management

Dashwire's new goodies make the most of your phone

Dashwire, a small Seattle start-up eleven employees strong, continues to impress with its growing service for managing and interacting with the contents of your cell phone online. To recap an earlier review, Dashwire synchronizes your cell phone to an online account, displaying on a flexible dashboard your call history, images, profile, texting history, photos, ring tones, videos, and contacts. You can roll up your sleeves and muck around with your phone from Dashwire, a much happier experience than crouching over your two-inch cell phone screen and tapping or clicking away through on-device management programs, particularly if you're not on … Read more

A charging station designed for neat freaks

BlueLounge is a company that makes cable management cool, as seen by its SpaceStation desktop organizer we featured about a month ago. Now it has announced the Sanctuary, a dish that holds your personal artifacts with cables that stick out of its base to charge various mobile devices.

Under its inner tray is a large AC adapter with many compatible connectors for devices from such big-name brands as Apple, Nokia, and Samsung. It also has a built-in USB port so you can plug in a USB charger for any connector the Sanctuary doesn't have. You pick the connectors you … Read more

Are you creating your own workplace stress?

Quick, by a show of hands, how many of you have workplace stress? Almost everybody, great.

Now, how much of that stress do you think is self-imposed? What, no hands?

Well, I'm not surprised, but you may be in for a shock.

You see, most people make their own stress. Why do they do it? How should I know? I'm not a shrink. I'm just here to tell you that a lot of it is self-imposed. … Read more

Olympus promotes top U.S. exec

Olympus has promoted F. Mark Gumz, president and chief operating officer since 2000, to be president and chief executive of the North and South American operations of the Japanese camera and optics company.

In addition, the company is changing the name of Gumz's division. Olympus USA, a holding company that represented all of Olympus' American operations and that employs 2,500 people, now is called Olympus Corporation of the Americas.

"His appointment will...help position the organization to better respond to customer needs, and his knowledge of Japanese culture and of our company makes him the perfect choice … Read more

Analyze your daily workload with RescueTime

If you've ever wondered how many minutes a day you spend using Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, or Gmail; or how much of your day is "wasted" by community Web sites such as Digg, Slashdot, or MetaFilter, a free application called RescueTime (also available for Mac) can track that information for you, while providing several other valuable features to monitor your time.

Monitoring productivity in the Internet age has become more complicated than ever, especially if you work online. E-mail, instant messaging, and multitasking keep many of us switching constantly between projects or contacts. RescueTime combines a local application … Read more

Windows Live teams up with social networks for contact portability

Robert Scoble couldn't do it, but Windows Live can.

Microsoft's Web-app division announced Tuesday that it has partnered with five social networks--LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo, and yes, Facebook--on a new project to facilitate address book portability. The partner social networks have agreed to use the Windows Live Contacts API so that members can import Windows Live contacts to their respective sites, as part of the new data-portability strategy that Microsoft outlined at its Mix conference earlier this month.

In return, Microsoft has launched Invite2Messenger, a new service for users of those social networks so that they … Read more

It's about the experience

So today is a special day. My father celebrates his 70th birthday — aside from my outing his birthday and age (fortunately he probably won't see this), today will be just another day for him. Needless to say, he's not one for celebration. In fact, I think he sees most days as just another day, but in a good way. Let me explain.

My father comes from a time long before the web and computers. He didn't go to college, and fortunately grew up in a day when you could do a lot more with your life without … Read more

Economic downturn = Financial upturn for GroundWork and open source

We are or shortly will be in a recession. While perhaps not cause to celebrate, it's also not cause for alarm as the best companies will emerge all the stronger for the experience.

Good open-source companies will be primary beneficiaries of a downturn, as Stephen Elliot of IDC points out with regard to open-source system management vendors like GroundWork:

With economic uncertainty building on IT organizations, we are seeing enterprise IT organizations tightening their belts when it comes to IT budgets and initiatives. As open source management solutions continue to mature and increase their functionality, they will see more opportunities on the enterprise scale.

I single out GroundWork because I had the opportunity to talk with Dave Lilly, CEO of GroundWork, in advance of next week's Open Source Business Conference 2008 (March 25-26, San Francisco), and got the inside scoop on how the company is doing. GroundWork exemplifies the "unfair advantage" that open-source vendors have when IT buyers actually need the software to work at a reasonable price.… Read more

LinkedIn goes corporate

So, the other day I posted about how you can fit LinkedIn into your SEO and Web marketing mix through optimizing the links within your profile as well as linking back to your public LinkedIn profile, participating on LinkedIn Answers, and optimizing member profiles. Of course LinkedIn is built around individual members, so business interaction is very individual to individual ... there's something kind of nice about this, more personal feel.… Read more

BMC and BladeLogic: Timing is everything

The technology industry loves to talk about anything that is new. Whether it's IT virtualization, SOA, or Web 2.0, venture capitalists, analysts, and the press team up and transform the latest thing into technonirvana.

OK, maybe this is just human nature, but in our business, it is important to remember that the IT triad consists of people, processes, and technology. In other words, enterprise technology ain't worth squat, unless a bunch of highly skilled nerds can monitor boxes, follow directions, and turn individual piece parts into a cohesive system.

Yup, the "people and process" part … Read more