Well, it looks like the title of my previous blog, “The sky is the limit for cloud computing!” was quite prophetic, with rumours abound this morning that BSkyB is reportedly going to buy The Cloud!

And it looks set to be a pretty good investment, what with Gartner’s report on Friday citing that cloud computing will be a top technology priority for CIOs in 2011.

There really is massive excitement around all internet service-based technologies – definitely an area to watch this year!

P.s. See what I did with the picture – Sky/ Cloud… Clever, no? I’ll get my coat

Photo by Flickr user jimflix!, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Total Telecom – Australia pushes ahead with controversial Internet filter
Australia said Tuesday it would push ahead with a mandatory China-style plan to filter the Internet, despite widespread criticism that it will strangle free speech and is doomed to fail.

CBR – Spammers target online Christmas shoppers
Cyber criminals are using the pre-Christmas online shopping rush to target users with seasonal spam message, new research from Symantec has revealed. The security firm’s State of Spam report for November found that during that month and October, spammers have been sending emails with references to online shopping and luxury goods.

Computer Weekly – Social media has changed online shopping forever, says report
The way consumers shop online changed over the past year as a result of the abundance of social networking applications enabling people to help each other make decisions. Web shoppers today are sharing information and their views on products and services through social networking before deciding what they buy.

Computing.co.uk – IT managers need to be more honest with staff
Many IT and telecoms workers remain in the dark about their employers business goals, according to new research conducted by YouGov, a situation that has a negative effect on their motivation, productivity and innovation.

IT PRO – Nokia shuts London shop
Nokia is closing retail stores around the world, including it’s flagship location on London’s Regent street, just down from the Apple Store.

IT PRO – Samsung unveils bada smartphone platform
Samsung has unveiled its new smartphone platform bada, in addition to a software development kit (SDK), which it claims will deliver benefits to operators, developers and users alike.

Computer Weekly – Companies failing to keep up with the internet
Companies are failing to keep up with the pace of change on the internet, according to Jeremiah Owyang, a partner at consultancy Altimeter Group. “Most companies can’t keep up with the slow web, let alone the future web,” he said, speaking at the Le Web conference in Paris.

CBR – Open-source BI to grow five-fold through 2012: Gartner
Open-source business intelligence (BI) tools are becoming a mainstream deployment option for all kinds of BI usage, according to Gartner. Gartner analysts said that while functionality is not yet on par with large commercial platforms and is still rarely seen as an enterprisewide BI standard, open-source BI tool deployment is growing solidly.

Computer Weekly – Dell increases Twitter sales
Dell has sold $6.5m worth of equipment by using microblogging website Twitter. This represents a late surge because in June this year the company said it had made $3m of sales on Twitter over the previous two years.

IT PRO – Twitter crowned top word of 2009
The Global Language Monitor has announced that Twitter is the Top Word of 2009 in its annual global survey of the English language. ‘Twittered’ was followed by Obama, H1N1, Stimulus, and Vampire. The near-ubiquitous suffix, 2.0, was number six, with Deficit, Hadron – the object of study of CERN’s new atom smasher – Healthcare, and Transparency rounding out the top 10.

IT PRO – Heathrow rolling out facial recognition tech
New electronic border gates are set to be introduced at Heathrow to speed up the process of passing through border control. The new gates will allow travellers over 18 with biometric passports to come back into the UK using facial recognition technology, comparing the picture with that on their passport as well as checking against any internal watch lists held by the UK Border Agency.

IT PRO – Parents call for online privacy lessons
The majority of parents want their children to receive lessons in online privacy, according to survey results released today. The YouGov study, commissioned to form part of the Digital Literacy Report 2009, showed 69 per cent of parents asking for the Government to provide compulsory lessons in school so children understand their online footprint and the effects it can have.

Computerworld UK – Are YouTube and Facebook guzzling your company bandwidth?
Figures uncovered by managed network provider Network Box between July and November of 2009, reveal the enormous impact YouTube and Facebook are having on corporate bandwidth.

