Forrester researcher Frank Gillett yesterday published a forecast that predicts 375 million tablets will sell globally in 2016. That’s nearly double a recent forecast by IDC, which estimated 200 million tablets sold globally that year.

Gillett writes:

“Tablets aren’t the most powerful computing gadgets. But they are the most convenient.

“They’re bigger than the tiny screen of a smartphone, even the big ones sporting nearly 5-inch screens.

“They have longer battery life and always-on capabilities better than any PC — and will continue to be better at that than any ultrathin/book/Air laptop. That makes them very handy for carrying around and using frequently, casually, and intermittently even where there isn’t a flat surface or a chair on which to use a laptop. ”

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Which is why experts on blogging and social networking have long recommended that all organizations have policies on the practice in place.

But according to a survey by the Ponemon Institute, only a little more than30% bother.

The disaster created by this kind of misstep is glaringly apparent in the recent Netflix imbroglio. In case you missed it, the company’s CEO Reed Hastings used his online blog to rescind (at least partially) a corporate decision to split its service in two (which had also been announced in Hastings’ blog).

Customers hated the whole idea. And while the move might have made great business sense (and potential profits) for Netflix, it instead created a public relations disaster that has the company reeling.

Letting anyone – even the CEO – write about your company for public consumption without some guidelines, review processes and professional counsel is hazardous. Communications professionals understand and are trained to deal with the pitfalls and unintended consequences of messaging gone awry.

If your organization doesn’t have blogging and social networking policies in place, now might be the time to start crafting them.

For more on the info and opinion on the Netflix debacle, check out this CFO advice.

The post The high cost of executive blogging appeared first on Finance Tech News.

But that’s the rub. Launching and maintaining a blog isn’t cheap. It also doesn’t have to be terribly expensive.

But there are some principles you’ll need to follow to make sure there’s ROI at the end of the day.

Turning blog visitors into customers is the way it works. Over at Entrepreneur.com, there’s a more detailed tutorial on the way to execute a blog strategy, but the basics are the 10 commandments of business blogging.

They include:

1. Make your blog a part of your main website — The idea here is to make the blog an extension of your site so they exist together.
2. Solve problems — The blog will turn off visitors if it’s a blatant sales pitch. Solve visitors problems, answer their pressing questions, be of service. Sell elsewhere.
3. Keep up a steady presence — This isn’t something where you can set it and forget it. Blogs need to be updated regularly with fresh information and up-to-date issues.
4. Be brief — Avoid the urge to pontificate or drag out your posts. Keep them short, to the point and targeted. Tackle a single issue. Don’t get lost in the weeds. Stay on topic. You can link to other posts or information, but keep your posts concise.
5. Use links — Spread the wealth and share your audience with other sites. The more useful your site, the more visitors you’ll attract.
6. Write great headlines — This  is the window to your blog post. Make sure it’s compelling, inviting and interesting.  Spend time crafting a good one. Use active verbs and hot button words.
7. Use all of your blog post real estate — The areas along  the side and above the post are fertile ground. Find a use for them, ideally a call to action. Get your visitors to interact with your company.
8. Set up subscriptions — Having visitors register for updates or RSS feeds will keep them routinely engaged.
9. Set up social networking links — Make sure your posts can be shared via Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other popular social networking sites. This will ensure you a wider audience among folks who share your visitors’ interests.
10. Integration — Make the blog an integral part of your business. Talk it up. Link to it in emails, newsletters and other marketing communications. Drive traffic in every effort you make.

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Stephen L. Rose, IT community manager for the software giant, writes in his blog:

“On April 8, 2014, security patches and hotfixes for all versions of Windows XP will no longer be available. So bottom line, PCs running Windows XP will be vulnerable to security threats. Furthermore, many third party software providers are not planning to extend support for their applications running on Windows XP, which translates to even more complexity, security risks, and ultimately, added management costs for your IT department if you’re still managing Windows XP environments.”

So there’s more risk, more cost and more work for your IT team if the switch to a newer OS isn’t made.

But there are plenty of risks, costs and work if you do. Chief among them: the capital expense of upgrading users systems so they’ll be able to handle the demands of Windows 7.

The good news: Windows 8 (yes, there’s a Windows 8 already in the pipeline) is supposed to run on machines with the same capacity as those running Win 7.

So you’ve at least got that working for you.

The post Still running XP? The clock’s ticking appeared first on Finance Tech News.

A recent ComputerWorld blog looked at just how casually posters  on the site discuss their work projects. Seems that in their attempts to either attract future employers or employees, many Linkedin users freely talk about activities and initiatives they’re involved in at work

Competitors could be mining these sites or intelligence about what a company is up to or how far along in an initiative they might be.

