Charles Cooper of CNET.com has made some pretty compelling points in a recent article [note that the page is gone so I can't link to it anymore]. His opinion is that Microsoft has emerged from its legal battles no worse off than when it went in. As such, I'd have to agree that Microsoft has indeed won. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you to decide.

IT hiring is apparently on the rise according to CIOs surveyed by CIO Magazine. Certain skill sets are in demand in particular project management.

A study from Walker Information reveals that IT workers are more loyal to their companies than they were three years ago. This conclusion is based on responses from 2,500 IT employees across many industries.

A sidebar in a recent issue of CIO Magazine reports some alarming statistics on the general population's understanding of data privacy. The survey was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center and includes the responses from 1,500 adult US Internet users.

If you're working for Microsoft, you've got to be bummed about a latest study published by the Gartner Group. In it they recommend that users wait until 2008 to upgrade. Only then, do they predict, will Windows Vista be vetted, patches, and stable enough to make it worth upgrading. They also go on to explain that most of the new features are already available as third-party add-ons to existing editions of Windows.

I just got through listening to another DotNetRocks show. This one had a couple of speakers including Ingo Rammer and Nicolas Landry. At one point the discussion moved to the question of whether Java is better than .NET. I'm going to ignore that question. It's been discussed before and there really isn't anything I could add that hasn't already been said.

A lot of development environments are case sensitive. Even some databases are set up to be case sensitive. And there are the operating systems such as Unix that are case sensitive. What I've never been able to understand is what value case sensitivity offers. Up until now, no one has provided a satisfactory answer.

If there's a company that most people are going to name when they think about information technology, I'd say it is IBM. IBM's roots are in hardware, but they've expanded in to software and services to round out the mix. I can't think of an IT skill that wouldn't be in use somewhere within this massive enterprise.

I consider Google to be the best WWW search engine. Apparently Microsoft thinks so too. There's a < href="http://www.google.com/microsoft" target="new">Microsoft specific version of Google available. This is very handy for anyone interested in filtering out results of a non-Microsoft nature. This will now be my first stop when I have a technical question.

Not too long ago I admitted to being far from the leading edge when it came to using or even trying out Second Life. While some people have found success with it, the reportedly wildly success "game" may not actually be all the impressive.

As a follow-up to my earlier, half-humorous post on how the recent 2000 Bloggers effort was depressing, I thought I'd post a quick note about a more positive event taking place. And this time I'm not joking around. For those bloggers out there that can't quite get the exposure needed to build a loyal following, there's a contest created just for you.

Tino Buntic decided recently to put together a collage of photos of 2000 bloggers. His criteria for entry were quite simple -- post your blog URL on his site and make sure that there's a photo available on it. He'd take care of the rest. This simple idea has spread rapidly among bloggers all of who are eager to become part of this collage. I'm not exception.

There's a general belief that niche bloggers can tap in to the long-tail and convert visitors in to money using advertising networks such as AdSense. The theory is a good one and if you look hard enough you'll find that some bloggers are indeed making significant amounts of money. The unfortunate news is that these big earners are few and far between.

I won't deny that I'm behind the curve with this whole SecondLife thing. I'm not even sure that in spite of its continued press coverage (hype?) that I have any real interest in exploring it. I still feel that it could be one of those fads that blow over after an intense, but short-lived existence. With such things I prefer to wait-and-see before investing too much time of my own.

The NY Times is reporting (registration may be required) that Time Inc. is cutting 300 jobs to focus more on building new web sites and improving existing ones. I can't say I've heard of that exact explanation for cutting people before.

A while back I had a discussion with a friend who felt that all the good business ideas had been taken already. When he said this I laughed and rebutted that just because neither of us had any ideas didn't mean there weren't any left. And sure enough, I've recently come across yet another big dollar idea that seems so obvious in hindsight.

In celebration of the launch of SearchGrit, my new blog dedicated to all things search, I'm offering to do a free blog SEO review. Not sure how long I'll provide this service so submit your site (follow above link) now!

In a previous post where I listed the best WordPress plugins I included the AdSense Beautifier Plugin for WordPress. This plugin makes it easy to have images appear beside the AdSense ads. The idea being that these images would attract a visitor's eye and lead to increase clicks. I'm now retracting that recommendation.

