Recent Blog Posts

We all know the good that technology can do, and the benefits it brings for the way we work, live and play. The future growth of the UK economy will be built on IT. Consumers are embracing ...

Ministers need to seize the opportunity of the Olympic lockdown to set Local Government free to make progress while their officials are at home wrestling with trying to domestic quality broadband ...

Any technology vendor that makes disproportionate assertions claiming to be able to "slash development times" does of course need to be approached with caution, shrewd scepticism and nervous ...

I attended the Westminster Education Forum National Curriculum this week, where IT professionals, teachers and educational bodies discussed the government's decision to remove ICT from the school ...

Smartphone technology has increased at such a rate that the phones of just 12 months ago look like relics. However, battery technology has failed to keep up with the pace and no matter how shiny ...

The Eclipse Foundation's annual software developer survey is always an interesting read -- detailing as it does the use of Eclipse and the wider world of open source tools.

Sometimes, just sometimes, your boss shouting and spitting in your face from approximately 0.06cm may not be the thing to give you that much needed motivational boost you have been waiting for.In ...

Sony recently gave (what they called) "power to the people".Actually, what it really did was allow people to click a button bringing the launch date for a mystery handset forward a few seconds at a ...

Downtime was interested in reading about some of the passwords that were revealed in the huge LinkedIn hack recently. It seems many people are not happy at work. The article also revealed that some ...

The novelty of the text message has worn off for many of us, knowing full well it will either be work asking for more of our time or home asking us to pick up milk on our way back. Yet, each time ...

Some interesting research from KPMG last week revealed that while demand for outsourcing is increasing it is the shared services element that is growing the fastest.According to KPMG research into ...

Whether or not Linus Torvalds wins the Millennium Technology Prize later today (apparently he's nominated), the Linux creator's recent comments on the BBC News website this morning make interesting ...

There's a cloud computing industry exhibition/conference/symposium/jamboree (pick any one you like) on this week in London!

The long hot summer of 1977, the Queen's Silver Jubilee, Mungo Jerry sang about being in the summertime and the two Steve's revamped their first Apple computer.Apple brought out its amazing home ...

These are not mere "techie issues".They are part of the regulatory malaise that has helped destroy UK and EU competitiveness and caused the Chinese sovereign wealth funds to be the latest to start ...

After decrying an open source survey issued last month from BlackDuck Software as somewhat simplistic and contrived in its initial presentation of facts, I'm pleased to say that we have a direct ...

In this guest blog post Computer Weekly blogger Adrian Bridgwater tries out a new 1 Gbps broadband service.In light of the government's push to extend "superfast" broadband to every part of the UK ...

Proving that one should always think before tweeting, Starbucks has angered followers of its Irish Twitter account. In a tweet meant only for UK customers, but that went to customers in the ...

Given that the dead hands of the BDUK frameworks and of Spectrum policy are also holding back the scale and nature of private sector communications investment that is needed for a future of ...

HTC have unveiled the One X as their flagship phone and this one is a beauty. The white polycarbonate shell feels comfortable in the hand yet sturdy. I really wanted to throw this phone on the ...

CSC's director of UK finance has left amidst a round of disciplinaries over an international accounting scandal that has engulfed the company's troubled NHS contract.

We hear a lot of talk concerning big data, but just how big is it and how much is data actually growing by? For that matter, do we all agree on exactly what big data actually is right no

Some people may hold out for Windows 8, but my Windows 7 laptop has started running seriously slow. It's a Sony Vaio and less than 18 months old, but now Windows takes ages to boot-up and ...

Red Hat has this week announced the general availability of Red Hat CloudForms calling it an "open hybrid cloud management platform" to act as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) layer offering.

I am currently writing a feature about the changing role of IT within BPO deals. A large part of the massive BPO sector is IT enabled and with the onset of cloud computing and increasing use of ...

Downtime is sure you, like us, wished buying presents for people was as easy as buying for a chocoholic. Because, there are only so many pairs of socks you can buy for people before they start ...

Women are still finding it hard to get onto the boards of FTSE 350 companies because the selection process continues to favour candidates who fit in with the masculine boardroom culture.

Is it too late, given the way that Flame is being used to exploit weaknesses at the heart of the current Internet trust system? Do ISOC, ICANN and the Internet Governance Forum still have the ...

Facebook made several headlines over the Jubilee holiday weekend by "announcing" (on a developer blog) that it had released to open source a collection of C++ library artifacts known as Folly.

The biggest weakness of the ippr exercise is that it fails to take account of the sophistication of those who make a very good living from corrupting our law enforcement and criminal justice systems

A third dimension of conflict is the need to take effective action against criminal malpractice over the Internet, in the knowledge that removing the vulnerabilities that facilitate much of that ...

You can't define an open standard, said Microsoft's policy director in an interview with Computer Weekly. But you know one when you see one.That has become the essence of Microsoft's opposition to ...

It's been a busy old Spring so far - I'm still trying to get my head around the recession - IT is going bonkers, spending like the world is about to end (does somebody know something we don't?), ...

