER in Florida sponsors a billboard that shows its wait time in LCD real-time—as well as the ER wait times at other local hospitals. The sponsoring hospital has significantly lower times. By doing so, they show their patients that they understand wait time is a huge concern, and that most people fear they’ll end up spending hours and hours sitting in the waiting room if they ever have to go to the ER.
This tactic could easily be modified by other businesses where long waits are often a customer deterrent—for example, “big box” chains and popular grocery stores, phone companies like Verizon and AT&T (where the transactions take a long time), or at coffee shops that want to show they have short waits during the morning rush. Or you can do this on a smaller scale in your own medical office or small business by having your staff let clients/patients know exactly how long it will be before they can be seen.
“Obviously, the shorter the wait time the better, but by providing patients or clients with the wait length, you can show that you haven’t simply accepted that long wait times come with the territory at hospitals, medical offices, and some businesses,” says Kuzmeski. “Show them that you don’t think it’s okay if they have to wait a while to be seen, and that you understand that people want and deserve better.”
Give it away for free. Vistaprint, a global printing company, made jaw-dropping value their hallmark. They did so by offering 250 business cards for free, with a nominal $5.67 shipping and processing charge, to appeal to their target market: cost-conscious small businesses. Today, 66 percent of Vistaprint’s business comes from returning customers. In the first quarter of 2010 alone, they acquired 1.4 million new customers—many who started with a free order.
“Offering freebies might also be a great way to get customers into a new restaurant or boutique,” suggests Kuzmeski. “Give first-time customers a free appetizer or special discount—along with great service, of course!—and they will be happy to recommend more first-timers and to come back for more themselves.”
# # #
About the Author:
Maribeth Kuzmeski, MBA, is the author of five books, including …And the Clients Went Wild! How Savvy Professionals Win All the Business They Want (Wiley, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-470-60176-1, $24.95, www.AndTheClientsWentWild.com) and The Connectors: How the World’s Most Successful Businesspeople Build Relationships and Win Clients for Life (Wiley, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-470-48818-8, $22.95, www.TheConnectorsBook.com). She is the founder of Red Zone Marketing, LLC, which consults with businesses from entrepreneurial firms to Fortune 500 corporations on strategic marketing planning and business growth. Maribeth has personally consulted with some of the world’s most successful CEOs, entrepreneurs, and professionals. An internationally recognized speaker, she shares the tactics that businesspeople use today to create more sustainable business relationships, sales, and marketing successes.
Tags: Business advice, Seven tips for turning your customers into fans, Viewpoint
Posted in Business advice, Viewpoint | Comments Off
Friday, December 24th, 2010
 TORONTO – As 2011 nears, the issues IT departments will face in the coming year become more apparent. Top of the list is how companies can leverage all facets of the cloud.
Toronto-based uptime software, Inc. has revealed its “watch list,” highlighting potential cloud pitfalls that IT departments must be aware of before migrating infrastructure and applications to the cloud.
Uncovered through market research, customer interaction, and conversations with industry experts, these cloud pitfalls have been used to help tailor uptime software’s own IT systems management solution, up.time, to better serve its customers by providing support for datacenters operating in physical, virtual and cloud environments.
Recent Gartner research shows that cloud services have grown by over 16 percent in 2010, and that this type of growth is expected to continue through 2014. However, as companies execute their cloud strategy, it’s essential to weigh the risks (loss of control, unhappy end-users) and rewards (potential cost savings) that are unique to the cloud.
“Cloud computing has the potential to offer organizations dramatic operational efficiency and cost savings, but when improperly managed it can have disastrous results,” said Alex Bewley, CTO of uptime software.
“This past year, organizations began experimenting with cloud and in 2011 much of that experimenting will become full cloud adoption. CIOs, IT Managers and System Administrators alike need a sound plan along with deep performance monitoring in place before moving to the cloud in order to ensure the end result isn’t a new job hunt.”
The Top Six Cloud Pitfalls to Avoid in 2011:
- Underestimating How Bad Cloud Sprawl Can Be: Provisioning in the cloud is convenient and quick which provides both agility and a huge potential for abuse. Migrating too much or moving too quickly can lead to complete loss of control by IT and exponential costs. Remember Virtual sprawl? Times that by 50. Additionally, it will become even tougher to monitor and report on Service Level Agreements (SLAs) as applications move between physical, virtual and cloud environments. On top of that you may be required to purchase individual point tools to manage it all.
