IT workers are a notoriously technical bunch.  Along with that technical expertise comes a certain "lore" about the personality of a typical technical guru who thrives in the cubicle canyons of an IT department.  If you are an IT professional, you know that many of those stereotypes are just that, images that the media likes to assign to a group of people.  But one image worth taking head on is the idea that IT people are notoriously unhappy.

IT people are problem solvers.  And many technical problems that are resolved by the "gurus" in your department are tremendously complicated and difficult.  So the focus and concentration that you have to put in to find good solutions to technical problems may be part of why IT people are considered to be unhappy people.  But IT people are also some of the most motivated workers who enjoy unique technical talents that give them an enviable job security and career path that many would kill for.  Who could not be happy about that?

If you make your career in a large organizational setting, there will be good times and bad times.  Projects encounter problems and sometimes go wrong and it is your job as an IT professional to try to guide them to success.  During those times when conflicts occur or the organization is going through hard times, it is possible for IT workers to become quite dissatisfied just as it is for anyone in any department to feel nervous about their working environment. 

So we need some tools to get through those times.  To have a long term career that allows you to climb up the latter toward management, coping with the hard times is a must.  Much of that coping includes learning to overcome your own feelings of dissatisfaction and disillusionment so you can maintain your focus on the prize of long term success and growth to your career.  But how do you do that?   Here are a few tips.

It Won't Last Forever

One way to overcome that sense of despair when it seems that your working world is a mess is to step back and get a wider view.  If you have been working in your organization for a number of years, you probably have seen a few economic slumps come and go. You have survived some lay offs and you have even endured some run away projects that were a disaster. 

None of these big problems that would like to convince you that your career in IT is about to come to an end will last forever.  Problems have a shelf life and it is amazing how often they disappear almost as fast as they came along.  Sometimes a hard time in your department just has to be endured.  Picture yourself as a turtle that knows how to pull your head neck and arms in when trouble comes and that knows how to hunker down and survive a storm. 

If you have done a good job at making your job essential to the organization and if the organization is fundamentally sound, it will come through the current storm. Even if your department is being reorganized, that too is something you can endure.  Use your history in IT and your ability to ride out trouble to not allow a short term season of trouble to end your long term brilliant career.

Misery Loves Company

One thing you can take comfort in is the friendships you have built in your own department.  Other IT workers are your allies in surviving difficult times.  If you have a good manager who has guided his or her team through a lot of bad times, trust in that management skill.  He or she got you through these little messes before and he or she will do it again.

Humor is a great resource in times of trouble.  Allow some good natured joking to help you keep your head up and your emotional balance working.  Lean on older workers who know well the lay of the land in good times and bad.  Don’t try to go it alone when despair tries to force you to make a rash decision during a bad time.  Use the friends, mentors and wise old owls of the department and get their help in making wise choices of how to turn a really bad situation into a really good long term career situation for you and for them as well.

Take a Little Joy in Your Work

There is a wonderful quote from the movie Men in Black that applies to trying to get through tough times at work in an IT department. The Men in Black were about to take on an impossible challenge from aliens because that is the theme of the movie. At one point as the young recruit, Will Smith begins to become unnerved, the old wise Man in Black played by Tommy Lee Jones says, "You’re a young man.  Try to take a little joy in your work."

Your work is why you get up and go to the office every day.  The one thing that IT professionals love it is performing their technical wizardry using their technical tools and toys.  So turn to the work you love to do.  Throw yourself into a project and disappear into the complexities of the challenge right in front of you.  Not only will that help you get through days were trouble is brewing, it will help you accomplish your work goals which is very good for your career.

Keep a Cool Head

It is amazing how just refusing to panic can often be enough to propel you through a crisis into a new day where the storm clouds have passed.  When it seems that the world is coming to an end, keep in mind that it probably isn't.  There will be people around you who will be losing their cool heads and speculating all types of wild ideas that project doom and gloom for everyone.  Don’t listen to those people.

This doesn’t mean you have to be a cheerful bird when everyone else is upset. Simply make a choice not to jump to conclusions.  If disaster is going to come, make it come all the way to the door.  Too often it will get as far as the street corner and turns away.

If you keep a cool head, you can be the one who survives the hard times and is there to pick up the pieces and the rewards when good times return to your organization and to the IT department that pays your rent.  And you will have survived another storm not only because you are a valuable employee but because you navigated the storm and your own emotions at the same time so you came out of the difficulty a winner.

For some reason, the vision of a future where we can control all of our machines with vocal commands continues to be a strong.  The ability to simply speak to a machine and have it respond flawlessly has been the stuff of science fiction for a long time.  Just consider the wonderful relationship between HAL and the human astronauts in the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey.  When you consider how well having a smart computer that could talk to you turned out for those astronauts when HAL lost its mind, that utopian world of speech recognition may not be so attractive.

