Read More . . .

Read More . . .

Read More . . .

Read More . . .

Read More . . .

Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

The Cayuga Group, LLC, the publisher of Eye on Sports Media and The Business Controls Caddy, is pleased to announce the availability of our first Sports Media Best Practices Whitepaper. Although mainly targeted to the sports media community, the ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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. ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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, ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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) ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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, ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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. ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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, ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

Winner gets a round of applause! We have a winner. Much applause all around. I have replaced the mystery image with the full ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

I received my "Dear John" letters from the Lotusphere powers that be today. Alas, with only 36 slots open and over 400 abstracts submitted I did not make the cut this year. This means that there is no way I will be making it down to Orlando ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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, ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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. ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

I know that most readers of this site are not into sports. That is one of the reasons Bob Costas fell flat at Lotusphere a couple of years ago. But there is a firestorm that has erupted in the sports media industry that is, unfortunately, going to turn ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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.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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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" 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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .

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. ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

"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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

"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" 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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

"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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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) ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

"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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

"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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .

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 ...
Read More . . .

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 . . .

Wow! Forty years ago man walked on the moon! With Walter Cronkite dying this weekend, the anniversary takes on new meaning for many of my generation.. Rather than hash out new thoughts, here is the short post I did on the 35th anniversary of the ...
Read More . . .

It was one year ago today that I launched this blog with a post entitled "How Many Golf Balls Can You Fit Into a Hole?". Little did I realize at the time, but this experiment in marketing and writing has blossomed in ways I could not have ...
Read More . . .

I was saddened to hear today of the unexpected death a couple weeks ago of Rev. Harold "Hap" Ridley, SJ. Fr. Ridley had been serving as the president of Loyola College in Baltimore, MD and was on the Board of Trustees at Holy Cross, but I ...
Read More . . .

This past Sunday at 9:00 AM as she ...
Read More . . .

Lotus Notes turns 15 years old today. If you are not a member of the Notes user community, you might ask yourself why you should care. Then answer is simple. Much as Lotus 1-2-3 changed the world of personal computing, Lotus Notes changed the way ...
Read More . . .

Back in 1980 when I started school at LeMoyne College in Syracuse (NY), we were required to take physical education. Our instructor was a man who, despite his size and calm, rugged peaceful exterior, was a person you did not want to get into a scrape ...
Read More . . .

In 1996, I was lucky enough to witness the Olympic Futbol Medal Round matches that were held in Sanford Stadium at the University of Georgia. My official volunteer title was "Manager, Results Distribution for Print Media, Soccer Venue". It was ...
Read More . . .

It almost totally slipped by me. 35 years ago today we landed on the moon. The next day, man walked on the moon for the first time. I was seven years old at the time. There was no such thing as cable television. No TIVO. No VCRs. No DVDs. If you ...
Read More . . .

Jonathan Byrd won the most unique trophy in golf Sunday at the B.C Open in Endicott, NY. This is his second Tour victory and with it came a check for $540,000. Not as much as Todd Hamilton, a 12-year hardended veteran of the Asian Tour, won in the ...
Read More . . .

I hear tell that they are playing a little golf tournament over in the UK this week, but being a good native of Binghamton, I am loyal to the B.C. Open. This is the only tournament that is played on a truly public golf course, as well as ...
Read More . . .

Over on Ed Brill's blog, the announcement of IBM's E-Mail Archiving Solution for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) is addressed in a new posting. I have a few thoughts that companies considering this product for their Lotus Notes and/or Microsoft ...
Read More . . .

The United States Food and Drug Administration is responsible for ensuring the safety of prescription drugs in the United States. So you might think that they are on top of their records retention practices, right? Not quite so, as pointed out by ...
Read More . . .

It has taken a while to get to this, but life and other things often get in the way. Nonetheless, I want to now provide you with a review of the free online information technology training I completed a month or so ago. Because of the length of the review, it ...
Read More . . .

I have been bogged down with mundane things of life, and helping to set up a new Apple network at church. So I have not yet finished Part III of the "Free IT Training" Series. Hopefully I will have it sometime this week. ...
Read More . . .