Lead architect at the Home Office Tariq Rashid has suggested that the UK government is still missing out on opportunities to save money by failing to adopt a more progressive attitude towards open ...

My leader article in Computer Weekly this week should have been easy to write. It's about the new NHS IT strategy, and it would be a simple task to cut and paste pretty much every similar article ...

There have been rumours about Logica being acquired for years. I have been told on many occasions that the firm was going to be acquired. Many contacts of mine felt it would be the perfect buy for ...

The package will remain incredible value for money, even after the price rise. At this point I should declare an interest in that I have just agreed to help the creation of the Security stream, ...

Now the weather has taken a warm turn (for the moment at least, anyway) what better way to cool off at your desk than with the iPhone 'shaped' compact air conditioner.

Telecoms operators (the companies, not the old ladies with the plugs and switches) are working hard to differentiate their services and rate-plans and at the same time help nurture the development ...

On winning the London Hopper Colloquium poster competition in 2011 I was both thrilled and excited at the opportunity to return and speak in 2012, but as the day approached these feelings had been ...

It is not unheard of for an American president to have trouble with his grammar, but surely if you are hoping to be the president of one of the world's super-powers good spelling should be a ...

Gartner vice president Steve Prentice came to Computer Weekly's office to discuss the future of the internet. He is speaking to CIOs about what happens if the internet changes radically. "We now ...

BT has been promoting how many Wi-Fi hotspots it will have in place in London in time for the Olympic Games which start in July. A press release circulated by BT claimed it was close to achieving ...

That might change to short order given sponsorship from a major employer which has seen the results of the recent stress tests and knows it has sufficient staff living in the broadband deserts of ...

Gartner has released news this week suggesting that the IT operations is on the up, saying that worldwide IT operations management (ITOM) software revenue totaled US$18.3 billion in 2011, an ...

The Open Source Software Industry Day on Wednesday, May 30 is co-hosted by the non-profit Open Source Software Institute and the National Security Agency (NSA).

Finally there is an app that helps us locate mushrooms. The iMushroomHunter and iMushroomGuide apps are available on the iPhone and Android phones. The app allows mushroom fanatics to share ...

Katy McCaffrey assumed she had lost her iPhone and would never see it again when it was missing after she had been on a Caribbean cruise, but that was not the end. A few weeks later, the iPhone ...

Duncan Tait took the helm at Fujitsu at the height of the economic slowdown and all the upheaval it triggered, but revenues and orders are on the rise again. Fujitsu is the UK's and the world's ...

It has seemed quiet in the IT outsourcing market for quite some time now with big deals seemingly few and far between. Last week Fujitsu signed a big deal with the Post Office where it is acting as ...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post for Computer Weekly in which I questioned whether Augmented Reality is really ready for the masses, concluding that while the technology and platforms ...

Where we once considered punch cards to be at the cutting edge of human computer interaction, the years passed and industry innovations brought us forward to a point where speech recognition ...

Microsoft, SAP, Progress Software and a number of other big names including Citrix Systems have come together to push the Open Data Protocol (OData) towards acceptance by the Organization for the ...

Action On Elder abuse warns that Financial Abuse of the elderly is more prevalent than physical and sexual abuse. Financial abuse is also most commonly committed by persons in a position of trust - ...

The London Hopper Colloquium is one of the key events in the women-in-computing calendar. For 8 years it's provided a focus and an opportunity for women at the start of their research career, with ...

For at least the past year, the ICO has maintained that its enforcement of the "cookie" law will be complaint-led, but in the past week it has fired of what have been described as "nasty letters". ...

FDM's next Women in IT event is taking place next Thursday, near London Bridge. The event will include speeches from some very well-known ladies, in the women in IT arena: An introduction from ...

What on earth is going on at HP? After three years riven by changes in CEO (three times) and in strategy (lost count), the company seems to barely know what it is or where it is heading. This month ...

Transport for London has spent £100m on a temporary contract that is still running after five and half years and will be clocking up more costs until 2014.

The digital marketplace is becoming increasingly flooded with apps in general, making it harder for users and businesses alike to filter and determine the best choice for their needs.Here, I'm ...

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and its allied functions across the administrative backbone is of course the most maverick, exciting and progressive element of any modern organisation.

Major retailers are stocking special Diamond Jubilee remote controls for Sky boxes. So if you don't think you have been fleeced enough by the Royal family through your taxes you can spend almost ...

Downtime went to visit IT supplier Atos at the Technical Operations Centre (TOC) for the London Olympics. There will be 900 servers, 1,000 network and security devices and more than 10,000 ...

Does a fox shit in the woods? Yes and we can tell you how many times. Downtime was chatting to the business behind the data analytics carried out in the recent Channel 4 documentary series about ...

The British, apparently, are the third most enthusiastic nation for using social networking tools in Europe,behind the Spanish and the Italians, according to a survey from Google.

You've heard of Robo-cop, now meet Robo-fish - the new aquatic pollution-fighter. The machine is being tested off the cost of Spain to hunt down contamination in the water and feed information back ...

