Professor Mark Lewis'
Information Systems blog at the Steven L. Craig School of Business!
7 Oct 2008
IBM is promoting their
"Software as a service" concept with
Bluehouse software that
allows social networking while at work. "Offered as a web portal,
Bluehouse offers tools to host web conferences, share desktops, create social
networks with activity streams, share files, create live charts from raw data,
and chat." Bluehouse also features extranet capabilities for interfacing
with customers and clients.
2 Oct 2008
Computer analysis of mammographs, in conjunction with a trained human viewer,
10%
better detection of cancer than does a single human analysis. The cost
is much less for the computer to do the analysis and can be performed anywhere
in the world when using digital x-rays. Undetected cancer costs life,
human suffering and medical bills. Is it ethical for the United States to
not require a second reading for cancer?
30 Sep 2008
Hollywood is suing RealNetworks over their
RealDVD product which lets you copy a DVD to your home PC or a portable hard
drive. The MPAA says copying a DVD is illegal, RealNetworks says they are
simply extending what people already do with music CDs when they copy them to
MP3 files. "The MPAA's suit accuses RealNetworks of violating the federal
Digital Millennium Copyright Act by circumventing the copyright protection
technology built into DVDs."
12 Sep 2008
A dashboard is a collection of "agents" that summarize and highlight activities
of interest, both historical and real-time. A mash up is combining into
one area content and services from various providers. The digital
entertainment industry is moving towards a "mash up" model for managing your
personal digital entertainment such as music, movies and communications.
Some WebCT courses might be considered mash ups. From a business
perspective, the benefit of a mash up is that the business controls the site
where the disparate content is being presented and can monitor how it is being
used. The
media industry's idea is to create a virtual ecosystem of inter-operable
applications and content for easy customer use.
6 Sep 2008
Savvy
stock traders misinterpreted returns from a Google search on "Bankruptcy 2008",
which returned a story on United Airlines declaring bankruptcy. Problem
was, the story was from 2002, but Google flagged it as appearing on 6 Sep 2008
because it had not previously found the story. A feeding frenzy of selling
occurred that dropped the stock over 60% before trading was halted.
28 Aug 2008
Microsoft has released the
Beta 2
version of their Internet Explorer Browser, incorporating many features
available in the other popular browsers Safari and Firefox. Read a review
here.
22 Aug 2008
How
much do you download? Most people wouldn't know. Internet
Service Providers are preparing to
charge additional monthly fees to people who download more than 5 GB/month,
which is about 3 DVD movies. The concept is similar to charging for cell
phone minutes and if one company can successfully implement the idea, others
will surely follow. This means additional revenue for ISPs, especially as
internet usage continues to grow with bandwidth heavy applications such as movie
downloads or video telephones. Prices continue to drop for technology that
handles more bandwidth and the technology itself continues to improve, however
ISPs will not easily overlook a means to add revenue.
20 Aug 2008
Create
and publish your own 3D views using your own overlapping digital images and web
based software called Photosynth.
By taking many overlapping photos, including ones that zoom in and zoom out,
Photosynth allows users to take
highly detailed tours of the world you create. Hyperlinks can be
included as part of the images to obtain more information or link to other
photosynths. Imagine taking a Photosynth tour of a museum where you can
zoom in on an object to get very detailed views. The idea is
similar to
what I do with my Adobe Photoshop stitched images.
12 Aug 2008
Modern warfare's
initial attack is a cyber attack to disrupt and confuse the enemy.
Russia launched a cyber attack
prior to invading
Georgia.
Cyber attacks do not have to prepend a hardware attack, they can be "warning
shots across the bow" as well, for example, Russia launched a massive
DoS attack in Estonia involving millions of computers in 75 countries
4 Aug 2008
In
order to draw customers from other non-Yahoo sites,
Yahoo is offering an opt-out policy for targeted ads, allowing users to
opt-out of receiving them. However, I do not know if this implies that
Yahoo is therefore not collecting, analyzing and sharing user surfing
habits, or is Yahoo simply not using revenue generation from sites like
Double-Click that use targeting marketing.