In Part I of this series, I told you how I surprisingly came across free information technology training from the United States Government, No it is not part of the stimulus package. And no, you don't have to buy one of Matthew Lesko's books. You just need to ...
Read More . . .

Don't you love it when you get spam messages like this in your e-mail? Or better yet, remember when pitchman Matthew Lesko would appear on television telling you about all of the free money you can get from the Federal government.? Well sit back and read ...
Read More . . .

...
Read More . . .

I came across this newsgroup posting via Darren Adam's blog and thought I would reprint it here. Not bought and paid for. Not someone pushing for one side over another. Just the real experiences of a Notes shop that converted. "> Can ...
Read More . . .

It is time for a little little diversion while I am working on completing the 3rd part of my review of the free online acquisition training from the U.S. Federal Government. In a conversation with a senior acquisition professional in Washington, D.C. ...
Read More . . .

The headline of the small article in the January 12, 2008 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution caught me eye. It read "Slow E-Mail Costs City $18,000". With a teaser like that I had to read it to see what was up. It turns out that the ...
Read More . . .

As I wrote last night in my preview of tonite's "Must Read" entry, I am going to talk about the contracts Halliburton has received to help rebuild Iraq. This thread is not for political battles or debate. What it is intended to do is shine ...
Read More . . .

Yes, there are plenty of things to not like about these contracts, but the media does not tell the whole story or even get the facts of how these contracts get awarded right. Tomorrow I will talk about this and the "7 Plus 1" exemptions to ...
Read More . . .

When I speak to groups about privacy issues, there are three points I always make sure to make. The first is that people do not truly understand what is considered personal and private data. The second is that the rules vary from state to state in the ...
Read More . . .

On January 3 and 4, 2007, I wrote about a company called CERTEGY. This is a check verification company out of Tampa, Florida. Merchants use this company to verify if consumer and business checks should be accepted or not. In my case, a business check ...
Read More . . .

Ireland has some pretty tough privacy laws, probably among the toughest in the world. Unlike the United States, the right to privacy is considered an enumerated part of the Irish Constitution. But why is privacy so important to the Irish? Well consider ...
Read More . . .

Yesterday started out normally enough. I was doing a few tasks before diving into the work day, and I received an email that a comment had been left on one of my Flickr photos. The person was complimenting me on a picture of the historic Morton Theater ...
Read More . . .

There are discussions going on in the Lotus blogging world about SPAM. The basic question posed by "ed underscore brill AT us d0t ibm nospam d0t com" (aka Ed Brill") is whether or not people should be concerned about posting their ...
Read More . . .

Yesterday I wrote about my experience with my business check being turned down at OfficeMax. This occurred because a company named Certegy decided that I had written too many checks that day, outside of my normal check-writing pattern. While in my ...
Read More . . .

It is not always outside threats that make it important to protect personally identifiable information. Inside threats are just as important to protect against, and it is not only customer data that needs to be protected. How have times changed that ...
Read More . . .

It looks like AOL is holding someone responsible for the recent privacy breach. According to reports, AOL chief technology officer Maureen Govern resigned. So the lesson is simple. If you do not protect sensitive data as you are supposed to, you may be ...
Read More . . .

For those readers who, like me, have been under a rock for a last couple of weeks (my excuse has been a sinus infection), you may not have heard about the recent AOL Privacy Breach. Yes, a well-meaning (but utterly stupid) employee in the AOL research ...
Read More . . .

During the recent British Open, Tiger Woods flinched more than once when people in the gallery took pictures with their camera phones. According to reports, there was not much that tournament officials could do under existing British law. I thought ...
Read More . . .

In his book, The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age, author Daniel Solove talks about the power of the three credit bureaus have in shaping national legislation to override state laws on credit information. Never is this more ...
Read More . . .

I was not expecting it, but I received my "letter" from the United States Veterans Administration this past weekend. In it, they say they are sending it from an "abundance of concern" for my compromised identity information. They ...
Read More . . .

When it comes to collecting data, there is a simple rule of thumb: only collect the minimum personally identifiable information (PII) necessary for completing a transaction. The screenshot above is from the Active.com web site that I had to use to sign ...
Read More . . .

