Craig Bailey on Microsoft

OMG, panic! But don’t be distracted by that other zero day exploit (you know, the Internet Explorer one), here’s where your security gaze should be firmly focused: WordPad.

It turns out that WordPad has a significant exploit. And by significant, I mean it affects at least one person. I strongly recommend WordPad users (both of you) stay glued to your browser screens (here) in anticipation of a high priority patch being released any day now. Alternatively, you could stop using WordPad…

In all seriousness, there is now a patch for the Internet Explorer vulnerability. Download the patch from here.

Any blog that has 4 Ps in its title is worth reading in my book. That aside, I’ve been reading Phil Factor’s Phrenetic Phoughts (oh hang on, that’s only 3 Ps – you tricked me with that clever similar sounding thing Phil) for years now. It’s always a classic read.

And for managers like me, his tips are gold. Take his series on hints for aspiring IT managers. If I happen to find myself reading his posts on the train there’s a good chance people around consider me a raving loony as I unexpectedly crack up and laugh out loud. Recommended.

Today’s moment:

Project-management software is essential. This is because just a small amount of data will produce reams of print-outs with esoteric graphs, calculations and reports. When ever anybody queries the status of one of your projects, just hand them the folder with all the printouts. The more data you put into project-management software, the more wildly impressive it looks.

 

Phil, you’ve done it again.

I spotted this gem on MSDN tonight (yeah, slow night…).

Above the annoying flashing ad was a link titled ‘Do more with this Ad’. You got me. I clicked it.

Amazing, they’re after my feedback. They care about me. My opinion counts.

I submitted my response, refreshed the page and waited expectantly for the refreshing change it would bring to my browsing experience.

Can you guess what happened?

I consider myself an average presenter. Not terrible, but not great. I’m working on being a great presenter.

To this end, as well as working on what I should be doing, I’ve also been spending time analysing what should be avoided. Over the coming weeks and months I’ll be sharing a few tips on what not to do. Most of course are things I’ve been doing for years, and only recently woken up to. Some are gems I’ve seen in others. Some are like a bad flu going round… which brings me to my first tip today:

Tip #1 : Using Zoomit != Great presentation

The ZoomIt virus: I don’t know if you’ve had to suffer through this one lately, but it really takes its toll. Five minutes of someone zooming in and out and you’re feeling sea sick. (ZoomIt is a presenting tool that allows you to zoom in to areas on the screen – download it here)

Here’s a quick video showing just how annoying the ZoomIt virus can be, and… (dun dun dah) the *amazing* solution. Enjoy :-)

I don’t know if you read CIO magazine. I do because I plan on being a CIO in the next 5 years.

Of course, I realise that reading a magazine won’t make you into a CIO, but it sure does highlight the skills you need to work on. Take last month’s edition for example. In the Generation Tech article, the following advice popped up (p37 June/July edition):

“In part CIOs of the future will achieve alignment by securing explicit support for appropriate separation of concerns, ensuring that disruptive 'burst through' between IT and business domains does not occur outside control.”

Concerned that I was reading a different language I copied the text into Google translator, converted to Russian, and then converted that to English. Here’s the result:

“CIOs in part in the future be able to achieve consistency in providing unequivocal support for appropriate division of problems, providing subversive "broke through" between IT and business domains does not occur outside the control of”

I think it may have actually improved the message.

But I digress. My point is, the article highlighted a few things for me to work on, on my journey to CIO-hood: Firstly, I need to be able to understand what that guff means. Then I need to be able to deliver it. However, the real success, and the sign that I’ve made it, will be when I can pump out that kind of tosh in management meetings and keep a straight face.

(Jokes aside, it’s actually a very good publication – but snippets like this are a nice little distraction on a Friday afternoon)

Having your code name objected to is nothing new. This (possibly hoax) story about Fiji (the island nation) objecting to Microsoft’s use of ‘Fiji’ as a code name is nothing new. Most recently this happened when the Visual FoxPro team were releasing the Sedna Add-ons and received numerous complaints from the inhabitants of Neptune :-)

(via Mary Jo Foley)

What a classic - David Meerman Scott analyses the use of meaning phrases by news services.

Topping the list: 'next generation', 'robust' and 'world class'.

See also his Gobbledygook Manifesto.

Great stuff - perfect for your next game of wank bingo.

Yep, I agree with Wayne that this is getting silly. Sesame Street being wound back due to all that harmful stuff they did in the 70s, 80s and 90s. No wonder this world is in such a mess :-)

But fear not, the pendulum swings both ways and in a decade or so we'll see the push back on political correctness going way too far the other way.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, my favourite word is: balance

We need balance in every areas of our lives. Life is often just a process of adjusting and re-adjusting the balance. It is, at any point in time, too far off to the left or the right, and our days are used correcting this imbalance.

Ok, enough of the philosophy, back to your regular scheduled program...

Not wanting to be the only person on the planet who hasn't linked to this, here's my late link.

After some silly copyright hoo-haa last week, a revised version is up on YouTube. This time there's some bonus material - the credits (which will be read by a total of 4 people, maybe less :-).

Well, not really. This wonderful interview with Stephen by Time magazine is a nice rebuke to what the media tells us is important news. IF the media is right about what is important to the public, then we should be making Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan the Time Persons of the Year. Or so claims Stephen. He makes a good point.