As a CIO, I spend a lot of time in meetings where I take a lot of notes. As a result, I go through a lot of note pads. In some situations and in some cultural settings it is considered rude to bang away on a laptop during a meeting. I also seem to attend a lot of meetings via conference call on my mobile phone. Have you ever tried to take notes on your computer while trying to hold your mobile?



When my "old" Vista laptop needed upgrading a few weeks ago, I decided to try moving to a notepad. Since my firm uses mainly Dell PC products, I decided to go that route and ordered the latest Latitude XT2 with 64 bit processors, Vista Business edition and 3 Gig of RAM.


After teaching it my cursive handwriting style, and installing MS OneNote (recommended by a friend) I was off to notepad penmanship. I soon learned that trying to use a touch sensitive screen to take handwritten notes was a challenge. Rest your hand on the screen, and an application launches! After turning off the touch feature things calmed down nicely.


I realy like OneNote. It lets me organize meeting notes and find information quickly using search. Converting script to text works nicely.

Last week, I blew everything away and installed Windows 7. The tablet PC capability is greatly improved. I didn't even need to "teach" it my handwriting. With a fresh instill it is amazingly accurate at turning my scrawls to tent. I published this blog without typing a single key.

I read in one tech pundit's blog that one day all notebook computers will be touch screen. What are your thoughts? Do you agree?

Technology should be simple!

I can remember a time when we believed that computer technology would liberate us from the mundane and give us more free time. There are days however when I feel that computers have enslaved us. Much of my time is devoted to "feeding the beast", just trying to keep all the applications and gadgets I use on a daily basis doing what I want them to do.

There are good examples though of technology that is simple and just works. A good friend of mine has a Kindle. He had it on the beach during a holiday and grew bored with the book he was reading. He browsed Amazon and saw another book which interested him. After downloading and reading the two free chapters he paid for and grabbed the entire book. Within minutes, he was reading the new book, without having gotten out of the beach chair. That's simple technology that works.

An interesting technology experience happened to me last week. My wife and I just moved from Europe and we haven't purchased a TV yet. We felt like watching a movie, but all we had was my laptop and our internet connection. We went to the web site of a major company that I heard is now offering download movie rentals. I quickly signed up, chose a movie and hit the download button - nothing happened. The movie would not download. Time to "feed the beast"! I wasn't going to walk away from the $3.99 I had just paid!

While the technology was broken, "feeding the beast" wasn't difficult. The web site had a nice link to "chat with a technical support person". I clicked that and stated my problem in the message window. Within 20 seconds, Angela typed back telling me to put my IE8 browser in compatibility mode, which I did and the download started. Having a live person to chat with was a good use of technology. Having the download technology work with the latest Microsoft browser would have been even better. The movie was mediocre.

I see great strides in making technology simple at the consumer end. We need to be doing more in the corporate environment. My company is global and we often have meetings in the USA office. Even though we have the same wireless configuration at all our offices, nearly every time we conduct these meetings, there are attendees lining up in the IT area asking for help in getting on the wireless. It's more than training staff, we do that, but the technology should "just work".

How would you rate ease of use for the technology you use as a consumer and the technology you use at work?

Operations vs Vision

As a technology executive, I am constantly trying to meet expectations. Many facets of the organization want me to manage operations. The IT infrastructure must be sound, hardware needs to be current, Disaster recovery must be in place, tested and documented and then there is COSO and COBIT. Added to the mix is Systems Integration, BI needs and how to flatten the Silo'ed applications I inherited when I took on this job.







In my organization, I am fortunate to report directly to the CEO. IT/IS is recognized as strategic and in reality, the platform on which our organization does business. The CEO however wants me to think and act strategically, chart a course for an effective and successful online presence and put in place a web architecture which can be monetized.


I work for a non-profit which means I do not have the resources to set up an in house web services department. That means I have to get out from behind my desk and establish the strategic partnerships and relationships to enable us to get that done. It's a tight balance. I need to oversee operations yet think and act strategically.


For me, the key to survival is a good team. Fortunately they know operations and are conscientious and proactive. They know how to to keep things running smoothly without me needing to micromanage. Delegation and encouraging growth and responsibility among the IT/IS staff also helps.


How do you handle competing pressures and expectations as a leader?

Were's the Secuity?

As an IT leader, I encourage the use of Technology. I value the improved levels of communication and the advantages of social networking which technical tools and gadgets deliver. We are all aware that the uptake of technology and its associated devices has been astounding.

The other day, I was sitting in the morning sunshine outside a Starbucks and surfing the web on my BlackBerry Bold. I usually end up at www.slashdot.com. It contains that “nerdy news” that interests people in my field. The days postings of news items were upsetting.
The first story was about a successful hack of the servers at Network Solutions, the domain registration and hosting service company (http://tinyurl.com/n7xg5z). The breach which lasted three months, exposed tens of thousands of credit card numbers of its customers. Although details have not been released, the malicios code installed on the servers was able to ship these numbers out to a destination on the internet.

The second story which concerned me was an article stating that iPhone Forensics expert Jonathan Zdziarski has stated that the much-touted hardware encryption of the iPhone 3Gs is but a farce, and demonstrates how both the passcode and backup encryption can be bypassed in about two minutes (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/07/iphone-encryption).

I’m seeing iPhones crop up in my organization for corporate use, which I have welcomed. To a large degree, my confidence comes from the security claims made by the manufacturer.
It’s obvious that companies are under pressure to get their web services and devices to market quickly to outmanouver the competition and gain market position. The hacking community on the other hand have the time and patience to maticulously search for those SQL injection attacks or buffer overflows and do their deeds. I am still amazed though at how many web based systems continue to get hacked.

I feel that as technology user we should be demanding better security from the services and devices we use. Consumers of a service should be compensated finacially or through free services every time a security breach is discovered on that system. What are your thoughts?

My first post

I'm not new to blogging. My company set up an internal blog about 2 years ago. The idea was that our IT/IS group would post to it and therefore keep each other informed. It was called blog.twr.org. It should have been called "nobodycomeshere.twr.org". It got off to a good start, then poeple lost interest.

I hope to keep this one going and I hope you enjoy it!