"Privacy is dead, deal with it" is a quote attributed to Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems. The assumption, of course, was that we ever had to begin with. With the latest revelation about the depth and scope of the United States National ...
Read More . . .

This slide will appear in my "Personal Information: Data Protection as a Business Driver" presentation to the Atlanta chapter of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) tomorrow. I fully expect it to raise more than a few ...
Read More . . .

I came across a web site this weekend that left me speechless because of the web site owners raw stupidity. To make matters worse, the web site owner was a professional employee of a university. What exactly was it? It was his child's birth certificate ...
Read More . . .

I am not sure which is scarier. Is it the fact that someone was able to intentionally dupe JP Morgan Chase into issuing a non-valid credit card? or is it the fact that JP Morgan Chase seems to want to dismiss it as an aberration. Given the proliferation ...
Read More . . .

It has been said that Germany has the toughest data privacy laws around, but I never had the chance to read them. Until today. Coming out of a discussion over on Volker Weber's blog today is a link to a bilingual (German and English) copy of the ...
Read More . . .

Visitors to this site might recall that I did not have very kind things to say about Google Desktop Search (GDS) when it first came out in beta. Well, Google Desktop Search 3 makes me even more queasy. In an article in today's USA Today, ...
Read More . . .

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shoe fell last week, slapping ChoicePoint with US$15,000,000 in fines and other redress resulting from the personal data theft highlighted on this site. But the question is whether or not this significant fine ...
Read More . . .

In today's USA Today, Columbus (OH) Dispatch editorial cartoonist Jeff Stahler has inked a cartoon which sums up what I say in many presentations: People just give too much information away freely, without any control of what happens to the information ...
Read More . . .

In the United States, the roots to legal jurisprudence on privacy issues can be traced back to "Right to Privacy", written by Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis (who served on the Supreme Court)(from The Digital Person by Daniel J. Solove). ...
Read More . . .

Note: This column originally appeared in the Athens Banner-Herald on Sunday, September 6, 2005. When I give presentations and training on privacy, and talk about identity theft, I might include any number of quotes and quips when talking about the ...
Read More . . .

Clark Howard is a local personality on Atlanta radio and television who dispenses a wealth of consumer help and information. One of the things he always preaches about is computer crime. Well it seems that Clark, who will often turn on alarms and ...
Read More . . .

A few days ago Bruce Elgort posted an entry talking about how Lotus QuickPlace users may inadvertently violate their organizations' privacy policies by sending group e-mails to external users and not using the "BCC" field. As Bruce points ...
Read More . . .

Many have you may have been reading about the recent (actually not so recent) debacle that allowed fake companies to steal the private credit information of at least 135,000 individuals from Atlanta-based ChoicePoint. They did not hack into a server. ...
Read More . . .

This story comes by way of the SANS Institute. "Petco Animal Supplies has settled Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated both privacy promises made to customers and federal law because of security flaws in its eCommerce web site. An ...
Read More . . .

Back on October 15, 2004 I sent an email to Google and their public relations contacts with my concerns about the lack of full disclosure about what would be installed and what functions were being enabled. This past Friday, I received an e-mail from ...
Read More . . .

My daughter has been hounding me for a few weeks about me allowing her to get on the Internet so she could go and play games on neopets.com. I told here I would consider it after I had reviewed the site to make sure it was ok. So this afternoon, I ...
Read More . . .

(sorry about that Beach Boys). From Adam Gaffin, by way of Richard Schwartz, here is a quiz to see how good you are at recognizing a phishing scam. I will admit I only scored a 9 out of 10 because a tell-tale sign that I KNOW about on one of the ...
Read More . . .

I am pleased to announce that I have received formal notification of passing the June 2004 sitting of the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) Exam.This cerification program is under the auspices of the Informations Systems Audit and Control ...
Read More . . .

The website for the Irish Lotus Notes User Group Conference 2007 has gone live. Be sure to visit the website for this outstanding free event put together by Paul Mooney, Eileen Fitzgerald, Bill Buchan and many others. I am in awe to be able to ...
Read More . . .

It's official. After being so sad that I could not attend last year's hugely successful Irish Lotus Users Group Conference (well I was happy that I was home for my daughter's birthday), I will be attending this year. I will be doing a presentation ...
Read More . . .

