I have not seen this blogged about or do not know how/where/why I missed
it, but Advisor Publications has an extensive list of RSS Feeds available
for their publications listed at http://webspheresolutionsadvisor.com/adv/AdvisorZones
How did I find ...
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If you have not heard of it yet, there
is an initiative gaining traction in the financial world called "eXtensible
Business Reporting Language", or XBRL. The XBRL Consortium describes
it as follows.
"XBRL is a language for the ...
Read More . . .
Is ISACA's WebSphere IT Controls Literature Lacking?Comments (0)
Last night, I was doing research on
segregation of duties controls for WebSphere
Commerce on the Information
System Audit and Control Association (ISACA) website
last night. They have a knowledge repository of literature and tools for
a wide range of ...
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Leaving San Francisco with 2 CertificationsComments (1)
It has been an interesting week in San
Francisco, learning about WebSphere, meeting new co-workers, and making
new contacts. In addition, I finally got around to updating my Lotus certifications
and am now an IBM
CAAD and CASA for IBM
Lotus Notes and ...
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Afternoon Session: Enabling a SOA Governance ModelComments (0)
Jon Richter of IBM,
who gave an excellent presentation Monday afternoon on SOA
Governance, is back on the platform
at the WebSphere
Technical Exchange. Today he
is talking about with Enabling
a Governance Model with WebSphere Service Registry and ...
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Certification Labs: WebSphere Tech Exchange vs. LotusphereComments (1)
It may hard to believe, but members
of the IBM Lotus Notes and Domino Community may be spoiled a bit by the
certification support received over the years (and no, let us not dwell
on the loss of the CLP discount at Lotusphere 2007). When at ...
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More SOA at the WebSphere Tech ExchangeComments (0)
This morning is more back to back Service
Oriented Architecture (SOA) session
at the WebSphere
Tech Exchange. The first session,
SOA Best Practices,
suffered from some of the same deficiencies from the first day: unreadable
slides and rambling ...
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Laying the Foundations of SOAComments (0)
Following on the heels of the excellent
"SOA Governance
and Management Methodology"
session, IBM's Rob
High is laying out the Foundations
of Service Oriented Architectures.
He is focusing at a high level of looking at "services" as ...
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Getting a Better Governance Picture from IBMComments (0)
After attending this morning's "Getting
Started with SOA" session,
i was getting more concerned that IBM was missing the mark on their definition
of SOA Governance and its relationship to IT Governance. This afternoon,
I am sitting in a ...
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Thoughts from The WebSphere Tech Exchange Opening SessionComments (0)
The screens may not have been readable,
but the message was clear. The WebSphere
business model is clearly wrapped around Service
Oriented Architectures (SOA).
Many times the term SOA
Governance was thrown out, but
it is not clear from my discussion ...
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Heard In SF: Is Oracle Your Competitor?Comments (0)
As I got on the elevator this morning,
a security guard asked another IBM WebSphere Technical Exchange attendee:
"So are you all competitors to Oracle? They seem so much bigger than
you. I mean they blocked off whole streets for their conference ...
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Gearing Up For The WebSphere Technical Exchange Next Week, ORD ToniteComments (0)
The WebSphere
Technical Exchange is coming
up fast. It will be interesting to put myself into a different mode of
thinking, and to become a sponge to absorb as much as possible. I will
be catching of with Peter
Santoro, the IBM Software Services for ...
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Gearing Up For Some WebSphere TrainingComments (0)
I will be heading to San Francisco in
a couple of weeks for the IBM
WebSphere Technical Exchange.
This will be my first real exposure to in-depth content on WebSphere, and
it should be very interesting. In additon to technical sessions, I ...
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First things first, I do not care if
it gets bad reviews or people think it is too much like Spy Kids. I grew
up watching the old
BBC classic, produced by Gerry
Anderson (UFO,
Space:1999),
and am looking forward to seeing the Thunderbirds
in a live ...
Read More . . .
Word of the Day: SpackerComments (0)
A Spacker
is a hacker that works for a spammer or a hacker that send spam. Spackers
are a "new breed of hackers, focused soley on finding ways to obtain
e-mail lists."
From Inside
the Spam Cartel by ...
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No, this is not the word that describes
what the models are, or are not wearing, in the annual swimsuit issue of
a certain sports weekly. It is a term that is used for the same reason
the words "Front Towards Enemy" appear on a claymore mine ...
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When Bad Portals Happen To Good OrganizationsComments (0)
As we start this new year, people in
the IBM Lotus Notes/Domino
and WebSphere Portal
worlds are going to be hearing a lot about composite applications and how
Domino will be able to offer up information for use in WebSphere Portal
interfaces. But even ...
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Should We Train or Trick End Users? Or...Comments (3)
A couple of weeks ago, Greg Eldred wrote
about a trick/tip posted on SearchDomino,
wherein the writer of the tip "changed the labels on the "Reply
with History" and "Reply without Attachments" actions.
So my "Reply with ...