Co-founder and CTO of Veracode Inc. Chris Wysopal has recently been interviewed on the subject of how difficult is it to address legacy software in an organisation.

The Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco this week has spurred an industry analysis report detailing "findings" which assert that open source technologies are leading innovation ...

Apple fan boys are typically very attached to their technology, but some take that a little too far as in the case of David Hurban in the US. Anxious that he should never be far from his iPod nano, ...

People have been campaigning for decades to make IT a more women-friendly profession. But, despite initiatives like the highly successful Computer Clubs for Girls which is inspiring girls at school ...

Open source Business Intelligence (BI) vendor Actuate has gone on the tech dating game and formed a new collaboration to match its BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) with the ...

After the controversy of the early meetings in the government's consultation on open standards, we're now down to the last few weeks of what is a hugely important process. After a slow start, the ...

Some 61% of CIOs face a salary freeze in 2012 as nervousness over the economic climate and the debate over executive salaries continues

The US Army and associated federal agencies are said to be testing prototype "virtual world" technologies in a secure open source environment.

In this video recorded at the recent HP Global Influencer Summit in Shanghai, I spoke to HP product manager. Kathy Nielson about the HP EliteBook Folio. This is a new Ultrabook, designed to bridge ...

Meanwhile at least 20% of the population, including most of us for our last decade on this planet, are incapable of reliably using anything that requires us to remember a password or use a keypad.

Apple continues to dominate sales of tablet, with the iPad, and that shows little sign of changing soon, according to projections from Gartner. By 2016, sales of tablets based on Apple's iOS ...

There's a saying in financial circles - one that has been conveniently ignored many times in the past - that says: "If it looks like a bubble, and it feels like a bubble, then it's a bubble."So, ...

Ward Cunnigham has expressed his views on the concept of "technical debt" i.e. the idea that programmers coding today leave a forward-legacy for future programmers to re-pay in terms of maintenance ...

The CIO and CTO collegiate approach, always fitted much better with the culture of Whitehall, if the objective was to transform the delivery of public services rather than "merely" centralise power ...

I went to visit IT supplier Atos at the Technical Operations Centre (TOC) for the London Olympics this summer. This was an opportunity to get an update and be reminded about how complicated and ...

FuseSource Corp. produces open-source integration and messaging products to achieve what it likes to brand as "Integration Everywhere" -- and "everywhere" in this case means from the data centre to ...

Printing may not be the most exciting activity in IT but as every CIO knows when the printers don't work you get to hear about it pretty quickly.

Back from Interop and my 'beloved' Vegas from which I escaped just in time before being air-con'd to death as my ongoing cough continues to remind me. Is it possible to sue "air"? I don't know - ...

The UK government appears to be taking positive (possibly even 'assertive') steps towards more implementation of open source technologies at this time. The Open Government Summit today will be held ...

During the past two decades I have spent in the corporate world, I have realised that your gender, race or colour does not matter. What is required to succeed is a strong conviction to believe in ...

You can't visit the Far East without contemplating the contrast between Eastern strategies of negotiation, and the less colourful philosophies of the Wild West. The Thirty-Six Chinese Strategies, ...

I am led to speculate on the reasoning behind the proposal and come up with yet another, ill-considered back door attempt to create a national identity register. I happen to have been a believer in ...

Public bodies have sacked at least 120 staff for abusing their access rights to the Department for Work and Pensions' Customer Information System, a government database containing details of every ...

We get used to reading articles about deals being won by big systems integrators. These companies either provide all the services in a deal or sub contract to a smaller firm, which hardly gets a ...

We can't quite record a piece of speech and just process it through speech recognition technology to output a full (completely accurate) transcript right now, but we're not far off suggests Peter ...

The government has done something very clever, and people seem not to have noticed. With very little fanfare, it was announced last week that all government departments will share a common logo, ...

With smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs and even cookers linking up to the internet at home, Wi-Fi is a must for most families. Yet, security specialists are always warning us how vulnerable ...

"Better than sex," is a common [in more senses than one] way of expressing how good something is. While Facebook does not quite qualify, posting on social networking sites does rank alongside sex ...

Downtime is proud that the headline for this post not only spells out what the content is about but that it is also one of the weirdest you will read this week. Probably. We don't know what else ...

The headline might appear underwhelming but claiming that outsourcing is not about cutting cost is a controversial one.Most people in the outsourcing sector, outside the supplier community, say ...

I'm just back from a week in the Far East where I was opening the 13th Info-Security Project Conference in Hong Kong. It's a couple of years since I last spoken at this conference so it was ...

The Computer Weekly Developer Network blog ran a piece recently entitled "What can software application developers expect from InfoSec?"-- which, if anything was an open invitation for additional ...

And if you do not like that idea, please come up with your own - because we really do need some fresh thinking if we are not to go round and round in circles yet again - while the world moves on ...

A new open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution with built in "CRM gamification" techniques has surfaced this month in beta version release form.