The technology week in view: 11th Jan 2008

Most technology news you may read this week is tied up with reports from CES – the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and the GizmosforGeeks team have been hard at work reporting on all the juicy new gadgets. I haven’t been so lucky to visit and instead have been at work at the office trying to sort out a number of technology issues – however a few interesting things have popped up. The new Everex Cloudbook, a potential challenger to the Asus eee PC is promised to hit the shelves in Walmart by the end of this month – in the USA at least. The UMPC is an ideal machine for the non-technologist, and indeed for the technologist, with its no-nonsense low-cost approach offering just the applications that are really required – I really believe the UMPC, personified by the ASUS eee PC, will be successful.

I have always been interested in technology management systems having already shown interest in ITIL v2 and the recent broadening of its horizons into ITIL v3. A complementary framework that focuses on a number of key skills and roles is SFIA: Skills Framework for the Information Age. This looks a very promising development and finally starts to give ICT the formal structure that it needs. One of the big problems in IT is skills related and formalising functions into a sensible structure. Over the years there has been a swing in IT from all rounders (though in a small company like the one I work for they are still essential!) to IT teams where focus in a particular discipline is a necessity and this is where SFIA should really help.

I have finally started getting to the bottom of my ongoing certificate battle with mobile devices. The struggle has been trying to get push email, in particular ActiveSync, working with Exchange Server 2007 using SSL but this has been something of a hit and miss affair. It seems that some devices can read SAN (Subject Alternate Names) and UCC (Unified Communications Certificate) multiple host entries contained within certificates whereas other devices only seem to read the first line so it would appear that ordering of hosts is vitally important when requesting a certificate.

While we are on the fix it schedule, I have a few more tips you might find helpful – firstly that terrible blacking, almost redaction, effect that can occur in Adobe Acrobat v8 on Terminal Services – Corrupt text display in Acrobat and Terminal Services. Also, if you’ve been struggling to update your Blog thumbnail on Technorati – How to update your Blog thumbnail on Technorati.

You get get more tips over at my Blog at http://www.jasonslater.co.uk/ by clicking on the Tips Category.

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