Stories by Mary Brandel

Earth Rangers: Focus on virtualization, geothermal power

"Bring Back the Wild" -- that's the mission of Earth Rangers, an innovative nonprofit organization that works to educate kids about environmental threats. Its goal is to inspire kids -- the "chief inheritors of environmental destruction," as its Web ...

Open-source software's hidden snags

When CIO Daniel Chan was first prompted to use open-source software, cost savings weren't top of mind.

How to manage outsourcers after the contract's ink is dry

When the global trade association SEMI experienced a big revenue decline last year and had to cut staff, CIO Gil McInnes turned to outsourcing.

Smartphones need smart security practices

As vice president of IT at Windsor Foods in Houston, Stephan Henze has to stay one step ahead of the latest IT trends. That's why he's spending a lot of time thinking about securing and deploying smartphones enterprisewide.

Forecast 2010: 6 hottest skills for 2010

Pent-up demand for new projects. Veteran employees leaving the company. Who could complain about such pressures in the waning months of 2009, when the year was spent under a cloud of economic misery?

How hackers find your weak spots

While there are an infinite number of social engineering exploits, typical ones include the following:

Bush's exit to put new e-records system to the test

For members of the Bush administration, January 20, 2009, marks the end of a job. However, for the staff of the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), it's just the beginning of a project unprecedented in size and scope: sorting, ind...

Letting Apple into the enterprise isn't easy

Eighteen months ago, Serena Software began exploring the feasibility of supporting Apple MacBooks as an option for its users, most of whom are developers. It was interested in lowering support costs and increasing satisfaction among employees who use...

Social networking behind the firewall

Microsoft calls it TownSquare. Deloitte hosts D Street. IBM has its Beehive, and Best Buy its BlueShirt Nation.

Solid-state disk will go mainstream in 3, 2, 1...

Solid-state disk, once considered a niche technology for ruggedized, industrial and military applications, is on its way to the mainstream. This is partly because of SSD benefits, which include performance, power efficiency, ruggedness and a lightwei...

Vendors form 10Gbit/sec Ethernet Storage Alliance

Aaron Martin likes to plan ahead. One year ago, the IT manager at Loro Piano, an Italian luxury goods manufacturer with US operations in New York, plunked down US$30,000 for a 10Gbit/sec Ethernet storage array from Nimbus Data Systems. At the time, i...

How to spot -- and stop -- a spy

Corporations are woefully unprepared to counter attempts at corporate espionage, say experts who perform vulnerability assessments designed to uncover security weaknesses. US corporations lose as much as US$300 billion a year to hacking, cracking, ph...

Are You Obsolete?

Vince Kellen has had a successful IT career. Currently CIO at DePaul University, he is also an international speaker on customer relationship management and the Internet. He has written four books on database technology and is completing a Ph.D. in c...

Rock star coders

"You sound great singing in the shower, but there's a rock star inside you!" So read the first line of a job posting placed by Viget Labs in December, in its attempt to fill a junior-level position for a Ruby on Rails "would-be rock star programmer."

Should your company 'crowdsource' its next project?

When Constellation Energy Group's commodities group needed a new system recently, it considered the usual sources of labor: internal staff, a consultant, a contractor, offshore programmers or a mix of all four. Instead, it turned to a somewhat less t...