The blogger who wrote about the trend actually culled some interesting company info by scanning the sites of some tech firm employees.

The age-old admonition that “loose lips sink ship” can easily be applied here. If your firm doesn’t have a detailed social networking policy, it could be easy for employees to inadvertently spill be beans on products, services or customers.

And that’s dangerous for your bottom line.

The post Linkedin leaking sensitive company info? appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Imagine that, if you will.

On his blog, security researcher Roger Thompson tells a truly cautionary tale of a recent trip overseas when his credit card got frozen by his bank for fear the card had been stolen.

Seems the U.S.-based Thompson never let his bank know he’d be in the U.K., so when he tried to check out of a London hotel, his card couldn’t be processed.

Thompson got on the phone with his bank, Wachovia, to verify that he was in fact the card holder.

That’s when things got weird.

The Wachovia security rep starting grilling him about details of his life Thompson never provided them with. Sure, he’d given up his mother’s maiden name to be used as identity verification.

But the security rep on the line starting asking questions about Thompson’s daughter-in-law, things he’d never told them about — her age and such. The security guy also used her maiden name, despite the fact she’d been married to Thompson’s son for nine years.

Ever the security researcher, he began to ponder where they could have gotten this data. His conclusion: The only place it existed online was Facebook, where his daughter-in-law was his “friend.”

In a follow up to his original post, Thompson wonders exactly what was pondered here at FinanceTechNews recently: If everybody’s using Facebook for free, but there are scores of pricey developers writing applications for the site, then how exactly are they getting paid?

The commodity Facebook has to sell is information. Who could blame them if they put a price tag on it?

All those “apps” on Facebook that ask to use your information must be doing something with it. Are the creators of those farms or gardens or quizzes really all that interested in your fertilizer preference or who’d play you in a biopic?

The post Are banks harvesting info from Facebook? appeared first on Finance Tech News.

It took only seconds after President Obama took the oath of office for techies to take down the old site and put up the new, interactive site Obama’s team will use to stay connected to fans and foes alike.

The site’s got a blog, policy statements, pictures, video, lists of appointments, proclamations, exec orders and the like.  It’s as easy to navigate and user-friendly as Candidate Obama’s site was during the campaign.

The site should be useful in coming months to keep track of the progress — or lack of progress — the new administration’s making. Companies would do well to study the Obama communications strategy that’s served the new president so well. Visit the site here.

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Do users in your organization care if their boss sees what’s on their computer screens right now? We’re not talking about that work-related spreadsheet. We’re talking about the baseball blog or the shoe store site hidden behind it.

If they’re at work and the answer’s yes, they’re probably cyberslacking — or, surfing the net for pleasure or personal reasons.

They have lots of company. Recent surveys found that employees spend nearly a fifth of their workday on personal Web activities.

You can hardly blame them.

Companies have supplied workers with a machine that’s a virtual gateway to the entire world.

Over 60% of workers say they fritter away time on the Web. About 34% of workers say personal Internet use is their top time-wasting activity.

Research shows that nearly one-third of e-mail messages workers send aren’t work-related.

And now, there are even Web sites that cater to cyberslackers:

• overheardintheoffice.com lets workers post and rate funny quotes overheard at work, and
• annoyingcoworker.com is a place where workers can rant about their fellow workers and bosses –- and even e-mail them anonymously.

But before your company imposes strict restrictions on personal Web time, remember that workers are often spending minutes doing chores that would take them hours out of the office.

And the break from work duties can also relieve stress and improve concentration in many employees.
But if you need to curtail cyberslacking, there’s software that will block overused sites, and monitoring software to keep track of extraordinary slackers.

The post Cyberslacking: The new national pastime appeared first on Finance Tech News.

Richard Frenkel, an employee at Cisco, writes an anonymous personal blog in which he mostly makes fun of patent lawyers. Apparently, he may have stepped over the line and written some defamatory comments about two lawyers in particular.

So they found out who wrote the blog and now they’re suing Frenkel – and his employer. Cisco’s saying that the blog was personal and had no affiliation with the company. But the company’s being included in the suit because Frenkel’s boss allegedly knew about the blog and the content he was posting.

In response, Cisco updated its blogging policy, now requiring employees who write blogs to identify themselves as Cisco employees when their content is related to the company’s business. And they must include a disclaimer differentiating between their views and the views of the company.

As this suit shows, a blogging policy is a good idea if that’s an activity your employees engage in. Besides defamation, other common issues to address in the policy are harassment of co-workers and the leaking of the confidential information.

Obviously, you can’t keep track of everything employees do in their spare time, but the boss in the Cisco case might have been better off saying something to the employee, if he really did know what was going on. Also, a good policy will remind employees that what they say online is public and never really anonymous.

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