Info-Tech Advisor Newsletter articles from October 2001

Info-Tech Advisor Newsletter archives from October 2001

A Technology Upgrade Roadmap.
October 2, 2001... Sources: The Business Journal Article, Coyote Communications Article, Earthweb Article, ITtoolkit.com Article IT decision makers are under a lot of pressure from management and vendors alike to upgrade technology simply for the sake of...

Employee Performance Reviews: A How-To.
October 2, 2001... Sources: BusinessTown.com Articles, The Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits Article, Fred Nickols Article Yearly performance reviews are critical to maintaining the overall productivity of your staff. Managers who avoid performance...

Beating Nimda.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Information Week Articles, ZDNet News Articles, ZDNet UK Articles Nimda is a new network-aware, mass-mailing worm that infects both Microsoft Windows and IIS Web servers alike. Think of Nimda as a combination of Code Red and the...

Web Services 101.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Computerworld Article, eWeek Article, Grand Central White Paper, InternetWeek Article, The Stencil Group White Paper, ZDNet Articles Web services are applications that use a universal language to send data and instructions to one...

Calculate the Costs of ERP Staffing.
October 2, 2001... Sources: BPIC Article, InternetWeek Article, Office.com Article When estimating the total cost of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation, be sure to cost out the human resources side. Cost factors associated with staffing...

Network Equipment: Save Power, Save Money.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Berkeley National Laboratory White Paper, eSchool News Article, Light Reading Article, Mac Info Web Site, NetworkMagazine.com Article The electricity consumed by your network and network-attached equipment could be costing your...

Extend Your PC Lifecycle.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Dell Computer Corporation Article, Gartner Group Article, Smart Computing Article "How long should I keep my desktop PCs?" is a common question that many top consultants are asked daily. Most IT managers remember being told that...

A Gigabit Ethernet Implementation Plan.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Cisco Systems Articles, Extreme Networks Study The 80/20 rule claims that 80 percent of traffic stays within a workgroup and 20 percent is routed across the backbone. This rule is becoming increasingly inaccurate. Is your network...

Disaster Preparedness: Put a Price Tag on Your Data.
October 2, 2001... Sources: InformationWeek Article, Inforum Article, Intelligent Enterprise Articles, Strategic Finance Article, UK Library and Information Commission Article, Unisys Corporation EXEC On-Line Journal Article You need to ramp up your security...

A Businessperson's Portal Primer.
October 2, 2001... Sources: CIO Magazine White Paper While the term "portal" does not have the cool new technology pizzazz it had only a year ago, there are still good reasons to use the Web to access business applications. This CIO Magazine white paper will...

"Smart" Hardware Purchasing Advice.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Smart Computing Web Site Situation: You need to pick up a hard drive and a vendor is offering you a deal on a Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80GB. Seagate says it is "the fastest hard drive ever" and the price seems good. You would like...

Installing Tomcat on Windows.
October 2, 2001... Sources: DevX Tutorial The good news: Tomcat is a "simple and free" environment for developing Web applications. It is an open source java servlet developed by the Jakarta Project at the Apache Software Foundation. The bad news:...

Defend Your Network.
October 2, 2001... Sources: PC Magazine Special Report We are living in a time when people are feeling particularly vulnerable. For the IT manager, these feelings translate into concern for the vulnerability and security of your organization's technical...

Benchmark Your Infrastructure Management (1).
October 2, 2001... Sources: BMC Software White Paper Managing your technical infrastructure is one of the foundational practices of an information technology department. BMC software, a leading independent software developer, has put together an online tool...

Benchmark Your Infrastructure Management (2).
October 2, 2001... Sources: BMC Software White Paper Managing your technical infrastructure is one of the foundational practices of an information technology department. BMC software, a leading independent software developer, has put together an online tool...

Plug WLAN Security Holes.
October 2, 2001... Sources: NextComm, Inc Weaknesses in the IEEE 802.11b wireless network standard's built-in security protocol, Wireless Equivalent Privacy (WEP), have been well documented in the media recently. NextComm has developed a new technology...

World's First Spreadsheet Server.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Actuate According to a Forrester Research report, 60% of executives say they receive reports in Excel spreadsheets. Excel is clearly a key business communication tool. To aid in the creation, distribution, and overall management...

IBM Updates First Informix Product.
October 2, 2001... Sources: IBM Corporation With IBM's purchase of Informix back in July, many Informix clients were worried that support for Informix products would cease to exist. With a new version of IDS 9.3, Informix' transaction database server, IBM...

New AMD Duron Tops Low-Cost Chips.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Advanced Micro Devices AMD is now shipping a 1.1GHz version of its Duron processor, which is geared toward home users and lower-end business desktops. What does this mean for you? * With the 1.1GHz chip, AMD has widened its...