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Understanding COBIT: User-Machine/Graphical User Interfaces as A Control ObjectiveComments (1)
Have you ever seen one of the people
who will be users of your current project?
Jakob Nielsen in "Usability Engineering"
A week or so ago, Scott
Good of Teamwork
Solutions mused that one of the
reasons that people do not like Lotus Notes ...
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I have been doing some postings on here
that have involved or referenced "Control
Objectives for Information and related Technologies"
(COBIT). But what exactly is COBIT and why does it matter to you?. In simplest
terms, COBIT are henerally ...
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News From "Eye on Sports Media" BlogComments (1)
Here are some recent postings from my
other blog ("Eye
on Sports Media"). I just
found it hard to get excited today about IBM's purchase of Cognos. I will
ahve to give that some attention later.
Lincoln
Financial Group Announces Sale of ...
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Spinning Off a New Blog on TV/Radio SportsComments (0)
I have decided to expand my experiment
in blogging and writing by spinning off content from this blog to a new
blog called "eye on sports broadcasting".
I invite you to visit
the new blog, add it to your blogrolls
if you would like ...
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"Hey, That Guy Doing Stats is Good!"Comments (0)
This coming Saturday is going to feel
pretty strange. For the first time since I moved to Georgia in 1994, I
will not be working the CBS
Sports broadcast of a Bulldog
home football game. I have fallen victim to the fact that there is a new
generation ...
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Saying Goodbye To A Dave In The Broadcast BoothComments (0)
Dave Rowe (right) with broadcast partner Dave Neal during a 2006 braodcast.
Photo Copyright 2006 by Christopher Byrne, All Rights Reserved.
For viewers of Southeastern
Conference Football on Lincoln
Financial Sports (formerly ...
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Beginning of the End for Georgia Legend?Comments (0)
He is 84 years old. He is battling health issues that make road games very
difficult for him. And his sharpness in the radio booth has been on the
decline for the last ten+ years. But for University of Georgia football
fans. Larry Munson
IS Bulldog ...
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Throw That Blogger From The Pressbox!Comments (0)
Bloggers should have the same rights
as regular journalists! Free speech should not be restrained! Does this
sound like some of the cries and arguments you hear from bloggers and others
in the new media? Well that is certainly what Brian
Bennett of ...
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17 Years Ago It Was No April Fools Joke for MusbergerComments (0)
April 1, 1990 was also a Sunday. It
was Final Four weekend in the NCAA Tournament. The night before. Brent
Musberger and Billy
Packer has called the semifinal
games on CBS Sports.
It was about 8:30 in the morning, and I was sitting in front of the ...
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A Thank You Shout-Out To David Johnston of 960 The Ref!Comments (0)
For the most part, my conversations
with David Johnston
of WRFC
960 The Ref (see right) have
been limited to short hellos, even though we have seen each other at various
University of Georgia
sporting events over the years. And every morning, the kids ...
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Coach Knight, The Record, and Seth DavisComments (1)
First off, congratulations to Coach
Bobby Knight on setting the career
coaching record for NCAA
Division I victories at 880.
Like him or not, he has set a new standard that will be hard to match.
Is he perfect? No. Like all humans, he has weaknesses. ...
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Taking on The North Avenue Trade SchoolComments (0)
It has been two years, but CBS
Sports is back in Athens. This
afternoon is the Georgia
Tech vs. University of Georgia
football game, and I am back in my spot as the officials stats liaison
between the press box and the truck. The weather is glorious ...
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Oh The Unbridled Joy of College SportsComments (0)
The Empire State Building was bathed
in scarlet lights. Times Square was lit up with screens touting the big
game. And over in Piscataway, New Jersey, perennial Big East football patsy
Rutgers University was playing the biggest game in school history, ...
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When Eye-Tee Meet Tee-VeeComments (0)
College football kicked off for me this
past Saturday. I was back in the booth at UGA as stage manager for Lincoln
Financial Sports (formerly know
as JP Sports).
Early in the game I had to do a double take. One of my customers, Titan
Technology ...
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Trying Not To Be A College Baseball FanComments (0)
They use aluminum bats. They have a
designated hitter. Two very good reasons why I try not to like college
baseball. But there is a very interesting 3-game series that starts tomorrow
at Foley Field in Athens, Georgia. Number 7 Kentucky (unbelievably) ...
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The Masters: Quality Family TelevisionComments (5)
Today marked the closing round of the
70th Masters,
televised on CBS
Sports. One of the joys of watching
the Masters (and golf is much better on TV than in person), is the fact
that there are only 4 minutes of commercials for each hour of ...
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Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward Went To School Where?Comments (3)
Yes, former University
of Georgia (UGA) quarterback Hines Ward
was named most-valuable player (MVP)
of Super Bowl XL. But something
seems to have been lost
on the media and the University
of Georgia (UGA). If you had
watched the ABC
Sports ...
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CBS Sports College Football On-Air Team To Be Overhauled?Comments (0)
Speculation has been flying this week
that CBS College
Football Lead Color Analyst Todd
Blackledge will be jumping ship
for ABC Sports.
