500 words into the future

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Contribute, contract; endorse? Technology reputations

Technology companies need to be careful about who and what they're seen to support. Lie down with dogs, goes the saying, and you'll get up with fleas. From SOPA to CISPA to campaigners who oppose gay marriage, disapprove of women in the workplace or associate climate change scientists with terrorists, technology companies have had some strange bedfellows recently.

Backing SOPA lost Go Daddy more customers than... Read more

Things Google is bad at: running a company

Despite the lack of a clear decision by the jury in the Oracle-Google lawsuit, , there's bad news for Google as a company whatever the end result and whatever damages Google ends up paying for infringement. There are some basic business issues it keeps getting wrong.

Much of Oracle's case against Google was made by emails provided by Google in discovery, including the outspoken Lindholm email which Google tried... Read more

Windows RT browsers and the point of Windows RT

It's no surprise that Firefox and Chrome won't run as desktop browsers on Windows RT devices; Microsoft has been saying all along that x86 apps wouldn't run on Windows on ARM and it explicitly said there would be no third-party code on Windows RT when it announced the details of the platform back in February. That's no plugins for IE on the Windows RT desktop as well as no desktop Firefox and Chrome, and if... Read more

You are the computer

Way back when, computers were people. Problems were broken up into lots of little pieces, and shared across a room full of mathematicians armed with logarithmic tables, Napier's Bones, slide rules and the like. That way codes were analysed, paths plotted, and ballistic tables computed, ready to simplify the art of war. No one person knew the answer to the problem, they just had their little part of it, ready to... Read more

IT security? You're doing it wrong!

Sometimes change is abrupt, sometimes it just sneaks up on you.

For quite some time I've been thinking about the impact of many different trends on the world of IT, as virtualisation and cloud combine with new devices and service-oriented application development to change the way we build and deliver applications. It's one of those megatrends that we can see pushing its way through the industry, leaving trails... Read more

Twilio meets Azure

At the end of the Cloudbusting video Kate Bush's character is firing an orgone cannon at the sky, filling the blue with clouds. That's rather like the IT world, where clouds melt away and reform, all the while filling the empty spaces with the services that used to be on premises.

One of the big changes to the IT cloud is the shift away from infrastructure- and software-as-a-service. Instead of blank spaces... Read more

Stupid passwords, irritating UAC & what spam you get

The latest release of Microsoft's comprehensive Security Intelligence Report has some fascinating nuggets in, among the hundreds of pages of vulnerability, malware and threat trends.

Anyone who’s responsible for even a single server needs to take the section on Conficker to heart. Despite the fact that there hasn't been a new version of Conficker in years, and that the exploits in SVCHOST.EXE were long since... Read more

What does Creative Cloud mean for desktop apps?

Adobe Creative Cloud is a way to pay for Photoshop and the rest of the Creative Suite in monthly installments. It's also a way to sync and share the files you make with Adobe tools, and there are some nice extras like live previews of files instead of unhelpful icons. But in the long run, the most important part of Creative Cloud could be how it might change the desktop Adobe apps too.

Take a close look at the... Read more

What Windows Intune means for Windows RT

Will the next version of Intune, Microsoft's cloud management tool for PCs and now smartphones and tablets, help you manage Windows RT devices? Probably. That's not what Microsoft demoed at the MMS conference today (and Microsoft isn't ready to talk about Intune and Windows RT) but what we saw has some big clues about how businesses will be able to manage Windows RT.

Today, you can manage iOS and Android... Read more

Windows 8 name and editions revealed

In a post on the Windows Blog, Microsoft announced that Windows 8 would be called Windows 8, and that there would be only two generally available versions for retail customers. It also used its Microsoft Management Summit keynote to name Windows Server "8" as Windows Server 2012 (to align its name with both System Center 2012 and SQL Server 2012).

The two retail versions of Windows 8 will be called Windows 8... Read more

About this blog

Coretech

Unapologetically opinionated views on technology, in the office and out

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Community highlights

BarryGill

Darth Vader brought his own device...

Blog Post A few weeks ago I wrote a blog piece called "Bring Your Own Delusion (BYOD)"....

16 May, 2012 by BarryGill
Jack Schofield

Mobile phone sales dip while smartphones boom

Blog Post Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users fell by 2 percent to 419.1...

16 May, 2012 by Jack Schofield
First Take

HTC One V

Blog Post HTC's One range of handsets comprises three models. There's the flagship HTC...

