Until now, Sneak has sought long and hard to find a practical application of RFID technology that could really propel this technology into the mainstream. Luggage bags in airports, clothes and other items in department stores, and pallets in factories have all been touted as locations where these smart chips could be installed to monitor usage, keep inventory managed efficiently and the supply chain well-oiled.

But until now it just hasn’t happened for RFID. Maybe no-one likes the acronym? Anyway, Sneak has discovered what could be the answer – RFID transponder vendor Sokymat Automotive has just announced the introduction of a new miniature laundry tag, the S-Tag10. This tag could be placed in one’s pants, for example, “to ensure the pre-sorting of soiled garments ... in industrial laundries”.

The Sokymat sales pitch continues: “Due to its particularly small size, the S-Tag10 is ideal for personal garments in scenarios where individual items need to be tracked at all times to ensure peace of mind to the owner.” Sneak doesn’t know about you, but he’d rather not have everyone knowing exactly where he is at all times thanks to a pair of e-pants.

May 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Social networking sites are fast emerging as the new powerhouses of the corporate world. Some firms, like Topshop are even reporting that referrals to their official sites from their own Facebook, MySpace and other social media pages are surpassing those from paid search ads. Just think of that. Can you imagine it!?

Well, while the business benefits are fast becoming about as obvious as a rather grumpy elephant, the pitfalls can be rather massive too. Just take the poor girl – OK, for poor, substitute, stupid and/or naive - who advertised that her parents' four million quid Spanish villa was open to all-comers, to experience “the party of the year”. By all accounts it was the party of the year, although unfortunately not if you were Jodie Hudson, the 16 year old in question, who found 400-odd horny teenagers from the nearby Costa del Sol descended on the place. Hmm, power of social media = great; intelligence and foresight of 16 year-old girl = not so great. Business benefits of social media sites = probably still good, although make sure the office is locked when you leave at night.

May 31, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has spent many a long, long day at IT conferences in his time, bored witless by an endless stream of grey executives and greyer delegates spouting their monotonous corporate mantra. So it was with a heavy heart that Sneak travelled to his ancestral home this week, to Tyneside, for the Thinking Digital conference – what appeared to be another typically traumatic technology snore-fest.

Well, it came as a bit of a surprise to find jeans, open necked shirts and trainers the typical delegate-wear. Where were the ill-fitting suits, the chino/polo shirt combos so beloved of these events? And on stage, the roll-call of presenters made even more trend-bucking reading. Thus, attendees were treated to three speakers who lectured on the meaning of happiness and how to attain it – in love, in life, and in work. We also heard from a self-taught biogerontologist about how the first human beings to live to 1000 years old may have already been born. Um, right. Somewhere down the list, Microsoft and Cisco peered out, but to be honest, Sneak was far more interested to hear from Caspar Berry; former star of hit BBC children's drama Byker Grove, turned professional poker player, turned motivational speaker.

Fascinating as they all were though, Sneak has one little problem. There’s actually nothing to write about. Oh, the things I do for IT.

May 23, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a revolutionary new project, Solihull council is trialing a new broadband for the masses project. The internet will be piped into council block residents’ hovels by networking company CI-Net via a wireless connection on the building rooftops and then from there on via electrical wiring to each person’s home. The broadbanded-up Brums will then be able to stick a three-pronged plug type device into their sockets to hook themselves up to the world wide web.

Which reminds Sneak of an amusing incident in which his parents once spent a good 30 minutes trying to force their Lan cable into the power socket of their laptop. Let’s hope the residents of Solihull are a little more tech-savvy, or the digital divide may remain a chasm for some time to come.

May 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Cash back! Microsoft is so ruddy desperate to grab a bigger share of the online advertising pie, that it appears the firm is prepared to offer users who visit its search engine and then click through to buy a product some kind of monetary recompense. Advertisers, meanwhile, are rumoured to be offered a deal whereby they only pay per user purchase rather than user clicks in order to advertise on the search engine.

Lovely stuff, although the likelihood is it’ll take a lot more than a bit of tinkering like this to supplant Google, or even challenge it, as the dominant player in this market. Could it be MS is trying to fight back after it was so publically knocked back by Yahoo. Aww, chin-up Redmond, you’ll learn to love again, I’m sure of it.

May 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a move almost as irresponsible as disaster recovery firms targeting potential customers in the aftermath of 9-11, with an “I told you so, wanna buy our services?” message, some bright spark has decided it would be a great idea to market mobile phones to six year-olds. Sneak remembers the days of his halcyon youth – footie in the park, cider in the park, um, cider in the pub – basically it wasn’t polluted by the presence of a mobile device.

