At last, what all stressed out IT managers have been waiting for; yet another way for their staff to fart about at work, lower productivity and eat up bandwidth. Yes, Google has launched a new add-on to its highly useful Google Earth offering – a flight simulator. OK, Sneak understands that the dot com giant needs to grow and is looking for new ways to expand its business, but virtual flying?

After the controversy surrounding its limp acquiescence to anti-democratic Chinese wishes, it’s nice to see Google is being its usual sensitive self. The idea that anyone could potentially download the software, log-on and practice flying aircraft into tall, well-known buildings, apparently doesn’t bother it at all. Although, having tried to master the controls on this sim, Sneak reckons Google may have a point – it’s probably easier to fly a plane than successfully operate the controls on this game.

September 26, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It seems the best form of attack is defence, for computing giant Dell at least. Having commoditised the laptop market and made enough money to keep him in teeth whitener for decades, Mr D has been on the back foot more recently, defending his firm’s dubious customer service record, even more dubious laptop batteries, and most recently that broadsheet favourite – an accounting scandal.

But Dell has come out all guns blazing – you know, a bit like that bit at the end of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but without the Bolivian army – and signed a new deal with University College London that will see its Legion supercomputer used by the university’s researchers. Sneak hears that Dell’s ubercomputer, which could reach performance levels of up to 43 teraflops, will be set to work on such big issues as discovering the origin of galaxies, and helping stroke victims. Maybe it could also work out one of mankind's most vexing questions; Jar Jar Binks - what was Lucas thinking of??

September 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak remembers a bygone age, not too long ago, when men were men and women were women and we all went about our daily business in a fairly well-grounded kinda way. Then came Second Life. Where men are avatars and, um, so are women. Aside from being the natural home of the self-loathing geeks that Sneak used to bully at school, it's now being used by staff at IBM.

Yes, the disgruntled staff at the Italian outpost of Big Blue have decided to organise a protest against their paltry wages, and want the avatars of their global colleagues to join in. A virtual strike? Sneak wonders what they hope to achieve from this – a virtual settlement from their employer of thousands of virtual pounds perhaps?

September 20, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak used to be a hippie you know? But the whole living for world peace and lack of personal hygiene thing just became a drag, man. That said though, even though his kids now go to private schools, and he's more likely to give people the Vs than the peace sign, sometimes, in the middle of the night, Sneak feels the siren call of Haight-Ashbury in his ears.

But let Sneak warn all of you children of the 60s; if you go down to sunny San Fran this month you're in for a big surprise. Yes, tens of thousands of uber-geeks have descended on the city to talk chips, CRM, virtualisation and much, much more. Following VMWorld and BEAWorld last week, it's the turn of Salesforce.com and Intel this. Now Sneak has been stuck on a SF streetcar with 50 Java developers before and it ain't pretty. So be warned y'all. Peace.

September 19, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Your friendly neighbourhood Sneak is a fairly magnanimous chap all told. Willing to give most people the benefit of the doubt, he is. That Shipman fella did some sterling work for the community after all before he, er, decided to murder hundreds of innocent patients. Hussain? How could a man with a moustache that bushy have been all bad?

But when it comes to Google’s latest campaign, Sneak gets ever so slightly hot under his well-starched collar. In a speech to the United Nations, the web behemoth’s privacy chief has urged the world’s governments to agree on some international privacy standards, in order to maintain consumer confidence in the internet. Well, let’s just do a bit of IT revision here. Google; isn’t that the firm which probably stores more personal information on its customers than any other web company? Or is Sneak confusing it with some other dotcom giant? Don’t be evil? No, don’t take the pi**.

September 15, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak is all for good ideas surrounding the issue of working from home. But how about an invitation to go home, not bother doing any work, and just 'enjoy' yourself?
Well, in that case Sneak would be like the proverbial rat up a drain pipe.

So, Sneak is saddened that he does not live in Ulyanovsk, a central Russian province. It is here that the local governor has urged workers to slack off wok for the day, go home and make love in an attempt to boost Russia's low birth-rate. Any parents that have a baby nine months to the day later will win some sort of prize – and that would be something more glamorous than nappies.

You say what now? Where is Sneak's passport?

Ah well, it's probably too late for Sneak anyway, since judging by the photo attached to the Reuters report that told him all about this, all the 'best looking' girls are already accounted for.

Still, there is always next year.

September 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak likes to think of himself as a bit of an octopus. Well, not a bit of an octopus – like some flopping half-arm, as that would be quite disturbing. So let's start that again.

Sneak likes to associate himself with octopi, because both have many long reaching arms – in Sneak's case colleagues.

There used to be more similarities – mostly associated with the spraying of ink, but since Sneak stopped using a typewriter this has become much less of a part of his daily work routine. Which is a shame.

Anyway, one of Sneak's tentacles just got back from a trip with Infor, the enterprise software vendor. Infor likes to explain its approach to creating systems, specifically a service orientated architecture, by comparing it to the Boeing 747, a plane with a 39 year old design that is still flying, economically today.