If this does happen, one would have to wonder if CBS will also replace
play-by-play announcer Verne
Lundquist as ...
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JP Sports Marks 20 Years of SEC BasketballComments (0)
Yesterday marked the 20th year that
Jefferson-Pilot
Sports has been covering Southeastern
Conference basketball. I decided
to take along my camera and take some pictures to share with the crew and
my readers. This also gave me a chance to learn more ...
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It's Raining Sugar In Georgia!Comments (4)
Congratulations to Coach
Mark Richt, Quarterback
DJ Shockley and the rest of the
University of Georgia
Bulldogs on their solid spanking
of 3rd-ranked Louisiana
State University, 34-14, in last
night's SEC Championship game. Their reward? A January ...
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Georgia Gets "Shocked" in 23-20 Win Over RazorbacksComments (4)
I started my 24th year working in TV
sports today, working as the stage manager for Dave
Neal, Dave
Rowe and the rest of the Jefferson-Pilot
Sports Crew. What did I witness?
Possibly the end of any national title hopes for 4th-ranked
7-0 Georgia (AP, ...
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NCAA Has To Get Priorities in OrderComments (0)
The National
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA),
the largest governing body of intercollegiate athletics in the United States
has never been known for consistency or rationale decisions. Many times
people have openly wondered where common sense went ...
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PGA Tour Returns To A Real Golf CourseComments (1)
Years ago from 1980 to 1986, the tournament
known as the Kemper
Open was contested on the spectacular
and tough Congressional
Country Club in Bethesda, MD.
Unfortunately, to the dismay of many players and fans, it was moved from
the less than ...
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I worked a women's college basketball
doubleheader this afternoon (GA Tech vs. Arkansas, Georgia vs. Clemson
at the Arena at
Gwinnet Center. It was the first
time I had worked games with a basketball court lain out on top of an ice
hockey rink. And my ...
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There is a minor college basketball
game going on in Durham, North Carolina tonite. #2 North Carolina is taking
on #8 Duke. This tobacco
road rivalry is one of the most
intense in the country. But this is not the Hatfield/McCoy
feud I wish I was there ...
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In a move I would not have predicted
but makes perfect sense, Defensive Coordinator Brian VanGorder is
leaving the University of Georgia to become the Linebacker
Coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars. It makes sense because
he can now continue to grow in ...
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I am here in the press box of the Georgia
Dome in Atlanta with about 90 minutes to go until kick-off of the SEC
Championship Game between #3 Auburn and #15 Tennessee (6:00 PM EST, CBS).
As much as I despise football played indoors, the Georgia Dome ...
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Athens, GA -- Tonite I had four tickets
to see the University of Georgia Men's Basketball team host Nevada,
the surprise Sweet 16 team from last year's NCAA Basketball Championship
Tournament. Georgia, as expected fell to 0-2 by a score of 58-47. ...
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Saturday afternoon at around 3:30 PM EST, the 8-1 University of Georgia
Bulldogs and 9-0 Auburn Tigers/War Eagles meet for the 108th time in the
Deep South’s oldest rivalry that began in 1892. Led by Quarterback David
Greene, the all time winningest ...
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42 years old and a 7th
Cy Young Award for Roger Clemens!
Gives me hope that at age 42 I can perform similar feats. Wait, who am
I kidding?...Maurice Clarett will just not go away and "The"
Ohio State University (do not ever, ever leave the ...
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and I have received my schedule from
Jefferson-Pilot Sports, which includes a Georgia Tech game. That will all
start after an unusual double-header for me at the SEC Football Championship
at the Georgia Dome (Atlanta) in December. First, I will be the ...
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They had lost to Florida in 13 of their
last 14 games against Florida, including the last 6 in a row. They came
into the game having to beat Florida to keep their SEC Championship and
Bowl Championship Series (BCS) hopes alive. Florida was playing under ...
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In less than 90 minutes at the "World's
Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party", the University of Georgia Bulldogs
take on the University of Florida Gators in Jacksonville. Right now South
Carolina and Tennessee are tied 8-8 at the half, but no matter ...
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Nothing like being a couple of days
late, but unless I am working a game, I do not get to see it at home. Plus
my oldest daughter had two soccer games (3 Goals!), we had to go pumpkin
picking, and then we had to carve the pumpkins. But enough of that, ...
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The Sixth Ranked Georgia Bulldogs (5-1,
3-1 SEC) cruised passed 1-5 Vanderbilt 33-3 as expected Saturday. The statistics,
for the most part, meaningless because Vanderbilt does not have a defense
that can do much against a team like Georgia. David Greene ...
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Earlier this week I promised myself
that I would write about Notre Dame playing against Navy this weekend.
For all practical purposes, I was being pragmatic because Vanderbilt at
Georgia should be a yawner (we will find that out tomorrow). I knew what
I ...