Compression Technology for the WAN.
October 2, 2001... Sources: Perabit Networks, Inc. If you could reduce traffic across WAN links by up to 90%, would you? Of course! A new compression appliance from Perabit - the SR-50 Sequence Reducer - leverages pattern recognition technology developed for...

How to Safely Crash a Project.
October 16, 2001... Sources: BusinessFinanceMag.com Article, CIO Insight Article, Ed Yourdon Article, PC Week Article, Welcom Presentation The failure and abandonment rates of IT projects are well publicized. While the best thing to do is take steps early on...

Telephony Meets the Web: Introducing Voice Portals.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Advanstar Communications Article, CNN.com Article, Speech Technology Magazine Article To answer the demand for "anywhere, anytime" access to the Internet, telephones are becoming popular Internet terminals, connecting through...

Negotiating the Best Telecom Agreements.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Applied Research Technologies Article, CRMXchange Article, CrossNodes Article, Network World Fusion Article, Service Level Corporation Paper Deregulation, vicious competition, and revolutions in technology have dramatically...

Putting a Web Face on Your Legacy Data.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Arkansas Office of Information Technology Report, Customer Interaction Solutions Article, IT Professional Article, Planet PDA Article Over the years, your company has invested a lot of time and money into what has become a...

How A DMZ Can Save Your Network.
October 16, 2001... Sources: SANS Institute Articles, Network Computing Workshop, ZDNet Article, Searchnetworking.com Article If your network security guru is talking about setting up a DMZ, pay close attention. If he or she is not setting up a DMZ for...

Dealing with Downsizing.
October 16, 2001... Sources: CompanyNewsletters.com Article, Harvard Business School Publishing Article, Internet.com Article, Network World Fusion Article, St. Louis Business Journal Article, TechRepublic Article Letting people go is perhaps one of the...

Prevention vs. Cure: It's Time for Online Backup.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Contingency Planning & Management Articles, Dell Computer Corporation White Paper, Lakeview Technology Article, techguide.com White Paper Up to 60% of your company's data may currently sit unprotected on PCs and notebooks. For an...

A Plan for Data Warehouse Security.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Computerworld Article, DM Review Articles, Intelligent Enterprise Article The data stored in a typical data warehouse is subject to a lot of handling. * Case in Point: According to Predictive Systems, a single admittance to a...

Modeling Business Requirements.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Department of Environment & Natural Resources-North Carolina Manual, Developer.com Article, InformationWeek.com Articles Gathering requirements from end users when developing a system or application is the only way to effectively...

Top-Level Wireless Guide.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Synchrologic White Paper Wireless technology has arrived as a legitimate extension of enterprise computing. That means you need to have the same grasp of wireless networks, protocols, and related technology as you have of...

Configuring Cisco's PIX Firewall.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Earthweb Feature If your shop uses Cisco's PIX firewall appliance for network security, here is some free advice you can use. Earthweb has published a five-part excerpt from the book "Cisco's Secure Internet Security Solutions" by...

Selecting BI Solutions: A Vendor-Neutral Approach.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Intelligent Enterprise Magazine Guide Business Intelligence strategist Mark Smith writes in Intelligent Enterprise Magazine, "Many companies don't know what they truly need" in Business Intelligence solutions, leading to "chaos...

An Online Course in Fiber Optics.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Fotec Tutorial Getting a handle on the nuts and bolts - or perhaps that should be cabling and connectors - of fiber optic networking can be daunting. This online course and other materials developed by fiber optic test equipment...

Streaming Media Production 101.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Sonic Foundry White Paper The company president is going to deliver a major strategy speech. It has been decided that the speech will be a good addition to the corporate information section of the company Web site. The...

LANDesk Offers Enhanced Features.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Intel Corporation At $60 per node, Intel's LANDesk 6.5 network PC management tool offers upgrade distribution in a heterogeneous environment. Highlights of this new version include: * Directory-integrated policy management....

New Netopia Routers for Speed and Security.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Netopia Netopia's low-priced T1 and DDS R5000 Series Routers - designed for small businesses - combine the speed of broadband routed across multiple computers and security features. Here are the key features: * These...

GoBack Automatically Backs Up Changes.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Roxio Roxio's GoBack 3 Deluxe can restore your hard drive to any state within the past two weeks, providing protection from viruses or user error. * GoBack runs in the background and requires no intervention. * RAM...

New Microsoft Security Program.
October 16, 2001... Sources: Microsoft Corporation Microsoft is making it easier for customers to implement their patches through what has been dubbed the Strategic Technology Protection Program. * For no cost to its customers, the new Strategic...

Caching Software Reduces Bandwidth Usage.
October 16, 2001... Sources: FineGround Networks FineGround Networks' Condenser caching software has just received an update. Highlights of version 3.0 include: * Tenfold performance gains and a bandwidth utilization reduction of up to 95 percent. *...

