Sneak is always prepared to hear both sides of any argument; so when the naysayers and the poo-pooers talk about the perils of outsourcing, you can be rest assured to get a fairly balanced reaction from yours truly. The arguments against IT offshoring usually go along the lines of, "Don't do business over there because: the transport infrastructure is terrible, and/or the economy is unstable, and/or the workforce is unreliable”. But these have always seemed outdated arguments to Sneak.

That was until one of Sneak’s colleagues recently found himself on the wrong end of the Indian High Commission. Said colleague was offered the chance to visit one of the country’s premier offshore IT firms. He duly handed over his passport to receive the necessary entry documents – but unfortunately it failed to materialise long after the flights departed.

Sneak reckons the best way to publicise the country's credentials as a reliable and credible destination for your IT outsourcing needs, might not be to lose the passports of those due for a visit to be reassured that the location is in fact fully set up to cope with the demands of 21st century commerce. In the meantime, Sneak's colleague plans to replicate the trip that never was by sitting at home with a takeaway, a box of Imodium and the central heating on full.

October 31, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following hot on the heels of Radiohead – which must be something of a first for the person involved – Sir Cliff Richard is going to let internet users decide how much his new album should cost.

Sneak refuses to be drawn into suggesting that the average Cliff fan may not be best placed to operate a computer, since they are probably still struggling with the highly complex instructions that came with their Argos catalogue, but he will say that Cliff's decision is a pretty good one.

According to the web site lovecliffrichard.com the download version of 'Love, the Album" will have flexible pricing depending on many people agree to have it in their homes, in the run up to its November 12 release date.

Sneak votes for a fiver, and Sir Cliff can pay him in luncheon vouchers if he likes - so long as Sneak gets the danger money, he will be happy. Oh, and if there is any flexibility on the album title, Sneak suggests Hate, this Album.

October 30, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, according to some new government statistics, nearly all the phones stolen in the UK last month were locked down by the network carrier within 48 hours. Yes, Sneak has been trawling through the latest figures from the Mobile Industry Crime Action Forum (MICAF) – well, there’s not much else to do on Sundays now, since Mrs Sneak decided to shack up with the plumber. But the message still doesn’t seem to be getting through – a reported 800,000 phones were stolen last year.

Sneak wonders whether Nokia, Motorola et al. could try to develop capabilities in their devices similar to Judge Dredd’s Lawgiver gun, which explodes when anyone other than the authorised user tries to operate it. The mean streets of our city centres would be littered with blood-stained Burberry caps and torn, smouldering hoodies. But at least our mobiles may be safe.

October 28, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

A new Swedish-engineered computer is helping fight the UK's growing epidemic of fatties, Sneak has discovered. Apparently the ingenious system works by placing a plate of food on a set of scales, attached to the computer. If said child is eating too quickly, the mandometer (yes, that really is its name) will have a go at the poor porky. And if they snarf too much too quickly, said technology will ask "are you still hungry?". Great. Sarcastic computers; is this what the 21st century is going to be remembered for? Might as well hook the kid up to a tazer and be done with it.

October 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has always fancied himself as a bit of a bit of a secret agent. Many’s the weekend he has spent in his bedsit with a James Bond box set on DVD, a large crate of beer and an industrial sized bag of cheesy Wotsits. Sneak has never dabbled in espionage computer games though; it just seemed a little too, erm, sad for his liking. Shame though, for it seems a love of thrilling spy games could be the computer geek’s one way ticket to the glamorous world of international espionage.

It appears that GCHQ plans to appeal for new recruits by embedding ads in video games such as Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent or Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Sneak wonders however, whether the UK intelligence services’ surveilance arm has really done its research this time around. Most of ther hardcore gamers Sneak has met are less licensed to kill, more licensed to kill time, on their own, in their bedrooms, surrounded by posters of Buffy and Gillian Anderson.

October 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another Facebook warning for you hapless worker bees. Sneak has discovered that recruiters are increasingly turning to social networking sites to find their next batch of bright young things. According to research by the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (ATSCo), over half of recruitment consultants said these sites were more useful than ads in printed titles, citing the special interest groups as a great way to head hunt candidates. Which is probably true, as long as your special interest group is not “if you don’t like Macaque monkeys, you’re probably not worth knowing”, or “chocolate Banjos – what went wrong?”.

October 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been fighting the anti-red tape corner this month, vetoing an internet retail security bill that would have prohibited online merchants from storing sensitive customer data after a transaction has been completed. Big Arnie argued that the law would have increased the costs of compliance, especially for smaller firms.

But while the move is likely to be welcomed by retailers, internet shoppers across Californian might be less pleased that this potential for greater privacy has been Terminator-ed.

Arnie has also been busy recently entertaining Tory party leader David Cameron during his US tour. The mind boggles at what the cigar-smoking, weight-lifting ex-movie star and the hoody-hugging, tree-loving ex-public school boy found to talk about – but perhaps we’ll see Dave driving a hydrogen-powered Humvee around Whitehall, and Arnie favouring a bike as a result.