I will be speaking at the University of Georgia's New Media Institute on Tuesday, November 16, 2007 on Privacy issues associated with new media. I will be discussing privacy as related to blogs, social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and ...
Read More . . .

After getting totally lost thanks to the car rental company, I have finally arrived at the Advisor Summit. After having lunch with John Head, Victor Krantz (and his wife), and Henry Newberry, I ran into Devin "Spanky" Olson. It seems he ...
Read More . . .

Alas, I am not talking about Ireland like Tom Duff (I am open to invitation Mr. Mooney:-)), but I have been invited to speak at two professional association meetings between now and May. I will be speaking about protecting consumer private data as a ...
Read More . . .

From 9-13 April 2006, I will be presenting four sessions at the Advisor Summit in Las Vegas. In addition to updates to my E-Mail Management & Compliance sessions, I will be presenting the following new sessions: SIA 309: Audit-Proof Your ...
Read More . . .

This morning I had the pleasure of being a guest on WGAU (1340) AM's AM Athens Radio Show. My segment was delayed and cut shorter than originally planned, but Liz Dalton was a great host. I will be posting a podcast of my segment, on which we talked ...
Read More . . .

I presented my "E-Mail Compliance Frameworks in the Real World" session at the GroupWise Advisor Summit this past Sunday morning. There were over 100 people present, which is excellent considering that a) the official conference had not ...
Read More . . .

I am pleased to announce that I will be making my first guest appearance on the radio. I will be joined by Dan Tynan, author of Computer Privacy Annoyances, on AM Athens with Elizabeth Dalton to talk about privacy issues that face businesses and ...
Read More . . .

A few of my slides from my Lotusphere 2005 presentation were reproduced and used by Robin Basham of Phoenix Business & Systems Process, Inc. at the recent IT Service Management Forum. Which slides did she like and use (with permission of course): ...
Read More . . .

I am sitting here at Java Vino, my new favorite place for wireless access in the Poncey-Highlands area of Atlanta. It is owned by a young family that live above the shop. Their house coffee is imported from a family plantation in Nicaragua. If you are ...
Read More . . .

Yesterday I did a presentation for ISACA Atlanta entitled "From Radicati to Oklahoma State and Beyond: IT Ethics and Business Risk". There were about 35-40 people in attendance for this luncheon presentation. I used up every one of the 60 ...
Read More . . .

Back in the ATL, my cell phone finally worked decently (Note to Disney: why will it not work well on your properties?). I had a message asking me to speak at the March 15th meeting of the Information Systems Audit and Control Association - Atlanta ...
Read More . . .

Indemnification \In*dem`ni*fi*ca"tion\, n. 1. The act or process of indemnifying, preserving, or securing against loss, damage, or penalty; reimbursement of loss, damage, or penalty; the state of being indemnified. Source: Webster's Revised ...
Read More . . .

This is a story that cannot pass the laugh test, or at least should not. As reported on CNet today, Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz, is seeking a patent on the company's per-employee software pricing plan. According to CNet: The pricing ...
Read More . . .

There is so much to say about the FBI and the state of their Information Technology Governance Structure. I am not sure if questioning what has happened there over the past couple of weeks, with the latest being the external e-mail system shutdown ...
Read More . . .

Some years back, I was travelling to Raleigh, NC to a customer site. This meant I was doing a layover in Charlotte, sitting in the makeshift construction terminal that was teeming with people. Sitting among this ragtag group of travellers, reading a ...
Read More . . .

This is one of those stories that sounds like it could not be true, only because it sounds so bizarre. Today in Athens, Georgia (USA), police raided a funeral home that wasn't. It seems that our local "Hurley Funeral Home" was being used as a ...
Read More . . .

People who know me and read my blog know I will not discuss politics on here. Those of my colleagues that do are free to do so and I have no problem with them doing that. It is their choice and the hallmark of a democratic society. That being said, I ...
Read More . . .

Rocky Oliver posted today that Krystal Burger joints have a number of restaurants that offer free wireless internet access. Well since I have to have had many drinks to eat at Krystals or White Castle, I thought I would offer my short list of free ...
Read More . . .

