Computer Weekly Editor's Blog

If you're a hoarder then we want to hear from you. I know that some of us can't bear to throw anything away - I know this as I am one of those people, while my wife, on the other hand, likes nothing better than de-cluttering.

Well if you've been hoarding old IT kit, then we want to hear from you. Send us your video or a photo of your oldest piece of IT kit that you have and tell us why you have held on to them, and enter our competition to win a great digital camera and £50 worth of Amazon vouchers.

I'm so excited .... we have had our first entries for our hardware hoarders competition - you can see the pics at our Flickr group.

This is great stuff but we want more entries and if you do take part you could win a fantastic Sony digital camera and £50 in Amazon vouchers. If you send us a photo of your old IT kit, then try and capture yourself in the picture too!!

Also don't forget there's a prize for the best video too, so send us your videos through our video player on our website - it's really easy to do. Just go to the hardware hoarders area on ComputerWeekly.com. Good luck!

If you haven't looked at our flickr group, then do, or take a look at the flickr revolving badge below that shows off our entries so far.

Sadly we haven't had any video submissions yet - some one must want to win the video competition surely?? Come on be the first - now there's a challenge!

Our video player can take film captured on a mobile phone - so it's pretty easy to film your oldest bit of IT kit - ideally with you in the film too explaining why you still have got it - and enter it into the competition. We're not expecting George Lucas-quality special effects!!

We have just announced our winner to our first Hardware Hoarders competition and the prize for imagination and creativity as well as an old piece of IT kit was Eric Jukes, who wins a Sony digital camera and £50 of Amazon vouchers, for pairing an ageing Toshiba T1100 with a brand new breed of mouse.

We had nearly 80 pictures sent in to our competition - which was a fantastic response. You can see all at our Flickr group or visit this selection.

Got a few minutes to spare over Easter then take part in out Guess That Kit competiton.

To enter just go to the competition's homepage and guess what item of IT equipment is featured in the each of the images. The theme is 'Essential kit for business on the move', but we've warped and cropped them to give you a bit of a challenge, so it should be easy for all those moofers out there.

Good luck and enjoy the Easter Break.

In May we asked you to nominate your favourite blogs to help us identify the best "IT blogs in the UK". Thanks to those who shared with us their must-reads, by June we had about 300 nominations for blogs that IT professionals are reading.

Now it's your turn again as it's time to cast your vote for your favourite blogs in IT.

Our panel of judges has selected the best blogs in each category, highlighting blogs that are bang-up-to-date, relevant to the UK, and liked by your peers.

So get involved and let us know what you think is the best blog in each category, by voting for your favourites at http://www.computerweekly.com/blogawards.htm.

I listened to a really interesting talk last night by JP Rangaswami, managing director of BT Design.

JP, who has a very popular and well read blog, Confused of Calcutta, was talking to the CW 500 club about the future of corporate information.

One of things that JP talked about that particularly struck me was that it is the kids of today that will shape businesses' attitudes to Information Technology in the future.

The key point being that if you want to attract those kids with talent to work in your organisation then you will need to offer them a better, or as least as good, an experience of IT than they currently get at home.

That means open access to social networks, blogs, twitters etc, because these are the online environments where young people have conversations and water cooler moments.

That means a non-proprietorial attitude to the work laptop - kids see their work laptop as their electronic wallet that stores all their photos etc...

It means a more enlightened approach to home-working and a more sophisticated approach to uniting diverse sets of employees across multiple time zones and regional boundaries of jurisdiction.

JP's believes that companies need to shift cultures and attitudes from the "control and command environments" and encourage sharing and collaboration between employees, customers and suppliers. As Aristotle famously said: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts."

Business development is hindered far too often by the failure to adapt and move on. Young people are adopting Web 2.0 technologies like social networking while corporate companies are seeking to ban it for compromising productivity or security.

This reminds me of Tony Blair's speech a few years ago that said we needed to beware of the forces of conservatism (note little C). Indeed we do. I agree with JP, the next information revolution will happen, so now it's time for corporate companies to review their structures and management practices to harness the new environment, rather than stifle it.

There will be more from JP on ComputerWeekly.com soon. We shot a video interview with him, so you'll be able to catch some of his views next week.

You can also understand far more of JP's thinking about the future of information from his blog, Confused of Calcutta, which is shortlisted in the CIO category in ComputerWeekly IT blog awards.