A couple of weeks ago (December 1, 2006) I decided to move this blog to WordPress. Prior to the move I had been using a homegrown solution written in ASP. I went down the ASP route years ago because there simply wasn't an alternative that appealed to me. But WordPress has become such a great blogging system that I felt compelled to make the move.

This is the first edition of the Carnival of Software Worth Using. My hope with this carnival is to learn about software that other people have found useful.

I'm taking my first step in to the world of blog carnivals. What is a blog carnival, you ask? Here's the official description from Blog Carnival.

It seems like every few weeks there's a new article about a new security flaw in some Microsoft operating system. This, I think, is a huge threat to Microsoft's dominance. If such warnings continue to appear and if some major system is compromised, I expect there'll be a backlash. Which in itself might not be significant. But what if the backlash is from developers and ISVs?

Not 30 seconds after writing about Microsoft being the winner of the anti-trust battle, I read about the release of some free software that is supposed to be a replacement for Microsoft Exchange. This new product goes hand in hand with OpenOffice, a replacement for the Microsoft Office Suite.

It used to be that stored procedures were considered must-haves. And there was little argument against the performance benefits of stored procedures so most of us used them whenever we could.

One of my clients has decided that they're going to give .NET development a try. They're not planning to migrate existing applications, which makes sense in my opinion. There's no need to convert something that's already in production. However, a new system being built will be done using the .NET Framework. Surprisingly, the push to use .NET didn't come from the developers. Instead, the decision came from a group involved in keeping their eye on the "big picture". And because it came from non-developers, there was next to no resistance from upper management.

An IT consultancy, Foote Partners, released a survey recently of 48,000 IT workers on compensation. One of the conclusions of the survey is that pay is rising for some IT workers.

Back in October of 2005, MTV Networks hired their first-ever Chief Digital Officer, Jason Hirschhorn, whose purpose was to play a role in helping MTV's brands "get the web". And then seven months later, this newly minted executive left the company. Ooops.

Blogging has finally reach the top of the IT food chain. I say this because CIO magazine dedicated several pages to the topic of blogging and even included commentary from blogging CIOs who make no attempt to hide their identities. This is great news assuming CIOs, like other newcomers to blogging , don't spend their time talking about their cats.

Yesterday I wrote about some interest spam statistics. Today, I'm summarizing some phishing statistics from the same edition of CIO Magazine.

The last page of the January 15, 2006 edition of CIO Magazine listed a bunch of spam statistics that I thought were quite interesting.

CertMag released the results of their 2005 salary survey. The survey covers a wide-range of IT-related careers. They report that, "As was the case last year, information storage and security bring the largest salaries, along with Cisco networking." And of particular interest to me, "Project managers and Java developers also scored well as career choices." Compared to last year, "Project management, a rapidly rising area of IT, crept up only two spots on this ranking, but its earnings power was boosted by almost $8,000."

The BlogHerald is a popular blog. At least that's what I'm reading. I had never heard of BlogHerald before it went up for sale.

Bob Weinstein over at gantthead.com (registration required) has summarized some career related findings from a few research firms. I wasn't able to find the original data so I have to accept Weinstein's interpretation. Here are some highlights of what he wrote.

Earlier in 2005, Fast Company Magazine highlighted the 25 hottest careers for the next 5 years. Two information technology careers made it in the top 10.

In the February 15, 2005 issue of CIO Magazine, Paul Roberts reported on some blog (see blog definition) related statistics. This information is based on data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit organization that produces reports about the effects of the Internet on society. Of course, only someone with a blog would care about such trivia.

A new report from eMarketer includes this statement: "...blogs can bend Web traffic, upend organic search results, and tarnish a brand or a company. But blogs can also burnish brands, generate awareness, and open doors to consumers." That's attributing a lot of power to something that the same survey indicates only 4% of major US companies have public blogs. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there's an even smaller percentage of Americans who even know the definition of a blog.

Cnet reports that Borland is set to ship C#Builder with DB2. This struck me as an odd match-up. Admittedly Borland wants to get its new .NET development tool out to as many people as possible. And perhaps bundling a copy with DB2 has a better chance of getting to a developer that doesn't already use Visual Studio.NET. But why would IBM want to engage in such a partnership?

CNNMoney reports that, "two tech jobs in high demand these days are .NET (dot net) developers and quality assurance analysts."