- Failing to Monitor Performance Can Lead to a Lack of Employment: Visibility into application performance in the cloud is critical, especially with your user-facing applications. Whether it’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), without cloud performance monitoring tools in place there is no visibility into how applications are performing. As an IT department, your lines of business will look disparagingly upon you if there is a lack of visibility into the performance of your services. If you can’t monitor and report on cloud performance and availability, then you are not providing business value.
- Lack of Knowledge of the Cloud Services/Applications You Actually Support: As applications are provisioned to the cloud, it can be easy to miss what is actually running without proper tracking. Beware of getting caught in the “out of sight, out of mind” dilemma of losing track of applications residing on-premise or in the cloud. If applications get lost in the shuffle now, imagine the nightmare down the road when your cloud infrastructure grows even more complex.
- Perils of Platform Lock-in: Be sure to pick your cloud platform carefully and do your homework. Once you have chosen a cloud vendor and have provisioned applications, it is tough to move them elsewhere if you are unhappy with the performance or service. Cloud providers usually make it difficult to extract the data from their cloud and in many cases, a third party tool is needed to migrate that data back on-premise. Once you have signed the dotted line, you are essentially locked-in.
- Mismanaged Performance Guarantees: Once in the cloud, applications are at the mercy of the platform now carrying them. For instance, performance latency can be caused by the simple geographical location of the servers your applications are now housed on. As the IT team, you will need to set expectations both internally and externally concerning how applications will perform, taking into consideration those on-premise applications vs. those that run in the cloud.
- Compromised Privacy and Security: A challenge to running applications in the cloud is knowing where the server that now houses your applications is physically located. There could be jurisdiction issues associated with the applications that you have running in the cloud based on the location of those new servers. Also, the IT person running those servers in the cloud may not understand the sensitivity of the data you have handed over. Remember, your company information is in the hands of someone outside your company wall and unless the correct processes and performance monitoring are in place, your critical data it is at the mercy of the cloud.
Tags: six cloud pitfalls to avoid, uptime software
Posted in Business advice, IT, Studies, surveys, reports | 1 Comment »
Friday, December 24th, 2010
 RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC – The staff at TechJournal South wishes you and yours a happy holiday season and your business great prosperity in the coming year.
We’ve posted several stories we hope you have the chance to read while we’re gone.
We will be taking our annual holiday vacation next week and won’t be publishing eWire.
We will be back January 3.
See you next year!
The TechJournal South staff
Tags: TechJournal South holiday vacation announcement
Posted in Events | Comments Off
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
 ROCKVILLE, MD - Supernus Pharmaceuticals, which is developing central nervous system treatments, has filed for a $100 million initial public offering of stock.
The company plans to trade on Nasdaq under the symbol “SUPN.”
The venture-backed company has raised funding from New Enterprise Associates, OrbiMed Associates, and Abingworth Management. NEA holds 44.8 percent pre-IPO stake, the largest. The other two investors hold 17.9 percent each.
Formerly known as Shire Laboratories, the company develops drugs for the treatment of epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, conduct disorders, depression, anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorders.
Tags: Abingworth Management, CNS drugs, IPOs, MD, NEA, OrbiMed Associates, Pharma, Rockville, Supernus Pharmaceuticals
Posted in Biotech, IPOs, Maryland, Pharma, Potomac | Comments Off
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
 Jason Caplain By Jason Caplain, General Partner, Southern Capitol Ventures
A couple of months ago, I spoke with Kevin O’Connor, co-founder and former CEO of DoubleClick. Kevin is also the co-founder and current CEO at FindTheBest. He has a lot of really good entrepreneurial stories and advice to share so I thought it would be good to do a quick Q&A with him as a post. And he agreed. Kevin has some ties to the Southeast since he was the initial investor in Atlanta-based ISS, which went public and eventually sold to IBM for $1.4 billion. Of course, his success with DoubleClick is a widely known story exiting to Google for $3.1 billion in 2007.
Most recently, it was announced that FindTheBest was one of the first recipients of investment from Kleiner Perkins’ new sFund. So here is the Q&A. I hope this helps. Thanks again to Kevin for spending the time.
Q: With the businesses you have started in your career, how did you generate the ideas behind them? A: We always start with brainstorming big problems facing a market. Then, we brainstorm major technology trends. We narrow the problems and tech trends to the top few. We then brainstorm again by applying a top tech trend to solving a big problem and out pops a bunch of product or company ideas. The feeling is disjoints happen with new tech trends and is the best opportunity to launch a new company.
Q: What are the top three elements that you’ve had in your businesses that have helped your companies be successful? A: There are really only 3 things in business: big market, best product and smart/competitive people.