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The game was as ugly as a game could
get. The 3rd Ranked University of Georgia Bulldogs (4-1, 2-1) lost to the
17th Ranked University of Tennessee Volunteers (4-1, 2-1) by a score of
19-14 in front of a sellout crowd of 92,746. Even if they had managed ...
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Sanford Stadium is empty except for
a few players on the field doing warm-ups. The UGA Sports Communications
Staff is helping reporters get their Internet Connections. CBS Sports is
getting ready to walk through graphics and do their rehearsals. I am ...
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In 10 years of working college football
games in Athens, GA (USA), I have never seen the atmosphere witnessed this
afternoon into evening. Four hours before kickoff and there was not a parking
spot to be found in town. The atmosphere was electric with ...
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Post Game Notes: Georgia Beats GA Southern, Business Controls Software, DUI Hypocrisy, and the Loss of a Colleague
Georgia Beats GA Southern
92,000+ fans from around the State of Georgia gathered in Athens, GA to
watch a valiant effort by the Eagles of Division IAA Georgia Southern against
the #3 Ranked Georgia Bulldogs "between the hedges" (tm). This
is ...
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This does not include analysts, just
the main announcers. We will hit the analysts next week.
My picks for the best:
Pat Summerall (It is great having him on ESPN for a short while)
Al Michaels (Goes without saying)
Keith Jackson (the ...
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No, not the one with the little round
ball, the other one where people bang each other around, get paid lots
of money, and then hopelessly try to find meaning in life when they are
cast aside for younger players. I just confirmed my first telecast of ...
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Winner gets a round of applause!
We have a winner. Much applause all
around. I have replaced the mystery image with the full ...
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I'm In A New York State of MindComments (1)
I have not been in New York State since
1992. I have not been in Rye, NY, home of the then Westchester Classic,
in 25 years. So here I site on my 45th birthday in Rye. I always liked
coming here for the Westchester
Classic, and now I am back to
see a ...
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In Tulsa On the Last Leg of Eleven Day TripComments (0)
I arrived in Tulsa this afternoon. It
is the last leg of an 11 day road trip. It started in Phoenix with a Domino
Health Check. This weekend I
was back in Los Angeles to finish up a server migration/cluster set up.
The next two days will be a
IBM Lotus ...
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Observations About Phoenix, ArizonaComments (1)
I have spent the last 4 days in Phoenix,
AZ. It is my first time in the state of Arizona and I have a few things
I noticed:
1. Like Portland, wireless access in
the airport is free. Very nice.
2. People here cannot drive, or just
drive way ...
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A Sign That Shocked Me In LAComments (0)
What was it that shocked me about the
sign pictured above? No it was not the price of gasoline (though it is
obscene). It was the fact that there are still ARCO stations around in
this country. They used to be everywhere, but I am used to seeing ...
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My Favorite Restaurant in the Los Angeles AreaComments (1)
One thing I learned by staying in LA
for a month back in 2002 is to stay in Santa Monica, so you can enjoy the
shops and restaurants of not only Santa Monica, but close by Venice Beach
and Marina Del Ray. My favorite restaurant, the On
The Waterfront ...
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In addition to the two other sessions I will be presenting at Advisor
Live in July, I will have
a session being sponsored by Compliance
Solutions Advisor Magazine
entitled "E-Mail
Compliance Frameworks in the Real World"
that I would hope ...
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This year at Advisor
Live, Compliance
Solutions Advisor Magazine
will have a one day E-mail
Compliance Management series
of workshops. I will be presenting the
following session which may
be of interest to attendees:
Handling the Human Side of ...
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This coming July I will be in Las Vegas for Lotus
Advisor Live and will be presenting
a session entitled "Compliance
and Governance for Lotus Notes and Domino Pros".
Here is the description of this session:
Compliance and Governance for ...
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The Cayuga Group, LLC/The
Business Controls Caddy is pleased
to announce the availability of our training brochure for the first course
offering in our "Business
and Information Tehnology Controls Training Series". The
4-day class, ...
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Well if Rocky
Oliver has the LotusGeek
Tour, I figured I needed a snappy title for the blog as well:-). I
am sure I can do better, so if you have any suggestions, go for it!
That being said, it looks like I will
be presenting two sessions at ...
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The Cayuga Group, LLC is pleased to
announce the availability of "Hacking a Domino Infrastructure and
Countermeasures", a hands-on training course for Lotus Notes and Domino
Professionals, Information Systems Auditors, and Business Control ...
Read More . . .
I have decided to add a no acronym to
my vocabulary: Things
I Can Do Without (TICDWO). Why?
I was in CVS Pharmacy
tonite standing at the cash register. Staring me right in the face was
a banner telling me that for
only US$29.95!, I can purchase a ...
Read More . . .
Telecommuting and Business/IT Risk (Part I)Comments (1)
Most of us want to telecommute at least
part-time. Sometimes employers embrace the idea, sometimes they don't.
But how often does the opposition discuss reasons of information technology
(IT) governance. And if it does, is it a two-way conversation? In ...
Read More . . .