The secret of the 747's success is, apparently, the fact that it is built – and enhanced – on a component basis. Something is old and rubbish? Snap it out and stick in a new one. Want a new engine? Yeah, well shove this one under the bonnet? It is this, Infor suggests, that make it so much like its own platforms. Want an update? Then just shove it in. Things will work fine afterwards and everyone will be happy

According to Sneak's tentacle – yeah, tentacle, this is a bad example to use when you are hours away from depositing a journalist on a 747 airplane. And even more so when you are dumping them in economy for a ten hour flight.

Such a passenger will soon lose all sympathy for the plane and how it is made once they are folded cricket-like into a space that must have been greenlit by the world's shortest man. He Pingping, who only reaches 73 centimeters (2.4 feet) in height, would probably have enjoyed the journey in seats that have been so componentized that they have started breeding. Sneak's colleague did not.

Hopefully Infor's solutions can scale up in a bit more of a comfortable way. Otherwise Sneak feels very sorry for its users.

September 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Question. What's the quickest and easiest way of taking out a Challenger 2 advanced main battle tank? A shoulder barge? Not a chance. A shoulder mounted rocket-propelled missile? Perhaps. A weenie bit of malware? Definitely.

Yes, cyberwarfare is the new, erm, black, according to Secure Computing. The IT security firm has just launched a new firewall for battlefield vehicles – MESHnet – which has been fully ruggedised to military standards to mitigate the risk of hacking attacks from the enemy, Sneak understands. Apparently the interception of communications between battlefield vehicles is a major risk for our brave boys nowadays – well, that and getting shot at by the Yanks. Sneak predicts that battlefield security could be a massive growth area for the likes of Symantec, McAfee et al. Rumours are that Trend Micro is fitting AV into soldiers helmets as we speak …

September 13, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has never been a particularly brave or adventurous soul. The most death-defying stunt he ever pulled was walking through Elephant & Castle in the early hours of Sunday morning. Oh, and there was that time he dared to nod off during a Steve Ballmer keynote – that required several stitches and a proctologist to, um, rectify.

So it was with a certain sense of smug self-satisfaction that Sneak heard that intrepid adventurer Steve Fossett is still missing in action. The man has been trying to kill himself in various extravagant ways now for over a decade – whatever did Branson do to him in that balloon? – and now he's somewhere in the Nevada dessert after his balsa wood plane went down.

Well, fear not, for now they've called in the IT big guns – Google and Amazon. Good thinking chaps; if you want to do a quick, efficient search over an area, Google's probably your best bet. I mean, he might be on the 356th page, but he'll be there somewhere. No, joking aside, it's Google Earth that is being used … and as for Amazon's involvement; um, when they find him he might want to catch up on some light reading, perhaps?

September 11, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sneak reads that so-called “patriotic hackers” are attacking the computer networks of Whitehall with the collusion of the Chinese government. Quite what secrets of central government the People’s Liberation Army is hoping to elicit is a matter for debate. Maybe they’re looking for tips on how to govern a nation … very badly indeed.

Or could it be that some senior Communisty party member with a crush on Gordon is doing some cyber-stalking? (Sneak knows GB only has a limited profile on Facebook, which must be frustrating for all those freaks, middle-aged women and homosexual men that apparently fancy him). Incidentally, Sneak was always a Maggie fan - Simpson not Thatcher.

September 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's tough sometimes being at the helm of a multi-billion dollar computing giant, Sneak reckons. It was all going so well for Michael Dell until recently, when certain, erm, technical issues with batteries, and the small matter of a massive accounting scandal, spoiled the party.

Well, at a recent technology conference in New Yoik Dell is reported as reassuring investors by saying he had "undertaken a set of extraordinary processes" to root out the wrongdoers. Wow, "extraordinary" and "processes" – not two words Sneak is used to seeing together. All the processes known to man are surely distinctly average? Although Sneak did have some particularly extraordinary processed cheese the other day. OK, moving on, Dell also said with all the innocence of a dog sitting next to a rather large turd, that he was "not involved in or aware of any of the accounting irregularities". And for the record, MD was not on the grassy knoll on 22 November 1963 either.

September 6, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was no surprise to discover recently that everybody’s favourite web behemoth Google, now has its eyes firmly set on m-commerce. After all, it’s running out of sectors to dominate. The firm recently applied for a patent to cover technology that, um, well, Sneak thinks it’s something to do with SMS texts and billing.

The patent application describes a system which includes “receiving at a computer server system a text message from a payor containing a payment request representing a payment amount sent by a payor device operating independently of the computer server system, determining a payment amount associated with the text message and debiting a payor account for an amount corresponding to the amount of the payment request, and crediting an account of a payee that is independent of the computer server system”.

Apart from being the longest sentence Sneak has ever read – and he’s met some cunning linguists in his time – this could be bad news for any minnows in the mobile payments space. Now, if you’ll excuse Sneak, there are some shares I need to buy…

September 4, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Great news for visitors to McDonalds.. Nope. The menu has not been totally overhauled and replaced with items that do not make you feel a) a little bit disgusted with yourself, or b) grossly overfed.

Nah, the restaurant favoured by parents with weekend access is offering free wi-fi hot spots with your 'shake, thanks to a deal with free-hotspot.com.

This means that you can take your kids and your work with you every time you fancy a Big Mac.

Just remember not to work too hard, as that is more than likely to be what got you into this situation in the first place.

September 3, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (0)