24 July 2008
Would you be interested in a computer pen that records audio and automatically
syncs the audio with the free-form notes you have taken? You upload the
notes and associated audio to your computer and can search and share them with
others. The
LiveScribe smartpen accomplishes these feats.
Google has launched a website called knol,
that is similar to wikipedia, but is
supposed to be more factual and allows authors to control the amount of external
editing of their own articles. It also provides an ad-based revenue
stream.
Insights and reviewer comments on the experience of writing a knol
article can be read
here.
10 July 2008
Privacy protection is a growing concern, even though
few
people realize how much personal, individual data is collected by companies.
PC Software
only
"protects" an individual PC, removing internet history files or restricting
incoming/outgoing traffic, it does not manage the files you leave on your
ISP's
servers, search engine servers, corporate servers, credit card, phone bill,
video rental, library card, etc. Anonymous surfing software does make your
internet browsing untraceable from the web sites you visit back to you.
From the Anonymizer FAQ page: "What kinds of
information can Web sites gather about their visitors?
The detail of observation possible online is much more exhaustive than in the
real world. For example, in a physical bookstore, the store can gather a list of
what books you purchase (assuming you don't pay cash). Online they gather all
purchases, your home address and credit card number, all the books you merely
browsed, and the amount of time spent browsing each book. It is like being
followed around the store with a camera over your shoulder.
Web Analytic tools make it possible for any Web administrator to identify
specific IP addresses, domain names, and geographic locations of visitors and to
follow visitor activity; analyzing individual surfing behavior, tracking the
pages within the site that are most frequently accessed, and the files that are
downloaded, etc. It is this aspect of functionality that can in turn be used to
build a detailed psychographic profile based on your purchases and online
tracks. "
12 June 2008
Fiber optic connections to the home are only provided by Verizon and allow
almost unlimited bandwidth (> 15 MB/sec) for internet and high-definition
television and other services. Cable companies Comcast, Cablevision, Time
Warner Cable, Cox and Charter have all run ads belittling FiOS.
MagicJack.com if you have access to a
broadband computer connection, then for $20/year (yes, per year) you can make
unlimited domestic and long distance phone calls using a regular phone plugged into the MagicJack terminal
and your computer's USB connection. Voice over IP (Internet Protocol) is
the enabling technology.
20 April 2008
According to an ATT representative
the internet will reach full capacity by the year 2010 due to high
definition video uploads (to sites like YouTube) and downloads (for
pay-per-viewing). They stress that the internet we use is based on private
companies investing in bandwidth, costs that will be passed onto the consumer.
The article also discusses "net neutrality" or paying for different delivery
priorities over the internet, much like postal services currently do. From
an article on
Comcast's disruption of peer-to-peer traffic, "Video is causing a new
collapse (of the Internet). It requires 100- to 1000-fold increase in capacity
to deal with current crisis."
Even infrastructure built to deliver video is feeling
strained. High-def enthusiasts have noticed that
Comcast, the nation's largest supplier of cable television, noticeably compress
their high definition video, especially when compared to the fiber optic
network of Verizon.
10 April 2008
The
future of cyber-security is that it will be each person's responsibility,
that is, information security needs to be taken seriously be each individual
person, don't rely totally on your government, school, church, businesses,
parents, spouse, etc. to be able to safeguard your information.
31 March 2008
The
Office Open XML (OOML) standard for working with Microsoft Office files will
shortly be accepted by the International Standards Organization (ISO). The
competing file format, Open Document Format (ODF) was endorsed by the ISO last
year. OpenOffice supports both these file formats. When your
software product is supported by an international standard, then more developers
will build products around your product, which should be good for everyone.
9 March 2008
As I mentioned in class, IT workers have been feeling squeezed by
outsourcing and increasing numbers of tech-savvy workers who procure their own
software for company use. This
article discusses the possible acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft and its
implications for downloading IT software.
29 Feb 2008
In case they didn't tell you, you should be cognizant of your employer's policy
on internet and email use at work. 66% of
businesses monitor their employees use of the internet and email. In
our 24/7 world that blurs the line between work-time and personal-time,
shouldn't employees be allowed to use the internet at least on occasion, perhaps
paying a bill online or reading email during lunch? 70% of businesses
communicate policies via a handbook, which most people do not read.
