The Portable Document Format (PDF) is now an ISO International Standard - ISO 32000-1. This move follows a decision by Adobe Systems Incorporated, original developer and copyright owner of the format, to relinquish control to ISO, who is now in charge of publishing the specifications for the current version (1.7) and for updating and developing future versions.

  

Adobe said that it is committed to open architecture and by passing the copyright to ISO they now have a product that competes with Microsoft’s Office Open XML, a proprietary XML-based document format it built for its Office 2007 productivity suite, to the ISO. The ISO approved OOXML on April 1 in a controversial vote that is still being contested by some of the standards bodies that took part in it.

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Muslim hackers yesterday defaced the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) site. IANA is the organization responsible for managing the DNS root zone and assigning the DNS operators for the Internet's top-level domains, such as .com and .org. DNS, which translates the domains and URLs - such as e-janco.com - into IP addresses.

A group calling itself "NetDevilz" claimed responsibility for the hack, which Thursday morning temporarily redirected visitors to the sites for IANA and ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

Users who tried to reach iana.com, iana-servers.com, icann.com and icann.net were shunted to an illegitimate site. According to a screen capture of the defacement snapped by zone-h.org, the bogus site simply displayed a taunting message claiming ownerhship of the assignment processes.

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Based on a study published in the New York Times, a typical worker in information based job wastes 28% of their day with unimportant and personal e-mails, text messages, voice mails.  According to the ITProductivity.org – an Information Technology think tank – most organizations would be able to help their bottom line by doing the following:

• Install a robust firewall and SPAM filter at the front end of the corporate mail server
• Improve SPAM filters on both desktops and smart phones
• Provide company owned laptops and smart phones that have robust SPAM filtering software and
• Limit the accessibility to POP and non-company mail servers

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It is impossible to deny how important disaster recovery and business continuity are in today's digital economy.  In a survey conducted by FEMA fully 35% of all businesses that are impacted by a disaster never re-open their doors.

Without systems in place to keep applications and data flowing after a natural disaster or other interruption, a business risks losses that extend far beyond a manufacturing plant or data center. Many businesses incur ongoing financial loses, damage to a businesses' reputation, and possible regulatory and legal sanctions. In a worst-case scenario like 35% of the companies that FEMA estimated, a company can find its existence threatened.

How can an organization tackle disaster recovery and business continuity issues effectively? How can it develop a strategy that reduces risk and increases the likelihood of success? And how can it devise a roadmap for coping with constant change? There are no easy answers, but the Disaster Recovery Planning Template with the Security Manual  Template are a step in the right direction.

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Hiring and spending has slowed down in IT as businesses try to control costs in tough economic times

Park City, UT -  The prospect for IT professionals is not good. Janco has found that IT compensation growth remains flat, hiring is limited to key replacements, and discretionary spending has been cut back and in many cases eliminated. The CEO of Janco said, "As we collected compensation data for our mid-year 2008 IT Salary Survey we found that at the end of the first quarter businesses turned off the faucet for IT spending. Many businesses, in response to economic projections, slowed down and halted discretionary spending for software and hardware as well as placed hiring requisitions on a slow track."

  The summary findings in Janco 2008 Mid-Year IT Salary Survey are:

• Hiring demand is now the lowest it has been since 2004. Many enterprises have stopped hiring except for key replacements and those positions are being replaced at lower salary levels.
• Enterprises have slowed down and in many cases eliminated discretionary spending by IT. This has resulted in fewer projects being initiated, consultants use being reduced (if not eliminated), and a slow-down of initiatives that had already been approved.
• In the last twelve (12) months the increases in compensation for most IT Professionals were lower than increases in the cost of living.
• The mean increase in compensation for CIO's was less that 1.5%. The mean compensation for CIOs in large enterprises now is $179,823 and $171,755 for CIOs in  mid-sized enterprises. (Large enterprises have over $500 million in revenue and mid-sized have are $100 to $499 million in revenue).
• The mean compensation (which includes bonuses) for all Executive IT positions surveyed now is $144,645 in large enterprises and $131,763 in mid-sized enterprises.
• Positions that were in high demand in the 4th quarter of 2007 such as CSOs and others to develop new Web 2.0 applications are now back to normal hiring patterns.         
• Administrative positions in some IT functions are now being looked at as those that are expendable

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The American Corn Growers Association asked Congress, via letters to John Conyers and Patrick Leahy, to look closely at any potential search advertising tie-in with the top two search providers Google and Yahoo.

They said that Without competition, the free enterprise system suffers. It is true across all segments of industry, and that includes the business of agriculture.