An article entitled "Conquering
the Spreadsheet Compliance Nightmare" from the Information
Technology Compliance Institute (ITCI) came across my RSS Feed today.
As I had recently written an article on spreadsheet risk for Corporate
Compliance ...
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The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest
Group has a great link that catalogs strange but true stories of spreadsheet
errors and the business losses they caused. In addition, Patrick O'Bierne
of Ireland and who is actively involved with this group has a ...
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I was doing research for an article
on spreadsheet controls this weekend and came across an archive of Lotus
1-2-3 print ads that included
this
one:
When did you first use 1-2-3 and what
did you use it ...
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When people talk about Section 404 of
the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX or Sarbox depending on what you call it), much
discussion centers around the costs of compliance, the level of controls
needed, what needs to be tested,and what area make a company most ...
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Well, Mr. Steinbrenner did not really
blame Lotus Notes for the humiliating defeat. But according to an
article in the November 29, 2004 issue of eWeek, Lotus Notes is
a key part of the technology infrastructure that was behind the success
of the Red ...
Read More . . .
Google has recently acquired Picasa,
a desktop image management program and has made it available free
for ...
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In the subject Article, published in
Lotus
Advisor Magazine, Craig Schumann
walks through an explanation of how a "solid, well-documented build
process can be invaluable to the long-term success of your applications".
Craig, who is the lead ...
Read More . . .
Bob Congdon has written on his blog about code
bloat, quoting a posting from
Jason Marshall about the exponential
growth of code. Bob states
that "Often developers are aware of code that they want to use but
it's not in a form that allows reuse. ...
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Ben Langhinrichs of Geniisoft
took me
to task very early this morning
about my post last night entitled "Would
You Change Your Oil at 70 MPH?".
As I started reading it, I thought "what is Ben doing to me?",
but I quickly realized ...
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The July issue of Baseline has a news
article about how the insertion
of a "few lines" of faulty code into production transactions
cost RBC millions of dollars in a two week span,
made their customers the targets of phishing scams, has the ...
Read More . . .
So The Texas Longhorns Coach's Stepson Has a MySpace PageComments (0)
For those of you who did not see it
on the Holiday Bowl broadcast the other day, the University
of Texas got assessed a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Why? because Chris
Jessee, the stepson of Texas
Coach Mack Brown stepped onto
the ...
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Doing an About Face(Book)Comments (0)
I had signed up for Facebook
some time ago in preparation for a privacy
presentation I gave at the University of Georgia's New Media Institute
(NMI). I had pretty much forgotten
about it until someone in the Lotus Software community found it. ...
Read More . . .
MySpace Taking a BeatingComments (0)
MySpace.com.
the fastest growing and most popular web site on the Internet, is certainly
taking a beating. There are rapes
and a couple of
murders being associated with
the site. Fair or not, these are among a number of issues associated with
this ...
Read More . . .
Wikipedia Prankster Loses Job Over False PostingComments (0)
As reported in the New
York Times on December 11, Brian
Chase, who posted false and libelous
information on Wikipedia
about an individual, from a work computer, gave into the pressure of being
hunted down online and resigned his job as an operations ...
Read More . . .
Now before my esteemed colleagues jump
all over me by thinking that Radicati
may have a point in their prediction that corporate
blogging will fade as a fad in
the next year, I am approaching this from a different angle. Last week
at the ...
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What is the True Value of Social Networking Software for Business?Comments (1)
As IBM is in launch mode for Lotus
Connections, dubbed as MySpace
for the enterprise, there are
many questions that may arise. The most fundamental question is if it even
makes sense for the enterprise level? If so, will it gain traction ...
Read More . . .
"Yes, I Facebook with 15 year-old girls"Comments (3)
"Yes, I Facebook with 15 year-old
girls" was the title of UGA
New Media Institute (NMI)
Director Scott Shamp's
(see left) weekly essay sent out to students and friends of the NMI. The
headline is definitely an attention getter. And this is a ...
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The Naked Truth About Paris Hilton's Cell PhoneComments (2)
Remember when Paris
Hilton's cell phone was hacked?
There was a lot of speculation that there was a team of hackers cracking
cell phone passwords, or worse yet that she may have been "ditzy"
enough to not even have password protection on her ...
Read More . . .
Peter Jennings and Thoughts of My FatherComments (0)
The passing of Peter
Jennings triggered thoughts of
my father, who died on March 2, 1998 of lung cancer. His death came 10
weeks or so after his diagnosis, even though he was in total denial that
he was terminal. At the risk offending some of my ...
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A section displaying the 10 most recent
Phishing Scam Alerts has been added to the "Security ...
Read More . . .
The "Security Alerts" link
above is now active. This link takes you to real time RDF/RSS alert feeds
from ...
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A Physical Security Lesson From ESPN's Kenny MayneComments (1)
Yes, I know all of you have your servers in a secure, locked facility. But what can happen when key systems are not secure? Just ask ESPN's Kenny Mayne when he tries to have a little fun at work.Updated at 12:48 PM, July 1, 2009 - Apparantly Keith Brooks ...