Of course, that is not to say HAL would happen when we can simply tell our furnace to come on or say "lights" and the lights respond or we can talk to our computer rather than use that old fashioned keyboard.  In a world where you can simply command your toaster to do its stuff doesn’t mean that toaster will turn on your with murderous revenge.  2001 A Space Odyssey was a science fiction movie after all.  It was not a documentary.

A Long Strange Trip it has Been

The attempt to bring about the utopian world of speech recognition has been going on for a long time.  When the idea of a computer recognizing a human voice came out, it seemed like a pipe dream. And the actual first applications that tried to make this kind of application a reality were pretty laughable.  Then about ten years ago, a major breakthrough occurred at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley.  The breakthrough was called Rasta and among other things, it opened up the potential of different kinds of hardware to take advantage of the same software that does speech recognition. 

Rasta made it possible to enable devices that were not supercomputers to use the massive databases and software genius it takes to simply have a conversation with a human being. In last ten or so years, we all have gotten used to a certain amount of interaction with speech recognition software.  Probably the one you and I are most familiar with are automated phone answering systems that have you "key in or say" your account number and use your voice to confirm other information before you can do business with the agency you called on the phone.

But even with that breakthrough and even though that speech recognition is pretty good, that doesn’t make it any more attractive to have that conversation. For one thing, a chat with a computer on the phone has to go along a very strict script and there is no saying, "wait a minute, I have to chase my dog". 

You can bet if you said that to an automated speech recognition software system on the phone, it would have no clue on how to handle that situation.  Speech recognition software has not gotten to the point that it can handle the infinite verity of things that can come up during a conversation with a human being.  Until it does, even if the computer can recognize every syllable you say, it will still be irritating to be "handled" by an automated personality, even if the voice on the other end sounds like a pretty girl.

Accents and Other Speech Recognition Hurdles

When you are having that phone conversation with voice recognition software, it is quite irritating each time it asks you to repeat what you said.  While the ability of computers to recognize the human voice is better than it was, it is still not very good.  To be fair, the ability to sort out inflections, accents and the huge variety of the way people talk even just in this country is phenomenal.  You can talk to someone from New Jersey, someone from Tennessee and someone from south Louisiana and for all intents and purposes, they might be speaking a completely different language.  Even in New England, some natives there have trouble understanding the differences between how people talk in the Bronx compared to Boston compared to Rhode Island.

When you put speech recognition in the context of human communications, even humans have trouble with it sometimes. You might try to count how many times in a given day you ask someone to repeat themselves because you did not understand what they said.  So add in to the problem of accents the additional issue of people that stutter or mumble or if you are talking to someone with a stuffed up nose and you can see how impossible the task is to teach a computer to figure that all out.

Stubborn Gurus

The gurus in the computer programming world are absolutely determined to get this right.  Now there are projects going on to try to teach computers to use context to figure out what someone has said.  Of course, this is another attempt to teach a computer to do what a 10 year old kid can do. It is a tough logic to teach because context is a phenomenally diverse undertaking. But the amount of powerful intellect that has been put to the task is impressive and we can expect some more breakthroughs in the field of speech recognition in the future.

Between now and then, most of us will probably not give up our keyboards in hopes we can speak to the computer and see it get what we said right.  It really is amazing that the scientific world is so stubborn about enabling computers to pull off this parlor trick. Even if computers could recognize every word you said and then they executed the next huge leap in programming to teach computers to be able to hold up their end of a conversation, the question would come up, "Who would want to talk to a computer anyway?"

That is a big question.  There are some great applications for speech recognition such as in helping the disabled and in education.  For those reasons, we applaud what the computer gurus are trying to make happen.  But their vision of a world where every device we own is run by voice recognition is probably a pipe dream.  After all, the last thing I want to do is to go to bed and say to my computer enabled house, "Turn out the lights" and for it to answer, "I don't think that’s a good idea…. Dave."

If you have enjoyed the hit comedy series, "The Big Bang Theory", you probably could relate to how strange very brilliant technical people can be. If you are a CEO or in a position of authority in a business, trying to manage the "geeks" in the IT department can be frustrating at best.  Of course, the first thing that should be recognized since we used the term in the title of this piece is that the word "geek" is not derogatory to computer experts.  It is a designation they wear with pride.

There is no getting around it that if you are going to run a successful business, you must be able to tap the power of modern technology. And to take full advantage of that power, you need an IT department full of computer savvy subject matter experts who can make technical magic happen. The problem the IT personality is notoriously hard to manage.  It isn't that they are a rebellious lot or that they are not loyal to the company and grateful for their jobs.  The problem is that it seems that IT people are another breed of human being entirely.  They think differently than how you think and they speak a language that could only be more alien to you if it was Mandarin Chinese.

Should You Just Ignore Them?