Let Us Count the Reasons...Not to Drop IIS.
October 30, 2001... Sources: CNN Article, ENT News Article, Gartner Group Report, IISAnswers Article, Microsoft Web Site, Netcraft Survey, NTBugTraq Web Site, Roberta Bragg Procedure, SANS Institute Web Site, Shavlik Technologies Tools, TechRepublic Article,...

Todays Hot IT Skills.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Hewitt Associates Articles, InformationWeek.com Article, META Group Article, TechWeb Article The pace of technology, the recent economic downturn, and even the events of September 11 have had an impact on what's hot in the world...

Novell NetWare 6: Is It In Your Future?
October 30, 2001... Novell NetWare 6: Is It In Your Future? Sources: IT-Director.com Article, Network Computing Article, Novell Web Site, The Register Articles, ZDNet Article, ZDNet UK Article Recent pronouncements of the death of NetWare have been...

How To Enforce Your IT Policies.
October 30, 2001... Sources: CrossNodes Article, Stambaugh Ness Article, Websense Article You've put together a series of policies that outline appropriate use of IT resources in your company. Yet these policies could be fundamentally useless if there are no...

Save Megabucks with Video Conferencing.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Latitude Communications White Paper, Microsoft Web Site, Placeware Online Calculator Face-to-face meetings can be expensive and difficult to arrange. Add to that our post-September 11 travel fears, and you have a situation ripe...

Its Time to Build an Incident Response Team.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Australian Computer Emergency Response Team White Paper, Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute Handbook, IT Professional Article, SANS Institute Articles, SEI Interactive Article Virus infiltration and hacker attacks are...

Making Cents of Online Communities.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Business 2.0 Article, EContent Article, Fast Company Article, Online Community Report Article, Participate.com White Paper, Unisys White Paper, ZDNet Article "Online Community" has been one of the most-abused buzzwords of the past...

Tips for Managing Teleworkers.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Business Week Article, CIO Magazine Article, Network Computing Article, Network World Fusion Article, The Transportation Management Association Group of Tennessee Handbook, University of California-Davis Institute of Transportation...

XSL: The Reason to Learn XML.
October 30, 2001... Sources: O'Reilly XML.com Web Site, TopXML Web Site, W3C Web Site, W3Schools Web Site A new standard - XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) - has been announced that allows you to publish from a single copy of a document, transforming it...

A Paranoid's Guide to SQL Backups.
October 30, 2001... Sources: DevX Articles "Hope for the best but plan for the worst" is the mantra of all good contingency planners. For SQL database maintainers, planning for the worst means having a solid backup solution in place. A SQL Server pro and...

Three Steps To Competitive Intelligence.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Inc.com Web Site Some companies shell out big bucks to have expensive consultants or entire departments working on competitive intelligence. However, author Jan Gardner writing for Inc.com notes that you can get meaningful...

Hard Data On Linux Hardware.
October 30, 2001... Sources: ZDNet Resource If you have already bought into the advantages of the free, open source, Linux operating system, your next question will be "What hardware can I use?" To help get solid information on the functionality of Linux...

Use These Memories of the Way We Were.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Internet Archive Web Site Problem: A competitor has introduced a cool new Web page. For a competitive intelligence report, you would like to be able to show the changes from the previous version. The trouble is that the previous...

Watching Your E-mail Ps and Qs.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Bartleby.com Article, Dynamoo.com Article, Larry Magid's PCAnswer.com Article, Webfoot.com Article Consider the following e-mail exchange: Message[greater than] I need that report RIGHT NOW. Response[greater than] Calm...

Salesforce.com: Online CRM Software.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Salesforce.com Acquire, grow and retain valuable customers with Salesforce.com's premier online CRM (customer relationship management) service. Be up and running quickly, resulting in immediate ROI. Highlights include: * No...

SiteSpring Manages Collaborative Web Development.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Macromedia Today's Web development teams are complex groups that hold a diverse array of skill sets. Managing such a group is not easily accomplished. To aid in this effort, Macromedia has released SiteSpring, a server-based Web...

EndItAll: A Handy Utility.
October 30, 2001... Sources: PC Magazine Sometimes you need to quickly shut down all or some tasks running on your system, such as when installing a new program or when performance degradation brings your work to a grinding halt. EndItAll 2, first published...

Manage Internet Usage.
October 30, 2001... Sources: SurfControl Employee abuse of Internet access privileges may not only be hurting overall productivity, but also leaving your company open to costly legal action due to inappropriate use. SurfControl, a market leader in Internet...

Fluke Network Inspector 5.0 - New Upgrade.
October 30, 2001... Sources: Fluke Networks Networks today have become more complex to manage and more likely to malfunction. Fluke Networks' Network Inspector builds a detailed database of the devices in a MAC broadcast domain and then lets you slice and...