ALTOM: When is it OK to connect with someone on LinkedIn?
I never thought of online business networking site LinkedIn as having an ethical dilemma attached to it, until one day when I received an invitation from a client to connect to him.
Tim Altom
Articles
ALTOM: Can new technology make a toilet cleaner?
In a previous issue of IBJ, another columnist wrote that technology can raise the productivity of toilet cleaners. It wasn’t a central part of his argument, but as you might imagine, it caught my eye. I couldn’t resist looking into bathroom technology.
ALTOM: Office defibrillators are worth the expense
Few pieces of business technology can lay claim to saving lives. One gadget can, but odds are you don’t have one. It’s called an “automated external defibrillator,” or AED.
ALTOM: Think before selling your old software
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has made it official: You don’t own your software if the software maker says you don’t own it.
ALTOM: Praise the unsung device … the ubiquitous paper clip
To me, the most versatile piece of equipment in an office isn’t the computer. It’s the paper clip.
ALTOM: Do I need a cell phone that’s hardy or handy?
It’s time to change my cell phone, and that’s causing me a big problem. I have conflicting needs, and like everybody
else in the business world, I can’t seem to reconcile them.
ALTOM: What can business learn from techies?
There have been some technical materials that have taught me a great deal about how business should be conducted. I’d like to share a few with you.
ALTOM: Bar-coding could help your business for as little as $200
Years ago, when technology was just starting to classify and count all of us, we worried we’d become merely numbers.
Now we may not even be readable numbers, but just ink on a bar code. And that’s a good thing, as it turns out.
ALTOM: How long will our ‘Net neutrality last?
Cable giant Comcast has fanned a typical smoldering Internet grumble-fest into a major screaming match, complete with a lawsuit
and cries for federal intervention. The outcome may affect how much it costs you and me to do business across the ’Net.
ALTOM: Is Pac-Man robbing your workers of productivity?
When Google users stumbled on a surprise gift from the giant search company, it was inevitable that in business offices
everywhere, the long-forgotten sounds of Pac-Man would come to life again.
ALTOM: Beware of inciting online vendetta from clients
It started as a dispute over towing a car, and it’s now a cause célèbre, thanks to Facebook.
ALTOM: Securing your Wi-Fi is worth your trouble
If you’ve got a wireless (Wi-Fi) router, you could be in some serious hot water if it’s not properly secured.
ALTOM: Is your computer being commandeered under your nose?
Around the world, tens of millions
of computers are infected with sly viruses that invisibly take over a machine, letting it continue working but redirecting
part of its time to doing nefarious things, like storing ill-gotten data or sending out spam ads for improbable enlargements
of body parts.
ALTOM: Are you disaster-ready, dust-induced or not?
You know you should back up your data for redundancy. But you can’t back up an entire airline industry. That’s
a lesson we learned recently when a volcano with the cat-crossing-the-keyboard name of “Eyjafjallajökull”
exhaled tons of volcanic dust into the clear skies over Europe and brought aviation worldwide almost to a literal grinding
halt.
ALTOM: Is your smartphone good for business use?
I love smartphones. No other form of biz-tech allows me so much opportunity to be so curmudgeonly
about something so popular.
ALTOM: Going green here may not be going green there
The idea behind the green office is to have a slightly smaller damaging
effect on the environment in general. That sounds great, but I never forget that you can’t make ripples in only one part of a pond.
ALTOM: Do your company data files belong in the ‘cloud’?
The “cloud” is a relatively recent word to describe the Internet, but it has a rather specific connotation. It
refers to the Internet’s ability to take individual objects and break them into pieces so they can be stored and retrieved
without your knowing exactly where they’ve been.
ALTOM: Who knew YouTube had potential as a free university?
As much as I love and happily use technology, I come from a different age and time when, as they say, life was simpler. I
have students who are aghast that I’d rather use a folded paper map to get around town than a GPS and Google Maps in
a smart phone.
ALTOM: U.S. slow to get on broadband bandwagon
The country’s old, tired cabling was never designed for such high-transmission speeds.
ALTOM: How the Amish make technology work for them
BusinessWeek (www.businessweek.com) has a recent story about a growing $1.8 million enterprise that’s doing
just fine without the Internet, Web site, texting, customer-resource-management software, a fax machine or a single computer.
In fact, the company doesn’t even have electricity.