I wrote a blog post about the service almost three years ago, claiming they made USB drives obsolete. Dropbox offers 2GB of free cloud storage that integrates seemlessly into Windows, Mac and Linux, and more storage (50GB or 100GB) for a monthly or annual fee. They also introduced a service for teams, which I could see being very useful for small businesses with remote workers in particular.

The old blog post was very successful for me, as seven people signed up for Dropbox using my referral link, netting me an extra 500MB each time!

If you haven’t yet tried it, give it a shot. The way it integrates with the operating system makes it so easy to use, and the web interface is great for those times when you don’t have administrator access to your computer but still need to get those files!

The heads of both your marketing and customer service departments should meet regularly. Marketing plans should be shared with — and can even be enhanced by — customer service. Each side should know how to use social media to not only fulfill their own goals but to help one another to get closer to reaching overall company goals.

Ensuring the alignment with the overall strategic plan is the key point, and in many cases KPIs for both groups will be similar. Hopefully customer service is already involved in other marketing efforts, but it’s especially important in the interactive space of social media. Customer service is better positioned to turn feedback into improvements to operations where identified.

Measure results together. As expectations are high for tangible returns on social media marketing investments, bring customer service in to help measure, analyze and tell the story of how social media is effective for the company.

Mine social media for more than sentiment. Instead of just looking for the positive, negative and neutral of what customers are saying about a company’s product or service, look for clues to how the public perceives the company as a whole.

Demonstrating a return on social media investments is a challenge for many companies, but collaboration across functions will help. As well, the social media team should build relationships with others subject matter experts within the company, so that customer feedback can be informed or addressed by the people best able to do so accurately. Tech companies, such as Google with their official blog, tend to do really well with this.

Building social media competence across the organization should also have the side effect of nurturing responsible personal use, which is still a risk, although one which I believe often unnecessarily overshadows the potential for beneficial use of social media to a company.

How are social media responsibilities organized in your company?

The data in .pst files has been accessible through the Messaging API (MAPI) and Outlook Object Model (two things of which my understanding is minimal at best), but only if the user has Outlook installed:

In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties.

The documentation will be released under Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise, which means that it is protected against patent claims. Other Microsoft Office formats, such as the XML-based .docx and .xlsx, and the older binary formats .doc and .xls, are covered under this promise.

This seems like a big win for users of Microsoft Outlook. Along with CodePlex, which hosts open source projects, it seems like Microsoft is slowly opening things up and making life easier for their customers. It certainly has the potential to make it easier for customers to leave the Outlook platform. From GigaOM:

In the past, if someone was moving from Outlook/Exchange to Gmail or any other platform, there was a pretty tedious process of exporting pieces of data from Outlook into various formats before moving over to the new platform. Basically, once you didn’t have Outlook, that .pst was a useless brick of data. Now in that case you’ll be able to take that .pst file with you and if other apps/platforms build readers, they will be able access that data. So migration to other platforms is a valid use case where there’s some benefit.

Some more ideas as to the reasons why Microsoft is making this change were floated on ZDnet a day after the announcement:

[Rob Helm, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft,] added that he believed Microsoft is trying to wean large customers from storing mail in .PST files or file systems “because doing that makes it hard for organizations to back up all their e-mail, enforce e-mail retention policies, and locate relevant e-mails during legal discovery.”

Not just retention, but perhaps helping organizations mine their email data for knowledge which can all too frequently be lost forever if an employee leaves the company? Here’s an idea: How about a tool that will gather information from emails dating back years and populate a wiki automatically for new employees?

[Rob Sanfilippo, another Directions on Microsoft analyst] added that .PSTs “are used most frequently for archiving purposes and Exchange Server 2010 includes a new server-based Personal Archive feature that gives users a separate mailbox to use for archiving on the server instead of using a PST.” He said this gives weight to the aforementioned idea that Microsoft is trying to help organizations get users off PSTs and onto server storage.”

Then, in February of this year, the promised documentation was released on the MSDN website. Finally, about a month ago, two open source tools that make use of the documentation were released on CodePlex:

• The PST Data Structure View Tool is a graphical tool allowing the developers to browse the internal data structures of a PST file. The primary goal of this tool is to assist people who are learning .pst format and help them to better understand the documentation.
• The PST File Format SDK is a cross platform C++ library for reading .pst files that can be incorporated into solutions that run on top of the .pst file format. The capability to write data to .pst files is part of the roadmap will be added to the SDK.

The project has seen some exciting progress, which is good news for organizations that use Outlook. And as you might know, data visualization used to enhance understanding is a favourite topic of mine!

What risk do these developments address within Outlook’d organizations? Knowledge/information management is critical to so many companies. The use, retention and (hopefully) reuse of knowledge developed by employees and stored in email conversations within Outlook will be enhanced through this openness.