Q: Talent is obviously very important to you when you build your companies. What are the best methods you have used to attract the very best people to your companies? A: I’m upfront with them and say if they are smart, passionate and hard working they will have the best time of their life. If they are not, then this job will suck and they won’t last long. Great talent loves to hear that – they want to compete with the best.
Q: What are some lessons learned in your career that other entrepreneurs should pay attention to? A: Ideas are cheap so come up with a lot of them, innovate constantly and focus all your efforts executing your strategy.
Q: What are the areas that are most ripe for innovation for 2011 and beyond? A: TVIP, cloud, vertical search and social.
Q: What are some of the biggest mistakes you made? How did you correct the situation? A: I repress all bad memories like a good entrepreneur. My biggest mistakes probably center around hiring the wrong person or coming out with a product too early and not sticking it out.
Q: When is the best time to take VC funding? What alternatives should an entrepreneur be thinking about? A: The best time to take funding is when you don’t need it. Ideally, you’ll have a product and customers which validate your market before you approach a VC. Most startups still begin with $25k so build a prototype and test it on the cheap.
Q: Talk about FindTheBest. Why did you start it? What are your goals with it over the next 3 to 5 years? A: A couple of years ago, I kept running into the same problem where I needed to make a big decision – school choice for the kids, web hosting for business, ski resort for vacation, but either couldn’t find great comparison data or couldn’t get past all the “affiliate shill”/scam sites purporting to tell me what was “best.” It took me a while before it occured to me these seemingly disparate problems were actually the same – the ability to filter and compare products and services with objective data.
What Kayak.com does for travel, we want to do for the other 1,000 important decisions you need to make in life. This is a massive market with no viable solution. We created a “comparison engine CMS” that allows us to rapidly create and develop comparison Apps for hundreds of product categories from best cities, fast food nutrition, smartphones and tablet computers. We create the foundation for these comparison Apps and populate the initial dataset but our goal is to have businesses and experts continue to build the data over time. This is happening.
We think FindTheBest is a big idea addressing a great number of large niches. However, as we learn more about “socially curated data” we believe we’re on the cusp of something gigantic. The web is this massive labyrinth of mostly unstructured data. Shouldn’t “like” things be organized in a way that is most useful to users? Stay tuned…
Reprinted with permission from Jason Caplain’s blog: www.southeastvc.com
Tags: advice to entrepreneurs, Findthebestshares, Jason Caplain, Kevin O'Connor, lessons learned, Southern Capitol Ventures
Posted in Business advice, Carolinas, North Carolina, Viewpoint | Comments Off
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
 WASHINGTON, DC – It is no secret that cell phones are playing an increasingly important part in the lives of most Americans. Evidence is plentiful. Here’s the latest from the Pew Internet & American Life Project: more than a quarter of American adults – 26% – used their cell phones to learn about or participate in the 2010 mid-term election campaign.
In a post-election nationwide survey of adults, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 82% of adults have cell phones. Of those cell owners, 71% use their phone for texting and 39% use the phone for accessing the internet.
With that as context, the Pew Internet survey found that:
- 14% of all American adults used their cell phones to tell others that they had voted.
- 12% of adults used their cell phones to keep up with news about the election or politics.
- 10% of adults sent text messages relating to the election to friends, family members and others.
- 6% of adults used their cells to let others know about conditions at their local voting stations on election day, including insights about delays, long lines, low turnout, or other issues.
- 4% of adults used their phones to monitor results of the election as they occurred.
- 3% of adults used their cells to shoot and share photos or videos related to the election.
- 1% of adults used a cell-phone app that provided updates from a candidate or group about election news.
- 1% of adults contributed money by text message to a candidate or group connected to the election like a party or interest group.
If a respondent said she or he had done any of those activities in the last campaign season, we counted that person in this 26% cohort.
Throughout this report we call this group “mobile political users” or the “mobile political population.”
Some 71% of cell owners say they voted in the 2010 election, compared with 64% of the full adult population in this survey who say they voted. (Note: The overall reported turnout was about 40% in the election.
It is common for post-election surveys to hear from a greater number of people who say they voted than was actually the case.) There was no partisan tilt in the makeup of the mobile political user population. They split their votes equally between Democratic and Republican congressional candidates – 44% to each.
About 2% said they voted for other candidates and 10% didn’t answer the question or said they didn’t know. Generally, there were few partisan or ideological differences in way this group used their cell phones for politics.
In most cases, those ages 18-29 were more likely than those in older cohorts to use their cell phones for getting and sharing political information.
Tags: cell phones used for election info survey, Pew Internet & American Life Project
Posted in Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports, Telecommunications | Comments Off
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
 HOLLY SPRINGS, NC – North Carolina has seen a small spate of job gains – many fueled by state and local incentives – the last months of 2010. Now, Novartis (NYSE: NVS) says it will expand its vaccine production plant in Holly Springs, adding another 100 jobs.