October 17, 2007 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak usually needs no persuasion to have a pop at our continental neighbours, so happily a recent survey from net ratings firm comScore provides yet another welcome excuse to do just that. It found that Brits spend more time on social networking sites than any other nation in Europe – nearly six hours a month compared to second placed Germany with just over three hours.

Now why are we poking, friend-requesting and uploading more than Johnny Foreigner, Sneak wonders? Given that most of the average UK worker’s week is spent, erm, at work, could it be that our internet usage policies are fairer, or more lenient than our European neighbours’? Or could it be that our lives are so devoid of meaning, our holiday allowance so brief, our existence so industrialised and grim, our cheese so processed, our supermarkets so evil and our leader so bog-eyed, etc, that we need something, any thing, to distract us from reality? Hmm, maybe. Or maybe they’re all out trying to learn how to play rugby properly while we sit glued to our monitors...goodness knows some of 'em could do with a bit of practice.

October 16, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak often gazes an envious eye over to the Far East; the land of the rising sun, the school girl panty-dispensing machine, karaoke, and Hello Kitty vibrators. But no, that’s not why Sneak’s peers are fascinated with Japan, it’s the bewildering rate of technological innovation and change that reduces geeks everywhere to a quivering mass of sweaty, lonely, nervous excitement. No matter that 90 percent of households don’t even have double glazing or central heating, and a bed consists of a thin lumpy mattress spread out on the floor, this is the nation that many look to in order to predict technology trends.

Well, maybe we shouldn’t look too closely in future, because some Japanese citizens are doing some rather disturbing things with our old friend the internet. Sneak read last week that police have arrested a certain Kazunari Saito on suspicion of killing a young lady – Sayaka Nishizawa – with sleeping pills and a plastic bag. But that’s not the weird bit. Apparently Saito was contacted by the girl herself on his mobile web site, asking him to come over and do her in. His site incidentally sells sleeping pills to people thinking about suicide, as you do - if this is the future of e-commerce and the mobile web, we should all be a little afraid.

October 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like baked beans and traffic wardens, and people that tut audibly, Sneak hasn’t got much time for national newspapers. They waltz along days or weeks after some hard working IT journalist like yours truly has broken a story and expect everyone to stop and applaud their magnificence. Ruddy idiots.

Another pet hate on Sneak’s top 100, while we’re on the subject, is new media-speak. Why is it whenever a government appointment is made, the position is known as the new "tsar", Sneak wonders? As if they’re going to turn up to the office wearing a Cossack hat and a gargantuan beard. The news this week is all about MPs’ calls for a new figurehead to coordinate public and private sector strategy in the area of identity fraud - aka a new ID fraud tsar. Why not king, or emperor, Sneak wonders, or Führer perhaps? Or maybe not.

October 9, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is not a big fan of acronyms. In fact, he spent most of his early career in the IT industry with head buried in the web pages of Answers.com and Wikipedia, desperately trying to unravel the linguistic traps laid by some smart-arsed vendor or other. The only possible reason for acronyms seems to be to let pompous people sound even more self-important, Sneak thought. And in recent weeks, yet more have appeared.

E-business trade association Eema – whatever that stands for – has given birth to Stork, arguably the most pointless acronym ever invented. In fact, it’s not even worthy of acronym status. It stands for, wait for it, “Secure idenTity acrOss boRders acKnowledged". Huh? And hot on its heels, Secure Computing launched its brand spanking new security strategy – the Secure Web 2.0 Anti-Threat (SWAT) initiative. Given the type of person that revels in using these frequently meaningless linguistic oddities, maybe, SC should have substituted “Secure” for “Total”.

October 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has always been a rather depressive soul, so it should come as no surprise, dear reader, that he loves a bit of Radiohead now and again. Although, not so much the band's recent dalliances with minimalist-electro-weirdness. Still, the boys' credentials as stadium-filling super rock stars are fairly impeccable, and online merchants everywhere rightly rub their hands with glee at the thought of bumper CD and download sales that greet each new album release.

Now, Sneak is not the sharpest economist in the box, but the 'Head's recent declaration that they'll allow fans to pay as much or as little as they like for new downloads could be a little naïve. Like that time Sneak asked for two cans of Diet from that nice young man who offered to sell him Coke in Hackney the other week. If it catches on, the antics of RH and their like may do for e-commerce what rising ID fraud and poor internet security have long threatened. Beware crazy rock bands bearing gifts.

October 2, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak finds IT a depressing game sometimes. It's all those damn dot-com success stories. Now it seems that part of Facebook is being snapped up by the world's favourite software company (c Microsoft) for anywhere between three and five million big ones. It could have all been so different for Sneak if only my ideas weren't all utterly useless and doomed to fail. That said, FB hasn't done too badly for itself.

So it was with more than a little mirth that Sneak read Facebook is also in a bit of trouble wiv da law. Apparently the social networking site for people too lazy and/or socially inept to have a real social life, is failing to vet users carefully enough. Sexual predators are apparently roaming its pages searching for young innocents to groom – and we don't mean give them a shave and a facial. While we're at it, can we keep employers off Facebook too? Sneak has been unable to find gainful employment ever since details of a particularly big Friday night out in Newcastle were posted...

October 1, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)