Read More . . .
Should Security Fear Trump Productivity?Comments (0)
We all live in an age of fear, uncertainty
and doubt (FUD). In many cases, we make irrational decisions based on FUD.
In some cases, this would include security decisions. Why do we have security
systems in our homes? Is it the salesperson making ...
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CERTEGY Done In By Poor SODComments (0)
After a bit of phone tag, I was finally
able to have a phone conversation with the president of CERTEGY.
If you may recall my article from the other day, an employee of CERTEGY
stole and sold 2.3 Million consumer records to a data broker. This ...
Read More . . .
Big 4 Auditors Continue Their Sarbanes-Oxley FolliesComments (1)
I have heard horror stories of Sarbanes-Oxley
audits going way beyond reasonable. I have heard stories of controls being
forced on companies by auditors without careful thought. I had hoped these
stories would fade away as the Big 4 accounting firms ...
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TJX Data Breaches Worse Than Thought?Comments (0)
The story about the TJX
keeps getting bigger and bigger. Their internal reviews are reporting that
the hacking activity may
have been going on back to July 2005.
Not being on the inside and having all of the information, it is hard to
make any deep ...
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Could You Absorb a $50,000+ Financial Hit?Comments (1)
I was sitting in Jittery
Joes Coffee yesterday, and I ran
into a web business entrepreneur who was quite stressed. It seems that
someone from Viet Nam had hacked into their servers and stolen the transaction
records for 125 customers. It turns out the ...
Read More . . .
Skype vs NHTTP Conflict Resolved, But What About The Security Risk?Comments (1)
Thanks to Rocky
Oliver, I have eliminated the
conflict between Skype and the nhttp task conflict I wrote
about the other day. It was definitely
a RTFM moment for me, and I appreciate his pointing out what needed to
be done to eliminate the ...
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Google Admits Desktop 3 Security RiskComments (0)
In the category of "No
S%#% Sherlock", CNET is
reporting that Google
has acknowledged the significant security risks
that Google Desktop
Search 3 presents to organizations.
I wonder what prompted them to offer this ...
Read More . . .
Question: Which of These Login Options Offers Better Security?Comments (9)
If you are implementing and/or reviewing
application security in an enterprise, which of the Login options above
is better for security? Post your thoughts here and be prepared to defend
your answer. It may or may not be what you ...
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State of Georgia Offers Up More Data (In)SecurityComments (0)
The State
of Georgia, through its poorly
managed and now drastically downsized Georgia
Technology Authority (GTA), has
had a number of highly publicized information security breaches/problems
over the past few years. These have included release of Hope ...
Read More . . .
What Do You Do When CIOs Do Not Listen?Comments (8)
Last week I posted an article entitled
"Does
Your Organization Block Malware Sites?".
In the discussion thread that accompanied this posting, the issue of not
using strong passwords, along with a mandatory password change policy,
was ...
Read More . . .
Does Your Organization Block Malware Sites?Comments (8)
I was talking to a colleague from a
Big 4 Accounting
Firm the other day and we were
talking about hashed
passwords in Lotus Notes/Domino.
During the discussion we touched on the tool out there called Domino
Hash Breaker. He said his firm
was very ...
Read More . . .
Anybody who knows me knows that I do
not suffer fools or foolish regulations/rules that make no sense very well.
Airline security since 9/11? Do not even get me going. Terror levels? Call
me when they have real meaning. Trying to go to my credit union at ...
Read More . . .
In a survey conducted by the nonprofit
National Cyber Security Alliance, more than a third of the 493 PC users
surveyed said they had a greater chance of winning the lottery or being
struck by lightning than of being hit by malicious code.
There ...
Read More . . .
I think Dr. Leonard "Bones"
McCoy might have said those words to Captain James Tiberious Kirk if the
writers of Star Trek if Google and the Internet had been around in the
1960's. If it was, perhaps the enemies would not have been the ...
Read More . . .
Duffbert
posted about a story
on eWeek about how Google
can be used to find unprotected data such as Social Security numbers on
unprotected web servers. There is no bigger business control risk for a
company doing business on the Internet. As such, I ...
Read More . . .
I will be reviewing a new book soon
that asks this question:
"If you accept the principle of writing code that is "just secure
enough" for your own applications, do you think it is socially responsible
for software vendors to do the ...
Read More . . .
In an article in today's USA Today,
Jean Cevaller, vice president of Altos Origin and head of the US$400M Olympics
Information System, makes the bold statement that "the
image of a hacker coming in from the Internet is ...
Read More . . .
There Are Loose Lips, And Then There Are IdiotsComments (2)
In World War II, the posters said it
quiet simply as displayed on the left: Loose
Lips Might Sink Ships. The same
thing might be said for modern corporate warfare. How many times are people
looking over your shoulder on an airplane, watching what you ...
Read More . . .
