According to a new article on the BBC News site some research has been done looking at the use of Facebook within the work environment. The research suggests that a blanket ban on the use of social networking sites such as Facebook can be counter productive. although this on the surface may be counter intuitive, the arguement is that social networking sitesfacilitate alternative communication channels that may facilitate the execution of work, such as reaching out to a wider audience for help with a problem.  This is far from a new concept, as such informal channels of communication to obtain help/communicate informally was identified as important in Frederick Brooks’ Mythical Man Month, and how such channels are important, this is sometimes referred to as a water cooler effect.

The research acknowledges that the situation can be abused, but if managed can be of benefit to an organisation. In addition to this the are also the tensions that may occur as younger staff are more likely to feel more at ease using such technologies resulting in a divide within an organisation. The crucial element that the news article fails to recognise is the possibility of sensitive information slipping into public domain (either deliberately or accidentally) when public sites such as Facebook are used. Such leakages could be detrimental to the organisation.

It is in these situations where services such as Ning and Huddle or for larger organisations private social network sites could come into their own. Although separation of the sites may create a barrier for adoption, when you can use a common site for both work and personal activities its adoption is going to be easier than where there multiple different sites for different activities. Although with the Open Social efforts driven by the likes of Google may reduce this problem.

In this day and age, email addresses are like bank accounts – we’ve got more than one, and we need to keep an eye on them with varying degrees of regularity.  As a sideline of webmaster and Hotmail (Live mail) email client getting heavier on resource needs all the time. Having a small tool to monitor my many email addresses without resorting to using my work Outlook being muddied by non work stuff and visa versa for my home mail client.

To help with this I’ve started using a brilliant little application called POP Peeper, it can watch webmail like Hotmail, GMail account as well as good old fashioned POP3, SMTP etc.  Its easy to setup and then let it sit out of the way on the toolbar and flag up when something arrives in the mail box.  You can then look at the email in this little lightweight tool.

As someone who is known amongst friends to work in the computer industry I often get asked to help sort out people’s problems.  Talking someone over the phone to deal with problems can be difficult, and often it is easier to understand and solve a problem if you can see the machine which brings with it a host of practicality issues.  Remote management tools aren’t a new thing, but having one that doesn’t cost you anything to help friends and family with and works over HTTP/HTTPS without needing to know the IPs involved is important an relatively new.

MasterNewMedia.org has a nice little article with plenty of links to tools and services in this area with a review of what they offer which can be found at Remote PC Support Tools: A Mini-Guide, worth checking out. I’ll be trying out TeamViewer which is free for personal use doesn’t require client installation and a small app at my end to sort things out. Good security – the client has to send you details independently of the tool for connecting to them (they suggest the phone). The client tool doesn’t need to be installed – just launched via the website.

  This article (Computer games industry threat to downloaders: ‘pay up or we’ll sue’) makes up the front page of the The Times today along with a photo of Christine Ohuruogu the Team GB athlete.  It is surprising such an announcement made the front pages of the paper, but also the fact that compared to the downloading of movies and music the games industry has been relatively quiet about the illegitimate downloading activity.   It is interesting to observe that the print edition of the article acknowledges that often people will download games and never play them, begging the question as to what proportion of the downloads do actually represent lost revenue?

I hope that the games industry don’t make the mistakes that the music industry (particularly  the RIAA) have fallen into which has done the industry no favours at all.