IT Week Insider, Volume 9, Number 38

Welcome to the IT Week Insider.

This week, the IT Week monkeys decided it would be a good idea to pop over to Thailand. Lord knows what havoc they might cause over there, but at least it keeps them out of the office, and their claws out of our hair. We are patiently awaiting their return, but in the meantime life goes on, as does IT news.

You can find out what has been going on here.

Editor’s choice:
News:
Battery issues cause travel headaches
As if boiled gonads are not enough of a concern, laptop users now have to worry about their trousers, underpants, and aeroplanes catching on fire. The recent hoo-hah about the exploding batteries in Dell and Apple laptops has seen them almost banned from Virgin Atlantic flights. We say almost because users are just asked to remove the offending battery, leaving the laptop about as useful as swimming trunks for penguins.

News:
BEA aims for 360-degree view of SOAs
How can you go to San Francisco and not see Alcatraz or the Golden Gate Bridge? It’s easy: go when BEA Systems is launching its 360 degree view of service orientated architectures, take the whole 360-degree thing too literally, get dizzy, fall over, hit your head, and spend the next few days wondering where you are.

Leading web sites fail accessibility tests
According to web site usability specialist Nomensa, far too many of the UK’s biggest firms are operating web sites that do not conform to accessibility standards. One common failing of such sites, which include Amazon, Apple and Argos, is the use of pop-up windows. These are not only annoying, they can also disorientate users with certain disabilities and those using screen readers. In the real world, it would be a bit like having Paul Daniels following you around whenever you went to the high street, making things pop out without warning. And no one would want that. Not even Debbie McGee.

Comment:
Windows rules – get over it
Daniel Robinson looks set to start more flame wars than a disagreement between that bloke from the Fantastic Four, and that girl in the Firestarter movie. Who is he rankling this week? You’ll have to read this to find out – or make some inference from the headline. Ah, just click here and be done with it.

Review:
Neon CyberGauge 7.0: Bandwidth monitor supports SNMP3
We get the S ‘n’ M part, but what is P3? Perhaps we shouldn’t ask. Alternatively, we might choose to remember that this is an IT publication and that SNMP3 stands for Simple Network Management Protocol, er, 3. Neon Software’s CyberGauge is easy to use, will generate useful reports and is a lot less painful than its misheard namesake.

IT Week Podcast
This week Martin Veitch and James Murray discuss the threat to firms of identity theft and Virgin Atlantic's ban on the use of some laptops on its flights, and play “Your Song”.

IT Week Labs blog
IT Week’s pink-eyes have been selling old gear on eBay this week. That money better be going towards the Christmas party, chaps.

IT Sneak blog
Sneak has been wondering what the world would be like if it were more like the adverts on telly. Sneak would be less grumpy, would smell nicer, and we wouldn’t have had to brick up the door to his office.

Phil Muncaster blog
This week Phil Muncaster has been writing about how much better at following trends we journalists are than analysts. Yeah, and we don’t make that ker-ching noise when we walk either.

David Neal blog
This week David Neal has been in San Francisco, with no blogging. We suspect he spent most of his time trying to attach flowers to his hair.