Workstation Locking for DummiesComments (0)
One goal of information security professionals
is to have users
lock their workstations when
they walk away, even for a few minutes. But not all users are easily educated
in the use of control-alt-delete,
or the even shorter windowskey+L
combination. ...
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The FBI and Cyber-SecurityComments (0)
There has been some benefit to finally
being back home in Athens, GA on an actual workday. Not only did I finally
get to meet Stan
Gatewood, Chief Information Security
Officer at the University of Georgia, I was able to listen to a presentation
by ...
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"Security is often the mundane
task of writing policies and enforcing regulations. Gupta and Laliberte
draw upon experience from their past consulting engagements to look at
these various issues with a sense of realism that is often missing in ...
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I have finished reading an advance draft of the subject publication, which
is going to be released by the IT
Governance Institute, in cooperation
with the Information
Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
They are publishing this in ...
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"Mirror, mirror on the wall. who's the fairest one of all?"
Yes, we all know that Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) has vulnerabilities
serious enough that major financial institutions and CERT
have declared the browser unsafe at any ...
Read More . . .
In the July 12 issue of "VAR Business", Jeremiah
Grossman of White
Hat Security writes about
"5
Security Myths". The
very first myth is that "since a web site uses SSL, it must be secure".
This is a myth of course ...
Read More . . .
If You Are Going to Post About a "Security Hole"...Comments (2)
If you are going to post about a "security
hole" in a product, it is important that you discuss it in its full
context. If you don't, you risk the chance of misleading people and creating
FUD. The posting I am referring to is a recent entry ...
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I came across yet another "scheme"
or "method" to keep viruses from getting into a networked environment:
just automatically delete them on inbound messages if they are certain
file types including zips and make the recipient and ...
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On the heels of Chris Miller writing
an ePro article called "Administration
and Strategy: How to Write an IM Policy (Part 1)",
I read an article on the security risks of instant messaging today in the
Information
Systems Control ...
Read More . . .
Summary
Tim Speed, along with Raj Balasubramanian, has published a new technical
article on Lotus
developerWorks entitled "Lessons
in secure messaging using Domino 6".
While this article goes into great detail about technical aspects of ...
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Using IBM Lotus Notes/Domino for Compliance ToolsComments (0)
One of the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act of 2002 is that corporations
establish and maintain a whistle-blower program. It is requirements like
this that make IBM Lotus Notes and Domino the perfect tool of choice, far
superior to anything else ...
Read More . . .
Submitted for your approval. The auditors
have finished their Sarbanes-Oxley
Section 404 audit of controls.
Your organization has been cited for not having an approval process for
changes to your
PeopleSoft HR Financial Systems.
They tell you that you ...
Read More . . .
Just announced by IBM: An IBM Hosted
Workplace Solution for Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Tools. More later as I
get some additional ...
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John Dvorak is one of those writers
you either love to hate or just love. Either way, he offers an interesting
opinion on just why Oracle was so aggressive in their pursuit of
PeopleSoft. It was their Sarbanes-Oxley Module called Human ...
Read More . . .
A press release came out today touting
the fact that Ingersoll-Rand had "selected" the Sarbanes-Oxley
Express Toolkit Offering from OpenPages. It is one thing to
cheer loudly when you have a competitive win, but another thing entirely
to leave ...
Read More . . .
PricewaterhouseCoopers Releases "Framework for Evaluating Process/Transaction-Level Exceptions and Deficiencies"
PricewaterhouseCoopers has issued
the subject DataLine describing
a framework that can be used when evaluating manual and automated process/transaction-level
exceptions and deficiencies resulting from the evaluation of a company's
internal control over ...
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Following a link in a listserv message
I received today took me to an article entitled "SOX
software: More questions than answers?"
on the WebCPA
Website. Because the site is gernerated
by Cold Fusion, I could not find a publication date for ...
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UGA Paper on SOX Impact on Corporate Boards AvailableComments (0)
Jim Linck (UGA), Jeffry
Netter (UGA), and Tina
Yang (Clemson) have published
a paper entitled "The
Effects and Unintended Consequences of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and its
Era, on the Supply and Demand for Directors".
The paper provides an ...
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Steve Ballmer: SarBox Means No XBoxComments (2)
One of my favorite subjects to post
on is how companies, auditors, and people are taking the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act of 2002 to extremes, claiming
it requires or prohibits things that are nowhere to be found in the law.
The latest,
for want of a better ...
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Are Lotus Notes Applications In Scope For Sarbanes-Oxley?Comments (0)
"Are Lotus Notes Applications In
Scope For Sarbanes-Oxley?" This was the question of found in my Google
referrer logs tonight. I hope the person asking this question was not looking
for a definitive yes or no answer, because the answer depends ...
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This advertorial
from PricewaterhouseCoopers(PwC)
was published in the Wall
Street Journal today. I received
permission from Bruce
Winters of PwC to reprint it
here for discussion purposes. I may publish some rebuttal thoughts in the
near future but ...
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A very important paper worth reading
has been published by the AeA.