I was doing a search today to find an e-mail address of a former colleague, I came across this draft acquisition mission statement for the Program Executive Office For Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aviation, under the Naval Air Systems Command ...
Read More . . .

Ed Brill's 4-part review of Dan Gillmor's We The Media has received a mention and a link from the author. Not in the We The Media blog, but in Dan's Silicon Valley eJournal...The August/September 2004 Issue of Portals Magazine has an article ...
Read More . . .

being a shill and posting anonymously to a blog or forum to promote a product or service, what do we call being upfront when we post on logs and forums with our return links?...just a thought:-). ...
Read More . . .

Michael Sampson connects the dots in a way that suggests that the anonymous poster was actually Dr. Radicati. Along those lines compare these two quotes: From EWeek, August 5: Radicati said she was surprised by the harshness of the initial ...
Read More . . .

Work on any TV production crew and you will soon find that if there is a woman in the stadium flashing herself, one or more cameramen will find it and that feed will go back to the production truck for a while. As they try to have a sense of humour, ...
Read More . . .

Though Shalt Set An Administration Server for Every Database If you have not set an Administrative server in the access control list (ACL) for each database on your Domino server, things will break. AdminP will not process ACL changes name ...
Read More . . .

No, Moses has not made a recent trip of Mount Sinai to get the latest and greatest commandments as they might apply to the management of IBM Lotus Notes database access control lists (ACLs). But over the past year, I have repeatedly come across ...
Read More . . .

I finally went and did it. I sat for the "IBM Lotus Notes Domino 7 - Implementing and Administering Security" certification exam (190-755) this afternoon. I am pleased to say that I passed this monster and can now add "IBM ...
Read More . . .

If you are a small organization, it is possible that you have not put IT security standards in place. One area where this could happen in Lotus Notes and Domino shops is inconsistency in how your access control lists (ACLS) are set up. One mail file ...
Read More . . .

One of the hallmarks of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino is its robust security model. So colour me totally shocked and surprised today when a security issue hit me in the face and I could not figure out why. As I am working with the Notes 8 Beta client, I ...
Read More . . .

IBM has announced the availability of a brand new Lotus certification. The IBM Certified Advanced Security Professional - Notes and Domino 7 certification breaks ground in a couple of new ways. The first is that it is the first security specific ...
Read More . . .

Yesterday, I posted my rant about Internet-facing applications not locked down properly. But have you also thought about your internal applications? For example, suppose you have a Lotus Notes database populated with human resources information ...
Read More . . .

Have you had your Lotus Notes/Domino Applications audited recently? And did you have it done by an outside entity that understands the Domino security model and the risks associated with poor implementations? This is not a hypothetical question. This ...
Read More . . .

Security Considerations in Notes and Domino 7, a new draft Redbook from IBM is now available for free download from the IBM Redbooks site. Written by former Lotus colleague John Bergland, fellow blogger and collaborator Richard Schwartz, and others, ...
Read More . . .

Eileen Fitzgerald, aka "Mrs. Doyle" (pictured at left with fellow Irishman Paul "Please call me the Peter Pan of Notes" Mooney, has joined the Lotus Blogsphere from Ireland this week with an entry talking about shared mailboxes. ...
Read More . . .

What is the most widely deployed PKI Infrastructure in the world? That would be IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, with an estimated 114 million users worldwide. So says Mary Ellen Zurko of IBM in the newly published Security and Usability: Designing Secure ...
Read More . . .

Over on the LotusUserGroup.org Sys Admin Tips Newsletter, Chris Miller writes about a system administrator who was asked by the IT security team to make the Domino server .ini file read only. In this post, Chris notes that, while a noble security ...
Read More . . .

Bruce Elgort (pictured above, on left, with Robert Scoble of Microsoft, Tom "Duffbert" Duff, and Ed Brill of IBM) has posted a request for suggestions on how to manage the termination of person documents created in the Domino Directory ...
Read More . . .

Imagine a world where everything in information technology is clear, straightforward and easy to manage. Yes, this is a stretch as well know that organized chaos often rules, especially in environments where strong IT governance is in place. In the past, ...
Read More . . .

