Computer Weekly Editor's Blog

Congratulations to the IT departments that helped raise £100,000 for charity by taking part in last weekend's Three Peaks Challenge, supported by Computer Weekly.

The sponsored teams climbed Britain's three biggest mountains in under 24 hours: Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in Cumbria's Lake District, and Mount Snowdon in North Wales.

Richard Preston of the FMC Technologies team enjoys the view in this first of our photos from the event.

More photos follow below...

Normally on Friday the editor's blog attempts to bring you a round up of some of the funniest or most intriguing things we've spotted on the web, like the Internet meme rock videos on YouTube. But having been a wee bit late in this morning, I've been feeling the need to make up for lost time all day. No, Friday's no time for fun, it's productivity all the way for me, honest, guv.

So, first, I've been researching whether or not I should get an iPhone 3G when they hit the stores (conveniently forgetting the fact that price cut or not, you do still need to have some spare cash in hand, whereas my spending habits are rather more in line with the shopaholic IT consultant spotted on our Downtime blog...)

The 3G iPhone's enterprise ready, says Apple, despite some analysts raising security concerns. And okay, the company probably won't allow me to connect it to the corporate network. But would it help me do my job as a deputy web editor? You know, online content production, supporting our in-house digital journalists, that kind of thing...

Follow the link or scroll on for what the reviewer from Stuff magazine had to say:

If you're a regular reader of or subscriber to  Computer Weekly in print form, you'll notice a dramatic change today.

The magazine has been given an overhaul and relaunched with an attractive, fresh new look. The front cover now features an eye-catching, almost full-page, image highlighting one of the week's top articles. This week it's Bill Gates' turn, with a piece by Jack Schofield focusing on Gates' coming departure: looking back on the road ahead.

Open up the magazine and things get even better. The new page layout is pleasing to the eye, but most importantly it's also clearer, making it easier to scan through to spot the issues that matter to you.

We've also tweaked the content. There's a greater concentration on analysis of the issues behind the news, although you'll still find a round-up of the big stories towards the front, and, of course, we'll be bringing you all the latest breaking news as it happens on ComputerWeekly.com.

You'll find other new and reworked sections in the magazine too, including Radar, Manage IT and Strategy.

Editor Brian McKenna explains the philosophy behind the redesign:

We have been guided by the principle that not all news in the IT space is worth paying attention to in a weekly print format: it needs to be filtered and analysed. The new 'News of the Week' section and the news analysis pages do this. We don't aim to be comprehensive, but to select and offer informed point of view analysis. Our bedrock is, as ever, to be the champion of the corporate user agenda and of IT professionalism.

Don't have a copy? Check out the new design online in our digital edition.

And to subscribe to the new look Computer Weekly, follow this link.

Got yourself an online address? Good for you, because cyberspace is filling up like it was "on steroids", and there may not be enough investment to ensure further growth is possible... Watch this video for a warning on the possible failure of IPv6.

"Despite good job prospects, graduates think that a job in IT would be boring. Is this because of the fact that Bill Gates has made the whole industry look nerdy?

Are you really trying to blame this on Bill Gates?
"I mean really? The man is the poster child for why you SHOULD get into IT... I don't think anyone looks at Bill Gates, with his billions of dollars, happy family, and from an outsider's point of view "good life," and says "Nope... don't want to be a nerd like that!"

People think it's boring because, generally speaking, it can get VERY monotonous. If you don't like programming (regardless of how you define the word), you won't like IT. If you don't like long hours trying to figure out why something isn't working on 1 out of 1000 machines, you probably won't like IT either. I'm not going to get into a "You might be a redneck if..." stream here, but I think you get my point.

If the corporate world is honestly having problems finding IT people, they should either (A) Outsource to a reliable partner, or (B) offer more money. Long story short, IT is like any other job on the planet, if you offer people enough money, they'll gladly do it.

What's ComputerWeekly.com really about, right now? This, according to word-cloud generating service Wordle's view of the text on our home page at 16:26 today:

I think Wordle word clouds could make fantastic quick and easy business cards for Web 2.0 types and bloggers. Whack your CV or your blog into Wordle, screengrab your Wordle cloud and pop that into Flickr (remembering to thank and link Wordle for their Creative Commons kindness, in a good online citizen kind of a way) and then use card-print service Moo. Business cards created and ordered in under an hour without leaving your desk! All you'll have to wait for is the post - it could put your local copy shop out of business!

Thanks for the heads-up on this service to both Ian Grant and fellow CW blogger, Ian White.