Archive for January, 2012

Five Things I Didn’t Learn at University

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

As a computer-scientist-gone-business-consultant I have had many opportunities to witness how IT is used in the enterprise context. Time and time again, I have found it baffling how the way that IT is really used in companies differs from what I have learnt at the three German universities I have attended over the course of my studies, or – even more important – what I did not learn at university. Here are five notable examples that I will elaborate on in this article:

  1. The relevance of enterprise architecture
  2. The legacy of enterprise IT landscapes
  3. The importance of data quality
  4. The challenge of defining and aligning on the right requirements
  5. The Embedding of IT in the enterprise and IT Strategy (more…)

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Top Privacy Plugins for Mozilla Firefox

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

As a privacy concious user (maybe a bit paranoid at times… but then again, I am a German, so that comes naturally), I have been thinking a lot lately about how to maintain control about which web company gets which information about me. After all, through the proliferation of facebook’s like-button an its relatives (Google+, Twitter et al.) and the advent of behavioral advertising, companies have the means to create browsing profiles and, in the case of those companies that offer social networks and advertising services, even tie it to my person and use it to serve advertisements to me even in totally different contexts.  This is even more relevant since that tracking can even occur when I am not logged in to the social network in question, since e.g. facebook uses identifying cookies even in that case (see heise for more information, albeit in German).

In this article, I am going to evaluate a few add-ons for Mozilla Firefox that help maintain control over the data that is being shared, and discuss some of their pros and cons. Similar or the same add-ons might exist for Google Chrome or other browsers as well. The plugins I am going to discuss are the following:

  1. Ghostery
  2. BetterPrivacy
  3. NoScript
  4. Beef Taco
  5. AdBlock Plus (more…)

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“Always online” is not reality for groupware yet

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

When looking for alternatives to the dominating groupware suites Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, one comes across multiple Web-based groupware solutions such as Zimbra. Since groupware is first and foremost about group collaboration—including messaging, calendar sharing and appointment scheduling, and managing of contact information—it seems like a good idea to implement it as a Web application, removing some of the hassles and inefficiencies of conventional client/server applications and allowing access to the software from a broad range of devices, including mobile phones or tablets.

There is, however, one significant drawback to Web-based groupware: It requires the user to have Web access in order to use the software. While offices in most parts of the world today have fast Internet connectivity, there are—even without thinking of less developed parts of the world—situations in which online connectivity is not given. A few examples follow. (more…)

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