Today, I had a customer ask me how he could change the display font in the Lotus Notes client for people with vision problems. The key is that they did not want to change their screen resolution. The answer is quite simple and can be found in the help ...
Read More . . .

There is a problem with IBM Lotus Domino Web Access running on Domino 7.0.2 FP2 on Windows 2003. This only impacts organizations running FixPack 2 (FP2), and it has been verified by IBM. They have issued a partial hot fix for one of my customers. As ...
Read More . . .

Yes, I know it is not Thursday, but it is Tuesday. So SNTT as an acronym works here. What I want to do is share information about Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook (DAMO) that came from IBM Support. Why IBM support? Because I just could not find the ...
Read More . . .

Imagine if you will a scenario where most of your users work in the field. Not just a field office, but at work sites. They need to access their Lotus Notes E-Mail via either Dial-Up or through a wireless connection such as Sprint or Verizon. It will ...
Read More . . .

Alan Lepofsky has posted another one of his excellent Notes Tips and Tricks items today, entitled "Quickly Manage Your Incoming Mail". It is quite timely, as an end user recently asked me a question I had not really thought of: why can't you ...
Read More . . .

It is that time of the year again: college basketball season in the United States. For the 3rd consecutive year, I have published the upcoming season's television broadcast schedule of 1, 275 games and growing for men (women to come soon) over on Eye on ...
Read More . . .

For the past couple of years, I have been publishing the television broadcast schedules for college football (not futbol) and basketball on "Eye on Sports Media." This year I was holding off on the college football schedule until Prominic upgraded my server ...
Read More . . .

Provocative headline eh? Well the answer is yes, I did find out that I was part of an Emmy award winning broadcast this past weekend. I don't get a statue, but I can get a plaque and/or certificate. It would be kind of funny to introduce myself as an ...
Read More . . .

It is that time of the year known as March Madness. Once again, I am offering up the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament Television Broadcast Schedule as a IBM Lotus Domino powered database. Once the tournament is over, I can start to look into ...
Read More . . .

A week or so ago, I published the Version 2.0 of my online NCAA Men's College Basketball Television Broadcast Schedule: The first version was published last year and was a hit on the web. Not only were fans coming to the schedule to find out ...
Read More . . .

Frank "The Ayatolla" Chirkinian, the former long time producer of golf coverage for CBS Sports, is the man who invented the scoring we are used to seeing in golf today (-3, +7, etc). However, he did it before computer programming was as ...
Read More . . .

There is a lot of discussion going on in the IT world that IBM will not be porting the ability to use DB2 as a back-end data store on System i machines. There are many reasons why IBM made this decision and hopefully they will be fully discussed ...
Read More . . .

This is posted on Lotus DeveloperWorks, and I choked on my drink when I read it. I cannot believe how restrained Andre Guirard was in his reply: "First time developing such a huge application... I would like to design a form that has around ...
Read More . . .

On a whole, I have loved the new Lotus Notes 8 client since I started using in back in Beta 2. This does not mean there are some things I do not like about it, especially from an application developer or system administration standpoint. While many of ...
Read More . . .

According to E-Week, IBM is going after developer mindshare. IBM is going to launch Jazz.net. According to E-Week. IBM, at this weeks Rational Developer Conference, "will introduce its new collaborative development community known as Jazz. IBM ...
Read More . . .

Over on Nathan Freeman's blog, there is a lively discussion on IBM thinking about changing the design of the view icons in the coming release of IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 (aka Hannover). While this does not happen often, I have to say that I am in ...
Read More . . .

For the life of me, I could not get the nhttp task for Lotus Notes to run locally today and I was getting very frustrated. Then I remembered that I had an install issue with Notes and Skype was running. You see, although it is not documented anywhere ...
Read More . . .

Every once in a while, I will see a posting in the LDD Discussion fora that are obviously tied to a compliance and/or IT Governance need. At the same time, I know there are tools on openNTF, like Julian Robichaux's OpenLog tool which can be so easily ...
Read More . . .

This SnTT is for developers who may often be faced with unintended errors associated with Save Conflict documents in Lotus Notes. This case study is one that burned the business process owner and caused much frustration. How? well read ...
Read More . . .

