Top 10 business technologies of 2010 – really?

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Analysts at Gartner yesterday attempted to look into the future to guess what would be making the biggest impacts on businesses in 2010, as it revealed the top 10 strategic technologies for 2010.

Technologies to make the top ten include Client Computing (think virtualisation, again), Social Computing (personal and work time will mix, darn it) and, rather less exotically, Flash Memory.

Meanwhile, Gartner also points to the rise in mobile apps, stating that despite the plethora of applications for platforms such as the iPhone, it predicts a newer version with identical operating system interface and processor architecture.

But can we trust Gartner to predict the future? (more…)

Stephen Gately, tube workers and the power of Twitter

Monday, October 19th, 2009

This weekend saw a fascinating display of the influence of social networking, and how it harnessed its power to unify – and arguably lead – people to rally together against wrongdoing.

Events kicked off on Friday morning when the Daily Mail published an article by one of its columnists, Jan Moir, on the death of Boyzone’s Stephen Gately last weekend, in which she claims there was “nothing natural”  about the circumstances of the gay singer’s demise, and that Gately’s death struck a blow to the “happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.”

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Should you be sacked for sending SHOUTY email?

Friday, September 4th, 2009

This week it was reported that a New Zealand woman was sacked from her job as an accountant at a healthcare company after colleagues complained that her emails were too “shouty”.  This was because of her tendency to write her emails in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Perhaps understandably, she thought that by using capital letters, her fellow employees would PAY MORE ATTENTION to her missives than if she used regular, lower case.

An employment tribunal also heard that Vicki Walker behaved “provocatively” by highlighting the REALLY IMPORTANT phrases in bold or red.  In one office-wide email presented as evidence she had typed in bold blue letters: “TO ENSURE YOUR STAFF CLAIM IS PROCESSED AND PAID, PLEASE DO FOLLOW THE BELOW CHECK LIST.”

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