Go ahead and take a gander at Sarbanes-Oxley
Section 404: The Section of Unintended Consequences and Its Impact On Small
Business. From the Executive Summary:
"Section
404 of ...
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Last night I attended the holiday party
of the Atlanta Chapter of the International Systems Audit and
Control Association (ISACA). It was a last minute thing because of
an e-mail I received from Jay Simonton of Jefferson Wells.
It was quite an ...
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2004 Oversight Systems Financial Executive Report On Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Released by Oversight Systems
Altanta-based Oversight Systems Inc.
today announced the results of the 2004 Oversight Systems Financial
Executive Report On Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance, a nationwide survey
of 222 financial executives. The report shows most financial executives
are torn ...
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Sarbanes-Oxley questions can
come up where you least expect it, including the Lotus Developer Works
Discussion Fora. Why? The fact is that Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory
drivers are going to be more and more a part of the daily lives of ...
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As a thread I started trying
to gather Atlanta area Lotus Notes/Domino professionals grows,
I came across this short but to the point
post on "LiveJournal":
Date: December 3, 2004
Time: 11:12 pm.
Finally got home from work about
20 ...
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In an opinion piece published in the
Australian Financial Review, Holman Jenkins, a member of The Wall
Street Journal's editorial board and author of the weekly Business World
column writes that
""Sarbox" (as it's
also nicknamed) ...
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There are provisions written into Sarbanes-Oxley
Act of 2002, as Amended, to protect corporate whistleblowers and encourage
a culture of ethics and honesty in corporations. So say Senators Patrick
Leahy (D- Vermont) and Charles Grassley (R- Iowa) who ...
Read More . . .
In the Roman Calendar, the Ides of March
fell on March 15th. This is the day that Caesar was warned to be careful.
Alas, he did not heed these words and he was killed by Brutus.
The Ides of November fell yesterday,
but the 15th is an all important ...
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"If your company manages projects,
then financial mismanagement of those projects could leave your senior
management legally exposed."
Ruthanne Schulte in "Is
Poor Project Management a Crime?"
When I was negotiating ...
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The bar is very high for passing
and very low for stumbling. IT controls are considered pervasive -- poor
controls could undermine the integrity of financial systems and processes.
It requires more to prove everything's running soundly in an IT ...
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Does Section 404 of SOX Really Require Me To Tie My Left Shoe First? Seriously, I Really Want To Know.
Does Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act (SOX) really require me to tie my left shoe first? The answer is absolutely
no! But if you think this question is absurd, you might think the same
thing about internal control questions I am reading on SOX ...
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"Fourscore and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal...".
So starts the Gettysburg Address, delivered by Abraham Lincoln on ...
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While doing research for an article
for this blog, Bruce Winters, a leader in the Systems and Process Assurance
practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers,
pointed me to "Choose
the Right Tools for Internal Control Reporting",
an article that he ...
Read More . . .
A year or two ago my then five year
old daughter was standing on a diving board as I encouraged her to jump
in, It had reached the point that In was turning to bribery. First, I offered
her $1.00 to jump in. She refused. I then doubled my offer to $2.00. ...
Read More . . .
I had a conversation the other night
with my nephew, who is a manager with a Big 4 accounting firm in the West
Indies. We were talking about issues he had to deal with in the region
and I was taken aback by what he told me about the impact of ...
Read More . . .
New White Paper: "The Use of Spreadsheets - Considerations for Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act"
This White
Paper from PricewaterhouseCoopers
discusses the evaluation of the control environment and specific control
activities that should be considered by management in evaluating the use
of significant spreadsheets as part of their 404 ...
Read More . . .
"Transparency, however, is not
an end in itself. There are costs to produce high quality information.
Markets will seek a compromise between the high cost of collecting, analyzing
and using information and the need to disclose the information to ...
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Looking At The Business Risk of Google SoftwareComments (0)
Google has made some interesting strides
in software tools that it offers on-line. One of these tools is the Google
calendar. This tool allows people to post private and shared calendars
on Google servers, and the tool is indeed pretty swift. This may be ...
Read More . . .
SnTT: The Perfect Storm Hits This BlogComments (1)
This is not the Show-and-Tell
Thursday topic I had planned
on, but it does offer lessons for other that would like to learn from my
mistakes. You see, readers may have noticed that this blog was offline
most of the day. Why? Because this site became the ...
Read More . . .
Should Technology and Operational Risk Drive Decision Making?Comments (0)
A definition
of technology risk includes the
risk that a given technology may not work, or be compromised, and that
technology risk is a significant part of operational risk (Scott Green,
Manager's
Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (Hoboken:
John Wiley ...
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One of the points I try to emphasize
when talking to people and groups about the risk of e-commerce is that
they could be held responsible for the laws of their own, or other, countries
if violated. As a CEO, you do not even have to have personal ...
Read More . . .
For many people who blog, the blog itself
is either the creation or an extension of a personal or company brand.
For most, the personal and company brand are one in the same. In a recent
interview in American Way (the in-flight magazine of American ...
Read More . . .
