Thursday | 16 October, 2008
CIO
Get Your BlackBerry Black Belt
How to improve your typing, messaging, browsing, attachment handling and more
Al Sacco 04 February, 2008 12:54:29

Related Stories
  • +

    Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44

    Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage
    Adobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage.
Additional Resources
Executive Guides
Whitepapers

Newsletter Subscription

Sign up for our CIO newsletters!
Weekly coverage of the issues that impact corporate and government information
RSS Feeds

MOBILE DEVICES | Margaret Genet knows BlackBerrys. Though officially dubbed "operations analyst", she's the first Aflac employee to hold the unofficial title of "technology concierge". Genet's job number one: Teach executives how to be more efficient with mobile devices and applications.

"I guarantee if you talk to [Margaret] for 15 minutes, she will tell you 30 tricks you didn't know that will save you time," says Aflac CIO Gerald Shields.

In addition to providing BlackBerry training, Genet also works with the Fortune 500 insurance company's executives on laptops and tablet computers and Aflac's custom mobile applications. Genet's training typically comes in the form of in-person, one-on-one sessions in and around Aflac's Columbus, Georgia, headquarters, but she also holds the occasional teleconference with executives in New York and sometimes teaches group sessions to business managers in Columbus. And she's constantly being summoned by those executives and others for repeat visits.

"Margaret's name has become very, very popular around here," says Aflac VP of IT business partnership management Bahija Noell, who helped create the tech concierge position along with Shields in the spring of 2007.

Many of the tips that Genet shares with Aflac executives can be found deep inside various user manuals or buried in BlackBerry Web sites, but who has time for digging? Here's a concise list of her most valuable advice. (Note: Some of the tricks may not work on all older BlackBerry devices.)

More about BlackBerry, Aflac
Market Place
 

Smart SOA World Tour

Discover how SOA can create smarter outcomes for your business.

Attend and learn:

  • How SOA is helping leading companies to become more agile
  • Where you should be applying SOA processes in your company
  • The top SOA implementation mistakes to avoid

Click here for more information.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25

    For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00

    Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05

    Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
  • +

    Anonymous proxy servers: Necessary or evil? 15 October, 2008 07:13:00

    Some security experts believe anonymous proxy servers are only necessary if you're up to no good, while others see them as a legitimate tool for research, pen testing and the like. Who's right?
    If there is truly a gray zone in the struggle between online good and evil, anonymous proxy servers live there.
  • +

    Four security lessons from the World Bank breach 15 October, 2008 07:39:00

    The World Bank is making headlines after a disputed report claims hackers managed to access their secure network for over a year. One security pro offers takeaways that everyone can learn from the breach
    According to a report from Fox News, several servers at the World Bank Group, an organization that offers economic assistance to developing countries around the globe, were repeatedly compromised and breached over the course of the last year.
  • +

    Cutting Through the Spin of Recent Vulnerability Disclosures 13 October, 2008 10:53:00

    The FUD surrounding the ClickJacking and TCP/IP vulnerabilities has the world seemingly frozen in fear. But once you cut through the spin, the vulnerabilities aren't all that they were made out to be.
    There are a few highly publicised vulnerabilities at the moment which haven't completely been disclosed and which, it is claimed, could threaten the whole Internet as-we-know-it. Only, when the vulnerabilities are finally disclosed, it seems that the whole incident has been somewhat Chicken Little.
  • +

    PCI app security: Who's guarding the data bank? 13 October, 2008 11:09:00

    Compliance strategies for PCI's new application security requirements
    While Willy Sutton never really said it, the truth is that people rob banks because that is where the money is. Today's criminals don't walk into banks with loaded guns and get-away drivers. Rather they connect from a remote location using a browser and are armed with hacking tools and spyware.
  • +

    Data-center security tools to not overlook 10 October, 2008 11:37:00

    With the rise of security suites, it's time to consider some emerging security tools and rethink others
    Protecting a corporate data center is like trying to keep an elephant safe from a swarm of flies. Despite your best efforts, bites happen. As the staples of security -- such as firewalls, antivirus software, spam and spyware filters -- come together in suites of products that allow for sophisticated management, there are other security tools either emerging or worth a rethink.
CIO Webcast Innovation #8 - What are the biggest roadblocks to IT's involvement in innovation at your company?
Watch the latest latest edition of CIO Innovation which is now available for download.
Watch the webcast
Sign up to the CIO Innovation update email


CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II
Listen to the latest edition of CIO Live which is now available for download.
Listen to the podcast
Sign up to the CIO Live email
Whitepaper

Web Security SaaS: The Next Generation of Web Security

Discover the latest web security SaaS solutions. Learn how to increase overall security effectiveness and reduce the burden on your IT department. Uncover the security challenges facing SMB environments today and identify the critical elements that can provide you with lower-cost and easier-to-manage web security solutions.