16 May, 2012 by First Take
Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

Contribute, contract; endorse? Technology reputations

Blog Post Technology companies need to be careful about who and what they're seen to...

16 May, 2012 by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

ZDNet UK Live

annonymous2

If Piratebay is a crime then so is borrowing a dvd you purchased to a family member or a friend. Why should we not be aloud to share. Most of the...

1 hour ago by annonymous2 on UK ISPs ordered to block Pirate Bay website
NanWag

File Services For Macintosh was causing Excel to prompt for Overwriting changes or Save Another Copy because it was changing the timestamp on the...

2 hours ago by NanWag on Windows Server 2008 drops the ball for Mac compatibility
Regis Machado

creative cloud $48/month in the USA, £48/month in the UK ($79). good for the competitors

4 hours ago by Regis Machado via Facebook on Adobe move promotes piracy
Tom Espiner

Hello KosGirl, Good question. I've asked Belfius for a response. The latest post I can find on Pastebin about it is here:...

4 hours ago by Tom Espiner on Hackers hold bank to ransom over stolen data
KosGirl

Have there been any further updates to this story? I can't find any information on whether the hackers released the data or not.

5 hours ago by KosGirl on Hackers hold bank to ransom over stolen data
SandJ

I have done 7 speed tests this morning on different speed test tools. They tell me my download speed is: 12.3, 12.3, 12.3, 11.1, 12.7, 12.7, 11.7...

6 hours ago by SandJ on Watchdog: TalkTalk's broadband speed test misled users
Jack Schofield

@Mary Microsoft could always send Mozilla a spec sheet and oblige them to meet the same standards as IE. Then Mozilla can spend millions of...

9 hours ago by Jack Schofield on Windows RT browsers and the point of Windows RT
goth1csnake3

Not before time, that people making films,dvd's get whats coming to them. Well done, Virgin Media.

11 hours ago by goth1csnake3 on Virgin Media: Spotify deal will bring down piracy
Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

Apex - the question then is what about letting the user choose to have a tablet where they don't have to have that responsibility? why can't the...

21 hours ago by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe on Windows RT browsers and the point of Windows RT
Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe

Moley, Apex, thanks; I think there's an interesting other dimension of choice - the choice to have a platform that is 'locked down' in the sense...

21 hours ago by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe on Mozilla accuses Microsoft of shutting Firefox out of WOA
Yellowcave

Not surprised. I once used the methods to let my firewall just notify me of breaches. Not one single logged event was genuine. Once, we all...

1 day ago by Yellowcave on Mobile porn filters catch innocent content, says report
duplex

live realy sucks in facebook becuase people hack your profile

1 day ago by duplex on Irish watchdog: Facebook privacy still falls short
Ed Macnair

If only it was that simple. When you start accessing Cloud applications you are stuck with the security model the vendor provides...........unless...

1 day ago by Ed Macnair via Facebook on IT security? You're doing it wrong!
Phil at Cloud4

Another good updaet, I have enjoyed going on the journey reading this series on SharePoint 2010 and have learned alot. Great writing.

1 day ago by Phil at Cloud4 on Designing a SharePoint farm: Tiers before bedtime
muteen

roumers of an ipad Mini, isnt that just an iTouch!?

1 day ago by muteen on Apple rebrands iPad 4G as 'Wi-Fi + Cellular' for UK
apexwm

Thanks for this article and bringing this issue to light. Unfortunately this type of activity is common not only with Adobe, but many other...

1 day ago by apexwm on Adobe move promotes piracy
Andy Bolstridge

there's a very thin line between tax avoidance and tax efficiency - earning £850 a month and claiming dividends to bring my income up to normal...

1 day ago by Andy Bolstridge via Facebook on The Idle Self-employed
Andy Bolstridge

I see that they are happy to announce these numbers.. but no-one will take any notice until they start announcing sales numbers too.

1 day ago by Andy Bolstridge via Facebook on Microsoft's score card for Smoked by Windows Phone
AndyPagin

I saw a Windows phone about a year ago, haven't seen once since, and quite a few people own phones in the City of London.

1 day ago by AndyPagin on Microsoft's score card for Smoked by Windows Phone
helice041

Well said. You can add the change differences between US $ and Euro for the adobe cloud subscription and the very clouded informations about when...

2 days ago by helice041 on Adobe move promotes piracy