http://www.cio.com.au CIO Executive Briefing en-us Copyright 2008, IDG Communications, for personal use only, not for redistribution without permission. Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:25:04 +1000 60 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=1499749635&rid=-154 Earlier this month, Gmail, the popular e-mail service provided by Google, experienced a service outage that left some users without their e-mail for 24 hours. Some of the users who were affected Aug. 15 included customers of Google Apps, Google's software as a service (SaaS) suite that includes Gmail, calendar, documents & spreadsheets, instant messaging and wikis. Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:50:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=840590111&rid=-154 As Wikipedia grew in popularity, becoming the eighth most visited site on the Web, many companies decided to purchase and build wikis internally to help enable better communication, knowledge sharing, collaboration and project management between employees. Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:12:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=643599764&rid=-154 IT project management practices are stuck in the mud, and they're hindering IT departments' ability to deliver projects successfully. That's the conclusion of a recent Forrester report, "Stretching Your Project Management Muscles," which was published in July. Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:12:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=1367868844&rid=-154 The most successful government Web sites devote time, people and technology to satisfy user requirements, according to new report from UK-based political research charity the Hansard Society Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:04:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=1756357166&rid=-154 Focusing your job search on the employers that need your skills the most will improve your chances of connecting with key hiring-decision makers and landing a new job. Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:09:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=789023826&rid=-154 Once upon a time at a NASA space flight center a long way away, I was an e-mail administrator. At the time, the 1980s, e-mail was still chaotic. The RFC 822 standard was only beginning to bring rhyme and reason to e-mail. One of RFC 822's competitors, the Common Messaging Calls (CMC) X.400 standard, wasn't making much progress, but then Microsoft adopted it in 1992, added the concepts of folders to it, and re-named the result Mail Application Programming Interface (MAPI). And, ever since, the e-mail world can broadly be divided into two camps: the RFC 822 Internet compliant e-mail group and the MAPI-compliant Microsoft Outlook/Exchange pack. Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:43:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=1154531844&rid=-154 While reading outsourcing horror stories may be somewhat entertaining, especially if it hasn't happened to you, it's even better to learn from the mistakes of others. Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:09:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=386996057&rid=-154 Agile methodologies seemed like a good idea to this software development team. But when the company doesn't sincerely accept the change in work style, the result is just a buzzword for "project hell" Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:11:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=212769337&rid=-154 You should know if your project is ‘healthy’, where any problems are, and whether they are retrievable Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:06:00 +1000 http://www.cio.com.au/index.php?id=676299748&rid=-154 As companies look to economize in a weak economy worsened by rising energy costs, it may be more tempting than ever to consider outsourcing your IT -- whether to a cloud-based provider, to a shop in your town, or to a provider in some far-off land. Certainly, outsourcing has worked well for many companies, but it can also lead to business-damaging nightmares, says Larry Harding, founder and president of High Street Partners, a global consultancy that advises company on how to expand overseas. After all, if outsourcers fail, you're left holding the bag without the resources to fix the problem. Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:13:00 +1000