Comments from the Wall Street Journal
blog on firing government employees who surfed the web too much include:
Hmmm - the overall job was getting done in
spite of the fact that all these employees were wasting all that much time. I
wonder what the chances are that they will be replaced anyway?
If they were wasting that much time and the work was still getting done, it
seems they are overstaffed.
If government employees worked from home, it would save us taxpayers a lot of
taxes spent on buildings and maintenance we don’t really need.
27 Feb 2007
Microsoft
has been fined a record $1.35 billion for non-compliance to anti-trust
rulings set against them by the European Union. Microsoft was supposed to
share interface information on server workgroups with smaller rivals, but
instead have dragged their feet, releasing incomplete information or charging
"unreasonable amounts" for interface information.
29 Jan 2008
The United States, Sweden and Japan are
ranked as the countries whose citizens best know how to use telecommunications
technologies to boost their prosperity. The
Connectivity ScoreCard report provides
details of how the data was collected and analyzed. As part of its
premise, the report states that:
"Connectivity should stress not only expansion of infrastructure and usage but
also the skills and complementarities required to drive communications networks
as an engine of growth. That is, it is "smart" usage which helps make
Connectivity a driver of productivity gains and hence economic growth. ...
The notion of Connectivity should be expanded to include also the complementary
assets and skills — embodied in people, governments and businesses — that
determine just how productively the hardware and infrastructure are used. "
28 Jan 2008
The
new Cisco Nexus switch has a bandwidth of up to 15 Tb, working seamlessly with
both IP and Ethernet protocols as well as data. From a business
perspective, we need to understand what this new technology offers, that is, how
can we
use it for competitive advantage?
27 Jan 2008
Your future involves Radio Frequency Identification (RFID).
25 Jan 2008
Software
security controls were manipulated by an employee at a French investment
bank in order to make bets on the futures market. The bank has lost $7.2
billion because of his bad bets. It is not clear if he ever profited from
the transactions. Over 10 years ago a brokerage firm went bankrupt because
of an employee the was using their money to bet on the future of the Japanese
stock market.
20 Jan 2008
A semi-popular movie released last year involves cyber-terrorism, so how real
are
cyber-threats to corporate and government infrastructure? The CIA has
typically kept quiet, as have companies that have lost money due to threats,
understandably so when consumer confidence is a high priority. If you are
interested in the managerial aspects of ethical hacking and social engineering,
check out the Hacking for Dummies book.
11 Jan 2008
When the internet started to be seen as a money-making opportunity, in about
1996, people would buy domain names that they knew would be popular, but had
nothing to do with any business they were in. For example, a student could
buy the domain name www.golf.com or
www.nbcnews.com for $5/year and then just
sit on them, waiting to re-sell them to the highest bidder. There was
nothing illegal about this, it was too new an idea. Now, Network Solutions
sells domain names and when you go searching for available domain names, it
knows those are popular ones and
"saves them" from being exploited by charging more to buy them.
Internet activists say this is the same thing as "front running". Another
problem in the business of domain names is people
buying domain names, trying them for 5 days, then returning them for a refund
-- this ties up a large number of domain names for legitimate users.
8 Jan 2008
Wiki search engine includes ethical elements of open source software,
Transparency, Community, Privacy and Quality.
4 Jan 2008 (Happy New Year!)
If you use their Sears Community portal,
Sears uses spyware
to track your web surfing habits, including what you buy on-line as well as
personal health related information, but don't worry, they don't sell it.
Consumers need to be aware that of what they may be agreeing to when they click
the "accept" button and businesses should be aware that consumers can easily be
upset and take their business elsewhere, especially their on-line business.
Sears has also had
problems with leaking customer information to 3rd parties on their
Managemyhome.com website. From the Harvard professor's
blog that first
presented it: "Sears offers no security whatsoever to prevent a Managemyhome
user from retrieving another person's purchase history by entering that person's
name, phone number, and address." Obviously, a name, phone number and
address are relatively easy to acquire.
Highlighted articles from 2007
Highlighted articles from 2006