The UltraTech Zone

Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting more file formats in its Office suite in the first half of 2009, and the response from the European Union was one of skepticism. Microsoft intends to increase PDF support natively in Office, as well as add the Open Document Format (ODF), as a part of Service Pack 2 for Office 2007.  The ...

Microsoft has announced that it will be supporting more file formats in its Office suite in the first half of 2009 , and the response from the European Union was one of skepticism. Microsoft intends to increase PDF support natively in Office , as well...(read more)

Yes, we know that information security in an interconnected world is not trivial.  We accept that configuration errors or malicious insiders or new, complex threats might conspire to provide opportunities for a breach.  But who says that it is acceptable that notification and disclosure of a breach be done months or years after the ...

Some days it seems like Microsoft still has a lot to learn about being a team player on a global stage where customers and regulators are interested in open standards and interoperability. They recently got spanked with both the ISO and the IEC while lobbying to get their OpenXML document format established as a global, open standard.  In ...

Some days it seems like Microsoft still has a lot to learn about being a team player on a global stage where customers and regulators are interested in open standards and interoperability. They recently got spanked with both the ISO and the IEC while...(read more)

Given the recent spate of breach announcements from companies like Monster.com and TradeFreedom Securities Inc., I've been thinking about how poor security is going to impact organizations and consumers over the next few years. Even though there have been an increasing number of attacks over the past 18-24 months, and even though the ...

Given the recent spate of breach announcements from companies like Monster.com and TradeFreedom Securities Inc. , I've been thinking about how poor security is going to impact organizations and consumers over the next few years. Even though there have...(read more)

I've been falling behind on my Harvard Business Review reading, in recent months, but I finally made some time to catch up on the July/August issue, and came across an awesome opinion article entitled, ''Productivity Is Killing American Enterprise'' by Henry Mintzberg. You can find the article here, or an extended version of it on Henry ...

I've been falling behind on my Harvard Business Review reading, in recent months, but I finally made some time to catch up on the July/August issue, and came across an awesome opinion article entitled, '' Productivity Is Killing American Enterprise '' by...(read more)

I have to admit that it took me quite some time to get the hang of the whole professional networking thing, as assisted by technology.  Until 2003, I hadn't really taken a whole lot of time to network with peers on a professional level, or build a useful network of contacts that is necessary for advancing ones career.   Not ...

Just today, I read the following article about bad job advertisements, and I have to say that I heartily concur with the sentiments posted there -- especially #6. Nothing is a greater turn-off in the job searching process than to find a job posting that won't indicate even a broad range for the position.  It's not like an organization will ...

Or, more precisely, better than many analysts expected.  The analysts always seem to initially expect that the new OS will sell wildly better than the current OS, and then when Microsoft provides any guidance to suggest caution, they downgrade their expectations to ''will probably do poorly''.  Thus, they are always surprised when it ...

On a number of fronts, April 2007 is turning out to be a very interesting month for me.  For this particular post, we'll just touch on Information Security again. A recent report from MessageLabs indicates very clearly that targeted security attacks are on the rise, and that email is still a common threat vector.  This morning, I ...

The issue I speak of relates to how many changes and new features should go into a new release of their software product.  If Microsoft adds lots of new functionality, then customers and analysts conclude that the likelihood of bugs within the new code is high and so they avoid product adoption for months or years or until several service ...

The issue I speak of relates to how many changes and new features should go into a new release of their software product. If Microsoft adds lots of new functionality, then customers and analysts conclude that the likelihood of bugs within the new code...(read more)