Corporate blogs are becoming a standard item, but some companies use them irresponsibly. The end result is that potential benefits are squandered due to loss of credibility. The latest such incident occurred when an independent blog dedicated to questioning patents was actually being generated by Cisco Systems.

 

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Title: Dealing With Your Digital Dirt 2.5
Source: ExecuNet
Date: 2008
Abstract: The Internet is an excellent vehicle for letting the world know our personal values but also for others to publicly express their opinions about us, which in turn has an influence, for good and for bad, on our reputation. This digital reputation will have increasingly more influence on our lives, such as in our professional career. Statistics show that those in charge of hiring personnel are making more and more use of search engines to find out about candidates and that the information posted on the Web about our behavior or our integrity are taken into account when deciding whether or not to offer a job position or whether to assign us with additional responsibilities. In such decisions, our digital reputation could have a positive influence…but it could also have the opposite effect. What could be done in that case? The ExcuNet report makes some recommendations on how to neutralize any unfavorable third-party information, which despite possibly not being something we can delete can perhaps be offset, for example by creating a blog to explain our viewpoints and actions and by doing so have those become the first results displayed in the search engines when someone goes looking for info about us.

 

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The use of cell phones has long since taken off and now that statement takes on a whole new meaning, as they will soon be allowed to operate during flights. Airlines such as Air France were already applying pressure for this to happen; airplane manufacturers, Airbus among them, have been testing out a number of technologies for quite some time now; operators such as Vodafone have been looking to make deals with the airlines that will establish formulas for doing so, and the technologies capable of ensuring security were already available. But it is the European Union that has officially given the green light in the race for putting cell phones on board airplanes by establishing a set of regulations and licenses that will allow passengers to make calls and receive messages from any aircraft within the 27 European Union countries. To summarize: calls will be allowed at altitudes above 3,000 meters; the use of a satellite technology, independent from the operators’ existing terrestrial networks, with a frequency of 1800 megahertz that offers the guarantee of noninterference with air traffic control systems; measures have not been established to prevent that passengers wishing to rest on board from being bothered, particularly on longer flights; with the airlines themselves determining the system and rates, the latter of these being higher than the norm.
The web portal Madri+D has featured an article from the newspaper El País that details the progression of this aspect with regard to the airlines (or the simple expectation, as in the case of Iberia); the information on the BBC News website includes a diagram to help explain how the system works, and the popular Spanish blog Microsiervos has included a link to the magazine Popular Mechanics, which shows the reasons for the US spurning the use of cell phones during flights.

 

Articles in Madrid+d, La Voz de Galicia, BBC News, 01net, Microservos and Popular Mechanics

For years now, the information provided by security software developers reflect the increasingly frenetic activity of cybercriminals. Nonetheless, this year the record has been broken. Numerous companies have coincided in predicting an all-too-round number for this year: one million new viruses, no less. Is this realistic, or just some sensationalist ruse to boost the sales of their products? Most likely a little of both. Nonetheless, malicious code remains forceful, phishing (identity theft involving websites) is living the days of wine and roses, and the risk-taking crackers have been replaced by bands of professional online criminals, who are ever more savvy. Anyone can go to their inbox and see the ruthlessness of spammers, whose activity now accounts for the majority of Internet email traffic. Meanwhile, the security industry is preparing for the battle on the next major front: wireless Internet. This is a dreadful trend for electronic commerce and a wonderful business opportunity for security companies that has no end in sight.

 

Articles in El País, La Vanguardia, PCWorld, Comunicaciones World, eWeek and Information Week

The IESE campus in Barcelona will be hosting the MIT Sloan CISR Research Forum on April 28 and 29, 2008. The Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) develops concepts and frameworks to help executives address the IT-related challenges of leading increasingly dynamic, global, and information-intensive organizations. The event is aimed exclusively at European CIOs and CISR sponsors.