The top 10 consumer mobile apps in 2012 will include:

1. Money Transfer – e.g. iMobile
2. Location-Based Services – e.g. Loopt
3. Mobile Search – e.g. Taptu
4. Mobile Browsing – e.g. Firefox Mobile
5. Mobile Health Monitoring – e.g. Main Street Medica
6. Mobile Payment- i.e. Charge Anywhere
7. Near Field Communication Services – e.g.  iCarte
8. Mobile Advertising – e.g. AdMob
9. Mobile Instant Messaging – e.g. Fring
10. Mobile Music – e.g. Spotify

With avatars creeping into business usage, Gartner believes there is an increasing risk of employees embarrassing themselves (and their organisations) through inappropriate dress and actions. The spoilsports recommend putting codes of conduct in place to stop Mr Jones from accounts creating an avatar called SexyBomb 137, with cleavage and skimpy dress to match. It’ll certainly affect the traffic to avatar building sites such as Build Your Wild Self and The Simpsons.

But surely this worry provides an opportunity for web-savvy designers? We wait to see Vivienne Westwood create a corporate avatar look……………….

Computing – Too many tools, not enough communication
Despite advances in technology, organisations find that a proliferation of communications tools is thwarting collaboration and slowing down their decision-making process, according to a survey sponsored by mobile network operator Orange. Orange surveyed more than 600 CIOs from multinational corporations across a number of industries in Europe. Nearly half – 45 per cent – of respondents said multiple communication channels cause severe delays in the response time from colleagues which can negatively impact business processes and productivity.

CBR – Technology democracy hits the workplace
Employees are demanding a greater degree of freedom to choose the IT applications and devices the use in the workplace – but are finding that enterprises are struggling to adapt to revolution.
The findings appeared in a report from the Economist Intelligence Unit, which found that users are adopting for work use the applications and devices that they use in their personal lives.

IT PRO – One in five homes broadband-connected by 2010
The number of households with broadband continues to grow, with one in five households worldwide predicted to have a fixed broadband connection by the end of 2009. This would mean that 422 million households have a fixed broadband connection in 2009, according to Gartner, up from 282 million in 2008.

Total Telecom – Twitter users twice as receptive to advertising
People who use Twitter appear to be much more open to advertising than those who use other social media, a tendency that might pay off for investors in the micro-blogging service. The finding, published in a report by Los Angeles-based research group Interpret LLC, provides a shot in the arm for the wildly popular micro-blogging service, which has so far been unable to make money.

However recent figures from Intel are putting a rosier spin on things. It has raised its guidance for the rest of the year and believes the industry will sell as many computers in 2009 as 2008.

What this sunny prediction masks is a fundamental shift in the market. It used to be your computer choice was laptop or desktop. Now new categories like netbooks, tablets, ereaders, sub-notebooks and even mobile phones are the computing choice for a lot of people. Fine for chip makers like Intel, but a worry for traditional PC manufacturers as the lines blur between computing, mobile and consumer electronics. Sales this Christmas promise to be crucial – watch this space to see who the winners are.

News-jack for business communications provider ntl:Telewest Business to target Twitter’s third birthday and an announcement by analyst house, Gartner

Approach:

• Carried out research in advance to find out how many large technology companies in the UK and the US have embraced Twitter for business communications
• Used Twitter to pre-pitch the results of the study to a few key journalists
• Pitched the story the following day to journalists and bloggers, and tweeted about the research with a link to the press release just three times
• Followed up with journalists who hadn’t covered the story the next day to flag a press release released by Gartner that morning highlight 4 ways that enterprises can use Twitter

Results:

• More than 150 clicks on the link to the press release, and three retweets
• More than 35 pieces of coverage, including two pieces in the national press
• Dozens of tweets commenting on the research, and linking to articles about it

Coverage:

Twitter’s potential overlooked by UK technology companies, says report, The Daily Telegraph
4 out of 5 UK tech companies aren’t using Twitter. So what’s the excuse?, Econsultancy
UK’s leading tech firms fail to grasp Twitter potential, Brand Republic
Enterprises turning to Twitter, says Gartner, IT Pro
Top UK firms slow on Twitter take-up, VNU Net