The American Corn Growers Association represents part of a thriving industry knows it has to adapt and change to survive market conditions through the years.

An AGCA spokesperson said it is no different for the family farmers out there, who have come to use search advertising as a way to mitigate risks associated with supplying customers and their businesses. Fewer providers, they fear, means higher prices.

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The Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon lost multiple sets of unencrypted backup tapes containing private data belonging to 4.5 million individuals. Third-party vendors misplaced the tapes during transport to off-site locations. According to the bank, the tapes "included shareowner and plan participant account information, such as name, mailing address, Social Security number, and transaction activity."

Responding to the bank's delay in reporting one incident, which was not disclosed for over three (3) months, the Connecticut Governor said: "The disastrous effects of identity theft are virtually instantaneous in today's computerized world, and the lag time between the theft and the notification only aggravates what is an already outrageous situation."

BNY Mellon's chief risk officer said the bank now plans to improve security related to backup tapes. From Computerworld - "To bolster its security controls, the bank said it will now require that any confidential data written on tapes or CDs for transport must be encrypted or transported with undisclosed additional data protections. Further, when "technically feasible," the bank will demand that encrypted confidential data be delivered to off-site facilities electronically".

After exposing 4.5 million people to identity theft, it seems the notion of tape encryption suddenly popped into their heads. 

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With the advent of wide-scale connectivity around the globe people now do have the ability to get away from it all.  In two recent trips the CEO of Janco was able to connect while in the Amazon via a Internet Café  that was driven by a satellite dish and a diesel generator and in Belarus via a public WiFi connection.

One in four workers said they plan to stay connected with work while they are on vacation this summer, a percentage that has nearly doubled in the last two years, according to a survey released by CareerBuilder.  The bulk of these hyper-connected workers were in the IT industry. Beat out only by sales workers, 37 percent of IT workers said they planned to check in while away.

Yet while IT workers also led the way in the requirement to be connected in the off-hours - 19 percent said working, checking voice mail and/or e-mail while on vacation was mandated by their employers - the reverse of this is that four in five IT workers are checking in with their jobs while on vacation on their own volition.

The Solutions Research Group study found that 68 percent of Americans feel anxious when they are not connected in one way or another. This disconnect anxiety (feelings of disorientation and nervousness when a person is deprived of Internet or wireless access for a period of time) affects all age groups, describing their feelings when offline as dazed, tense, inadequate and even panicked.  The study also found that 63 percent of BlackBerry users admitted to having sent a message from the bathroom.

In fact, this concept of "technology addiction" has gone so far that U.S. psychiatrists are considering adding this "compulsive-impulsive" disorder to the next release of the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in 2011.

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Firefox has just released the first release candidate for Firefox Version 3.0.  At the same time Microsoft has announced that it will release a second beta of Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) before the end of October.  Both Mozilla (Firefox) and Microsoft (IE) are looking to at the future.

Firefox version 3.0 has a cleaner look and is significantlty faster than prior versions.  One issue over the long terrn will be the exposure to security breaches with the Master Password feature.

IE 8.0 will default to a standards-compliant rendering of Web content -- an approach that had been pushed by site developers in lieu of a mode that stresses compatibility with IE7. A new tag, which can be applied on a per-page basis or site wide, instructs IE8 to display the content as would IE7. Browsing with this default setting in IE8 may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended

The first beta of IE8 is not exactly in widespread use. According to the latest data from Janco Browser and Operating System Market Share Study IE8 Beta 1 accounted for just .03% of all browsers used in May 2008. IE7, by comparison, held the top spot with a market share of 30.07% and IE 6 at 34.22%.

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As more technology is released to users vendors face a risk of too much "bang for the buck". 

What many vendors do not realize is there are a large number of users who just do not like to change. These people are not technophiles, they are just users who comfortable with what they are using and they do not want to deal with the risk that something they depend on does not work.

Many feel that just because a product is old it does not mean it do not meet their requirements. Eventually as their computers get replaced they will move to a new version of an OS and Browser because that is what the computer comes with.

A great example of this reluctance to change is Vista. After 18 months, many have not moved to it because they do not to risk what they have that works with something new.

Another example is seen in a a survey by Opinion Research Corp. which found that non-iPhone and non-BlackBerry smart phones were the single most-returned gift during the most recent holiday season; more than one-fifth of those purchased were brought back to stores. Why? The top reason was the inability to understand the setup process.

Returned gadgets are bad enough for the companies that make them, but the survey also found that almost 16% of those polled said that trouble with phone setup 'significantly worsened their perception of the company that manufactured the product."

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