Has your organization taken these developments into account in your audits of knowledge/information management and strategy?

The school district overpaid employees and former employees at least $1.54 million, according to the [internal] audit. It also found that the district’s payroll system lacked proper controls, was cumbersome and inconsistent, and included manual paper entries that led to human error.

Aside from the poor conversion, it doesn’t sound like the new system is all that great if it requires manual entries. I’m assuming the entries are needed because the payroll system doesn’t interface with their general ledger system. Additional review controls over the process between systems is required in that case.

Some trustees are seeking an independent audit of the problems to get more assurance that fraud wasn’t a factor and that all the issues have been resolved.

[Trustee Christene] Moss said she wasn’t comfortable with parts of the report in which the [internal] auditors could not determine why various issues happened.

Yeah, I’d be concerned about that too! As well, the auditors aren’t certain that all the overpayments have been identified and fixed. I think these are the main reasons why an independent audit is needed. The situation calls for a specific engagement looking at the system conversion process and subsequent issues.

Board President Ray Dickerson reiterated that he didn’t think there was a need for a costly external audit. He said controls will be put in place.

[…]

Dickerson said the problems that were found are typical in such a transition.

“No matter how well you plan and train, once you flip that switch, you’re going to find things you didn’t know,” he said.

Uh, not really dude! And certainly not $1.5 million worth of “things you didn’t know” (on a monthly average payroll of $41 million)!

As a not inconsequential footnote, the conversion to a new system was required because the old system’s vendor was no longer going to be supporting it. A quick search for “open source payroll software” turns up many options which will prevent vendor lock-in in the future.

Update: Another story, this one in the Fort Worth Weekly, has more details about the internal audit’s findings and the attempts by the district to have some former employees repay the erroneous amounts.

At the office, you’ve got a sluggish computer running aging software, and the email system routinely badgers you to delete messages after you blow through the storage limits set by your IT department. Searching your company’s internal Web site feels like being teleported back to the pre-Google era of irrelevant search results.

I don’t have a sluggish computer at work (it’s actually newer and better than my personal laptop), but it does run Windows XP still. Email storage limits should be a thing of the past and likely will be in 5–10 years as more businesses take advantage of cloud computing (or are forced to compete with that level of service). And I think we’ve all had bad intranet search experience!

Even more galling, especially to tech-savvy workers, is the nanny-state attitude of employers who block access to Web sites, lock down PCs so users can’t install software and force employees to use clunky programs.

For me, preventing software installation is much more heinous crime than blocking websites. Both treat employees like children, but the former serves to hurt productivity much more so than the latter. Youtube is a bandwidth hog, but explain to me why the default browser is still IE6?

“Virtual machine” software, for example, lets companies install a package of essential work software on a computer and wall it off from the rest of the system. So, employees can install personal programs on the machine with minimal interference with the work software.

This is an interesting idea. Has anyone experienced this method of organizing a work computer? It seems like a good compromise.

When they get fed up with work technologies, employees often become digital rogues, finding sneaky ways to use better tools that aren’t sanctioned by the IT department.

Is this really what the company (or the IT department) wants? Clearly not.

Instant Messaging (IM) is one area where corporations have really dropped the ball. Before I graduated from school I worked remotely part-time for a dotcom and I used MSN to communicate with my manager much more often than email. And it worked superbly. But that type of environment seems like a dream now.

The article talks about the changes Kraft Foods implemented to take better advantage of new technologies and improve worker productivity. They give employees an allowance for a phone and let them choose which one they want (60% chose iPhones). They even let employees choose their own computer, with the rule that they must consult forums for technical support if they choose not to use Windows.

For many of us, our computers and mobile phones are the primary tools we use to do our jobs. Companies that fail to provide their employees with the best tools will not get the best results.

If you enjoy hardware and software freedom at work, tell me about it in the comments!

This is not to mention all the web-based software designed for Internet Explorer (and usually an obsolete version of IE like 6) which is a similar issue to the vendor lock-in problem. Corporations still overwhelmingly use IE6 as their default browser, but the missed opportunities related to browsers in industry is a topic for another day.

In Office 2007 Microsoft has made its XML-based formats (docx, xlsx) the default, which was certified as an open standard by Ecma International in 2006, and then by ISO in late 2008. But did we really need a second open document standard? We already had OpenDocument, which was an ISO standard as far back as 2006.

OpenDocument is now supported in Office Word 2007 SP2, and there are only a few formatting issues noted by me in informal testing. There are issues around the formula handling in Excel, as Microsoft built support on the 1.1 version of the standard instead of the newer 1.2 and thus strips formulas from ODF spreadsheets even if they’ve been created using the Excel add-in. For the time being businesses might be safer using Office Open XML.