For many years, I worked in a lab full of literalists. You know, the kind of people who will parse every word in a sentence and take it for its literal meaning. There were times when this would drive me bonkers. As a developer, being a literalist can ...
Read More . . .

I am about to go off on a rant here, so bear with me and read this so you can understand were I am coming from. This is not a message to all Lotus Notes developers, but to those that are sloppy about the architecture, security, and design of their ...
Read More . . .

Matt Holthe of Breaking Par Consulting responded to my frustration posting yesterday, providing an example of how to code a Style Sheet for the Notes Client that will control cellpadding in tables, as well as background colors. I tried it and it works ...
Read More . . .

I had a simple goal this evening. I wanted to try and see how I could use a style sheet resource to make the Notes Client application development part of my life a wee bit easier. I had two goals: set a consistent font for my tables as a default, ...
Read More . . .

Not too long ago, Chris Toohey posted a different approach to creating tabbed tables in the Lotus Notes client called Context-Sensitive Tabbed Navigation in the Lotus Notes Client . I really liked his solution and wanted to use it in one of my own ...
Read More . . .

One of the lower visibility areas in the compliance arena is computer application accessibility, such as with Section 508 in the United States. Quite accidentally, when looking at a unknown (to me) web site called the The Notes & Domino Insider ...
Read More . . .

I was looking into a legacy coding error today for a client and stumbled on an unintentional error that seems to have resulted from unanticipated user behavior. I would have held this for show and tell Thursday, but thought this would make up for last ...
Read More . . .

You are a Lotus Notes developer that has designed what you think is the perfect application that integrates enterprise data with a back-end Oracle database. You have written your LotusScript agents to move data between your Domino interface and Oracle ...
Read More . . .

For this edition of Show and Tell Thursday (SnTT), I am going to reach back deep in my memory, to just this morning. I received a message from a client that a custom search form in one of their applications was throwing a mysterious error that said ...
Read More . . .

So today is the day. The day Rocky Oliver challenged his colleagues to share a coding or application tidbit that may be beneficial to the community. I have previously written about how I used the openNTF Domino Blogsphere and project management ...
Read More . . .

I am beginning to wonder if members the Lotus Notes/Domino community are emerging as evangelizing leaders in the use of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) in the Visual Basic (VB) community. Why do I wonder this? Because in a listing of AJAX ...
Read More . . .

Some of the most horrific user frustrations can be in using on-line help systems based on the non-customized, out of the box Lotus Notes help file template. Page jumps, too many round trips to the server, framesets and more can diminish the user ...
Read More . . .

Yesterday I posted my answer to Andre Guirard's question to me, on Bruce Elgort's blog, about the application development controls that might be impacted by the new in-view editing of design element names. While I hinted at it, I never came out and put ...
Read More . . .

When I am giving presentations on risk and control self-assessments, I often talk about risk arising in the most unexpected places. As Bruce Elgort pointed out the other day on his blog, an intended enhancement IBM made to the Domino Designer 7 ...
Read More . . .

The past two weeks have included some hair-pulling developing a domino web application for a client. The hair-pulling was not the result of coding extensive JavaScript and DHTML. It was poorly defined requirements from the project owner. Let me put ...
Read More . . .

Regular readers of this site may recall that I wrote about the Georgia Department of Education deploying the openNTF Blogshere template to support the Governor's Honors Program (and yes, Julian's face still graces the main page). The program ...
Read More . . .

I promised I would thank everyone involved in getting the missing Sandbox link restored to the IBM/Lotus developerWorks site. So a big thank you goes out to Rocky Oliver, Barbara Mathers, Scott Souder, and last but not least, Craig Lordan of IBM ...
Read More . . .

This post may surprise some people who think I believe Lotus Notes can do no wrong. Well there are sometimes when I just want to slap the people in Westford, who seem to have coded Domino Designer 6.5.4 to do what it thinks is best, not what I want or ...
Read More . . .

While I was at AdvisorLive 2005 a couple weeks ago, I did some demos on how I was starting to use AJAX in my Domino applications. spreading the word that Julian and Sean have inspired (at least in me). I received a nice email today from ...
Read More . . .