The $36 million expansion of the billion dollar facility will qualify the company to receive up to $3.7 million in state tax incentives.
Swiss-based Novartis says the new jobs will pay an average of $106.200 a year plus benefits. High paying jobs such as those tend to bleed more money into the local economy, which is one reason biotech and life science firms are eagerly sought by regions internationally.
The announcement of the Novartis expansion follows recent good economic development news in the state from smart phone maker HTC, Enviva, and Arvato.
Tags: Biotech, Economic Development, Holly Springs, jobs, NC, Novartis, Pharma
Posted in Biotech, Carolinas, Economic Development, North Carolina, Pharma, TechJobs | Comments Off
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
 Founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange WikiLeaks headlines continue to underscore what happens when confidential documents are freely distributed by unauthorized parties. Unfortunate consequences can occur when companies lose control over confidential information and experience intentional or unintentional disclosure of the information. In some cases, even the possibility of information leakage can damage reputations and stock prices.
Brainloop (www.brainloop.com), a Boston-based supplier of software solutions for high-security management of confidential documents, has compiled a list of best practices that can help companies strategically protect their most confidential and sensitive documents from leaking outside the enterprise.
Without a document compliance strategy in place to manage document sharing, along with a platform to provide secure, efficient document collaboration, stakeholders will resort to emailing documents or employ an online collaboration tool that was never designed for security and traceability.
This puts information at risk, resulting in premature disclosure of companies’ strategic or financial information. Additionally, unsafe document sharing may result in companies’ failure to meet their contractual or regulatory obligations due to loss of information entrusted to them by a partner or other stakeholder.
Best Practices to Prevent Document Leaks
For companies to protect themselves they must establish a mechanism where business users can do their jobs without worrisome distraction, automatically applying security policies that will protect information that is being shared with externals. Best practices in document compliance policy mandate an enterprise-wide process to:
- Define security policies for types of documents
- Define roles and what privileges each group of users can have
- Provide a platform that automatically applies these policies
Providing security and compliance with end user demands for efficiency and productivity is a difficult balancing act for corporate IT, so security professionals’ goals should include:
- Empowering end users to perform all the collaborative tasks of their jobs within a secure environment
- Meeting user needs in a variety of business situations
- Ensuring that service level agreements support the company’s contractual agreements and certification requirements
- Complying with audit, security and compliance standards, including
- Strong authentication
- Separation of content ownership and administration
- Information-centric security model with persistent document security and rights management
- Audit trail of all accesses to documents
Says Brainloop CEO Peter Weger, “Ironically, a document paradox exists in that the most confidential documents are often those that require the most sharing. The lifeblood of any business depends on trust and the sharing of information.”
He adds, “The integrity of a business is compromised if its most sensitive documents are stolen or tampered with. Should they become public, like in the case of WikiLeaks, then the business will lose the trust of all its constituents, damaging its reputation and causing the bottom line to suffer. Companies are at risk if they believe their documents are safe by default or by virtue of their not being leaked yet.”
Tags: best practices to avoid data leaks, Boston, brainloop.com, Wikileaks
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 Scrooge from the 1971 cartoon version of Dicken's classic. RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – I could do without all the email holiday greetings we’ve received. Like most journalists, I get hundreds of emails a day, and separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff takes a chunk of my daily work time.
Now I hate to sound as if I don’t enjoy the holiday spirit. But impersonal email holiday greetings are essentially meaningless. They are sent out in bulk, even if a program adds your name. So far, I have yet to notice a personal note of any sort on any of these happy holiday emails.
Although I suspect print is not going to be the major media of the future, greeting cards are one area where I would just as soon see a message on paper. A mailed greeting card at least takes some personal effort, especially if someone takes the time to pen a personal note.
Over the years, I received many superb printed holiday cards from various firms, some with customized art, others with wonderful messages. A few were so good, I still have them and trot them out as holiday decor. Printed cards take personal effort, even in selecting an image and a message.
Bulk email greetings just take my time.
So forgive my lack of holiday spirit if I say bah humbug to emailed holiday greetings.
You won’t be getting any emailed greetings from us other than in our eWire.
But here’s one that won’t clog up your email box any more than normal:
Happy Holidays from TechJournal South. May 2011 be a watershed year for you and your business.
The TechJournal South staff.
Tags: Allan Maurer, bah humbug, email Christmas greetings, Scrooge
Posted in Internet/New Media | 1 Comment »
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