Despite this, ODF is the future. Rob Weir puts it succinctly:

With an open standard, like ODF, I own my document. I choose what application I use to author that document. But when I send that document to you, or post it on my web site, I do so knowing that you have the same right to choose as I had, and you may choose to use a different application and a different platform than I used. That is the power of ODF.

There is a plugin available from Sun for older versions of Word, including: Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007 (Service Pack 1 or higher) or the equivalent stand-alone version of Microsoft Office Word, Excel or PowerPoint.

Governments and educational institutions have been making the move to OpenDocument, and it’s time for the private sector to follow suit. Preserving the integrity of data within critical files should be a top priority. OpenOffice.org is a free and open source productivity suite that with its latest 3.0 release has reached a level of maturity appropriate for business use, and its implementation of the ODF standard is without the caveats associated with Microsoft’s.

The most important benefit is the freedom to choose how to view and edit your data within documents and spreadsheets. But the cost differential between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office should also be a factor. And the history of Microsoft’s unique interpretation of the term ‘interoperability’ should be considered if your business chooses to continue to use closed standards.

Enter the netbook. These are basically laptops that have been shrunk down to half the size. The result has been increased mobility thanks to reduced weight and better power usage. The netbook is a recognition that users need primarily internet access to accomplish most daily tasks. But for most computer users, a netbook isn’t enough to do everything they need to do.

Re-enter the desktop. The limited mobility of a desktop would be complemented by the hyper mobility of a netbook and take the place where a single computer (a laptop) used to exist for some users. Take the netbook with you when you need to go, have the desktop waiting for you when you get back.

I think the possibility exists that we will have a segment of consumers that use the netbook+desktop setup. This could be the redemption of the desktop format, which has been in decline for the past few years at least. What do you think?

It was this event that brought home to me on a personal level the way the world is changing when it comes to how news is disseminated, and the role Twitter is playing in ushering in this new era.

My condo looks over the freeway and I was able to watch the protests from above as they progressed through the evening. It started around 6:30pm and lasted until nearly midnight, when the last of the diehards finally called it a day.

When I wasn’t taking pictures of the crowd below, I was glued to my Twitter client of choice (for this week anyway), DestroyTwitter, reading the updates coming in from people watching the action from different vantage points.

All you needed to do follow the trend was search for #tamil or #tamilprotest. People weren’t just commenting on how crazy it all looked from above, but were also posting links to background information about the protests and the reason for them.

The most valuable aspect to me of this new way to experience current events is the connection I felt to everyone else in the city inconvenienced by the shutdown of the busy thoroughfare. There are a variety of points of view on the intelligence of the tactic itself, and everyone is sharing theirs via Twitter. It’s just such an incredible tool to connect people.

Follow my updates @neilmcintyre and connect with me!

Longer keys increase the amount of work the defender has to do linearly, while geometrically increasing the amount of work the attacker has to do.

Strong passwords are the first step to protecting your firm’s and your clients’ information assets. Assigning a strong password using a combination of lower and uppercase letters, numbers and special characters is far more important than changing your password frequently. It has been my experience, however, that strong passwords just aren’t being enforced as well as they should be.

There are several whole-disk encryption products on the market. […] The reason you encrypt your entire disk, and not just key files, is so you don’t have to worry about swap files, temp files, hibernation files, erased files, browser cookies or whatever. You don’t need to enforce a complex policy about which files are important enough to be encrypted. And you have an easy answer to your boss or to the press if the computer is stolen: no problem; the laptop is encrypted.

I love the idea of simplying this process in the way described above. Making it easy for non-technical users to implement security measures makes it more likely they will get implemented effectively. And being able to tell your manager or the partner that the client data has not been compromised would help me sleep at night.

Bruce also mentions that the product he uses can encrypt USB drives, which are an essential tool for the modern auditor. I keep mine secure by wiping data from it immediately after transferring to the laptop, but that may not always be immediately possible.

Whole-disk encryption means that anyone at your computer has access to everything. […] I recommend a two-tier encryption strategy. Encrypt anything you don’t need access to regularly — archived documents, old e-mail, whatever — separately, with a different password.

This is a sound strategy for older files, although I prefer his final point:

Minimize the amount of data on your laptop. Do you really need 10 years of old e-mails [sic]? Does everyone in the company really need to carry around the entire customer database?

This is a better strategy for me as an auditor. The only files I need on my laptop is the client I’m working on at the moment. That audit that wrapped up last week? It’s on the network, where security isn’t my responsibility! As for email, I try to clear out old stuff annually to keep the hard drive usage up but also to remove potentially sensitive information.

Follow those simple tips and your portable client, employer and personal data will have a much greater chance of remaining out of the wrong hands.