Edward Cone

Many people lust after the iPhone, but Jonathan Zittrain sees danger in the device. Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School and co-founder of its Berkman Center for Internet and Society, worries that closed appliances like the iPhone and walled gardens like Facebook will stifle the creativity that has fueled the development of the Internet. […]

It’s likely that your company is not well-prepared for an IT disaster–and doesn’t view IT disasters as business continuity crises. To make matters worse, your CEO and board probably don’t give these issues enough attention. The CIO needs to do something about all of this–and quickly. That’s the outlook from Accenture’s Gil Brodnitz, senior executive […]

After 23 years as a reporter–not to mention 19 years of marriage–I’ve learned to resist the impulse to shout “You’re wrong!” when somebody who’s smarter than I am says something that strikes me as, well, wrong. If I take the time to listen, I’ll usually uncover some meaning that I missed the first time. This […]

Today is yesterday’s tomorrow, and things look simultaneously different from and the same as they did before. So today’s tomorrow will seem both familiar and different. Technology changes faster than people do, and people don’t always change around technology in predictable ways. No, I didn’t inhale the pungent air too deeply at the Arcade Fire […]

Not long ago, we asked in these pages if the micro-blogging service Twitter had become “the next small thing” for businesses. Today’s verdict: not yet. Twitter lets users send very brief messages of no more than 140 characters, which subscribers to a given user’s feed can pick up on computers or mobile devices. It’s an […]

The Web 2.0 era is supposed to be about empowering the user, with the average Jane and Joe free to create and communicate, using simple tools that unlock their creative potential–and perhaps create value for their employer. But Joe Sokohl, director of the User Experience at IT services company Keane, sounds a note of caution […]

Clay Shirky’s new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations (Allen Lane, February 28, 2008), looks at the Internet’s impact on the way people work together. “When we change the way we communicate, we change society,” he writes. Web 2.0 tools have “altered the old limits on the size, sophistication and scope […]

Software integration is a familiar challenge for CIOs, but these days it comes in a new flavor: making your installed systems work with those running somewhere else. As companies begin the long journey toward cloud computing, many will find themselves managing across the firewall, with key applications running both on- and off- site. Douglas Menefee […]

IT professionals are problem-solvers. So, in 2005, when Constellation Energy had challenges reining in the costs of its real estate operations, the top brass at the Baltimore utility and energy company tapped its top IT pro, CIO Beth Perlman, to add to her portfolio the unit charged with managing leases, maintaining facilities and deciding where […]

Mike Gabbei says he’s a tactical CIO, and he’s okay with that. As the CIO at Celadon Group, a $500 million trucking company based in Indianapolis, Gabbei knows his focus on operational efficiency is considered passé at a time when business-tech gurus insist that CIOs need to be more strategic in outlook. “I read the […]

Recent news from Tibet has been unsettling, for those who could see it. Reports of a harsh crackdown on protesters by the Chinese government have been tightly controlled within China itself. This is the kind of situation in which the Internet was supposed to change the balance of power. The expectation was that the free […]