And just as well … apart from rendering the user an obvious target for a mugging, a happy slap or a sharply-timed tut-tut in a quiet train carriage, it ends up something akin to a Linus blanket. And to be honest, kids have enough of those already without emotionally blackmailing their parents into forking out over 300 quid for one of these cute, pink little phones. Hello Kitty creator Sanrio has said that the phone is actually marketed at adults, thankyou very much. Yeah, right. Maybe the firm should market them at the corporate market too, while they’re at it.

May 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

The security of your IT systems has got to be one of the most high priority issues on the CIO’s growing to-do-list. Worrying if your firm is about to be attacked from some shadowy criminal gang hell-bent on sucking out all your valuable data and leaving you to pick up the pieces must be an almost daily occurrence for some. Well, let’s up the ante shall we?

If you live in Texas you may well find your problems have just doubled – according to reports a new strain of ants known as “crazy raspberry ants” (well, it is America you know) has washed ashore and is going mad for anything electronic. Yes, the pesky critters apparently are attracted to anything running on electricity and will feast on computers, telephone exchanges - anything they can get their little teeth on. So be thankful you don’t live in Texas. Although on the plus side I’ve heard the Big Macs are cheaper over there

May 17, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Virgin Trains bosses must be rueing the invention of email this month after foolishly using the medium to invite precious customers to a golfing day. How irresponsible.

Unfortunately for the firms' PR machine, rather than just asking the elite 75 members of its first class traveller club Virgin invited a lot of plebs, AKA the other poor saps that use its un-premium seats and service… Eurgh… Just imagine.

Not usually known for over estimating capacities, well, apart from on some of its trains, Virgin had managed to email 76,000 customers to the Grove Golf Resort Hotel, Herts, a course with a capacity much much lower than that figure.

Of course the mistake was soon realised and Virgin sent out a second email apologising for the mistake and offering recipients the chance to win a day at the course.

Sneak thought the firm handled this all very well and sent them off a congratulatory email. Except he didn’t.

He is however, offering Virgin's customer service team the chance to win a congratulatory email. Which, he is sure, will be a rare bonus for them.

May 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has heard a lot in his daily travels about the increasing IT savviness of the workforce. Raised on a diet of Google and Amazon and the world wide web, worker drones these days have a much better grasp of technology than their parents ever did. Which is probably true, but according to support desk software vendor Sunrise, the stupidity of the human race really does know no bounds.

Top on its list of most ridiculous requests placed to a helpdesk over the last year include the receptionist in a London telco who asked IT if they could de-scale her kettle. Or possibly the senior actuarial consultant who asked his IT manager to arrange for the orbit of a satellite to be altered so that he could get a better mobile phone reception on his journey home. Sunrise chairman Tom Weston said, "IT support is a skilled job, but this league table shows it’s as much about people skills and time management as technology." You ain't wrong Tom.

May 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

IT has always suffered from an image problem; a trend that Sneak believes begins way back in school. It's just not cool to want to grown up and become the next Steve Jobs, no matter how natty his polo necks are. Well, new research by security vendor SmoothWall has found that even those who end up in the industry may actually have a secret hankering to do or be something else.

The vendor surveyed attendees at last month's Infosecurity Europe show in London, and found that 15 per cent of IT managers would actually have preferred to be pilots. Astronaut, footballer and doctor were also popular choices for the IT crowd, although Bruce Lee, Bill Gates and "seagull" were slightly less predictable.

May 8, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to consumer watchdog magazine Which? Some keyboards are dirtier than toilet seats. In fact they are a lot dirtier says the magazine, and could even give you diarrhoea. Let us not speculate how…

Sneak, however, is not surprised by this, since quite often he can be found sitting on the toilet using a keyboard, and less frequently confusing the two, (sorry Mum, but it has been known.)

So, he believes the warnings, especially as he is incredibly distrusting of the hygiene practices of anyone, including himself.

Not for Sneak is the handshake, the shared water bottle, the communal park bench, or the dish of mints at the takeaway. Nor, come to think of it, is the publications racks in shops and libraries – which is where you might find this fingerpointing periodical.

So, Sneak wonders, just how dirty is the average copy of Which? And, would anyone want to eat their dinner off it?

May 6, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are many important factors to consider when registering your organisation’s domain name, Sneak cautions. How many permutations of the name should you buy up to avoid typo and cybersquatting; how do you manage the re-registration process; do you need to provide legal documentation and proof of trademarks etc? All of these issues should be front-of-mind for any domain name manager worth his salt.

But it seems that some firms were a little, um, hasty when snapping up the “perfect” name to represent them on the world wide web, according to registration expert Sedo. Imagine for example, you run an art business, and have come up with the snappy title of “speed of art” for your store. Well, maybe you don’t actually want to turn this into a URL of speedofart.com. And say you run a therapist-finding service..well, um, might not be a great idea to go for the literal – www.therapistfinder.com. It’ll only end in tears.

May 4, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)