Whether you are the president of the company or a department head, the need to find a way to communicate with the computer gurus in your company is essential to the long term growth and stability of the company.  For one thing, it is a morale issue.  Good employees are hard to find and those with specialized computer skills are worth working hard to retain. As much as computer experts put on an illusion of being separate and better than everybody else, they really do want to feel that they are an important part of the business.  Just getting an acknowledgement that upper management knows they exist can be a huge morale boost to workers who often stay on the job well into the night and weekends to make things work right. 

A second but just as important reason to learn to communicate with your IT team lies in how much it will help your business be successful. If you can help your IT team grasp the business priorities of the tasks they take on, they will be more capable of tuning the requirements of their technical challenges to what you are trying to achieve in the business.  They will keep their eyes on the business objectives as well as the technical objectives of each project. 

That will lead to more successful projects which makes the business more successful as well as benefiting their careers.  Everybody wins when the IT people become part of the business rather than an isolated camp of misunderstood "geeks".  So let's review some options to open up the communications between you and those strange but brilliant people in the IT department.

Option One - Make Them Learn Your Language

One option to build that line of communication is to simply invoke your executive privilege and require your employees to speak in language you understand when in your presence.  After all, you are the boss so why should you bend over backward to learn how to talk "geek talk" to communicate with the IT team?  In one way, helping the IT experts learn to speak in business terms will help them long term.

But that plan could be a dangerous approach simply because of the peculiar nature of IT experts.  Technical employees are a fiercely independent lot and you get a lot more out of them with cooperation and partnerships than through intimidation and pressure.  And considering that the technical gurus probably have their fingers on the computers that are the life pulse of the business, it pays to find ways to communicate with them in ways that do not antagonize this population of your business community.

Option Two - Learn Their Lingo

As with option one, there is a good side and a bad side to trying to learn "geek talk".  It is always a good idea to become more savvy of the technical concepts that drive your business. If you understand at a conceptual level the types of resources your technical people are capable of delivering, you can be a better manager and capitalize on those resources more efficiently.

But it will not work to just learn some buzzwords that you overhear your IT people using and throw them around to appear to speak their language.  This is as much a mistake as trying to appear "cool" to your teenagers.  IT geeks can quickly figure out that you are just using those terms to get on the inside track with them and they will see that tactic as foolish and awkward.  Better to keep your dignity and take full advantage of option three which is…

Option Three - Get a Translator

There are individuals in your business who may already be equipped to serve as a translator between you and the computer experts in the IT department.  The best translators are supervisors or project leaders in your IT department.  They may have grown up out of the IT world so they know the lay of the land and the lingo of their peers because they are native speakers.  As IT geeks themselves, they stay up on the latest developments and the technical implications of new technologies.

By having that level of comfort of a person who understands the business language that you speak but also speaks fluent "geek" language, that is a crucial skill set to use to launch and manage projects.  You can spend time with those translators to learn the lingo and what your computer gurus can do for you.  Then when you do meet with the programmers and systems engineers, they understand your requirements because they were translated by those skilled managers.  And you understand the technical terminology and ideas because someone who knows how you think explained it to you in your terms.

It is always smart to keep that line of communication open to all employees including your IT experts.  Don’t be intimidated by them.  They understand that you are not one of them and they want you to be one of them.  They want you to keep the business moving toward more and more success so they can enjoy prosperity too. Leave it to the managers you keep on the payroll to do the heavy duty translation when it comes to technical ideas.  In that way, everybody has a role to play and when each performs their role well, everybody wins.

The justification and pay offs for business and for employees for promoting more telecommuting are well known.  That is why it is so surprising that employers seem to be dragging their feet on offering work at home programs for their employees so that they can sponsor a strong telecommuting program for their staff.  But a recent study that was sponsored by Microsoft using an online survey reflects that the percentage of companies offering this option is far below the level of interest in employees to participate in such a program.

The Microsoft survey which is available online here reveals some numbers that are not that surprising such as…

• 60% of the people surveyed had the opinion that telecommuting was more productive, not less.
• 46% of employees had an opinion that their employer might be open to offering telecommuting. That is not a positive statement that such a program is in place.  It is just an impression that employees have of their current employers.
• An astounding 37% of employees were open to a pay cut if allowed to work at home.  That alone should be an attractive idea for employers because they could save money on office costs and on salary.
• 72% of employees surveyed were quite interested in working at home.  That is a surprisingly high number of office workers who feel it would be a change for the better.
• The reasons that employees responded to that they felt were positives about telecommuting were split three ways. 55% felt saving gas was a value of the program.  47% liked the idea of skipping that commute and 60% preferred the idea of telecommuting because it would help them balance their work and private lives more effectively.

With that much employee interest, it is hard to fathom that employers would not move forward with offering work at home programs for their employees.  Now, obviously not every job is a good fit for work at home employees.  Hands on jobs such as manufacturing or construction are not a good fit.  But for companies that sustain a large office staff where they fill office buildings with cubicle farms full of employees, many of those jobs could be moved to a home based system rather easily.

There are numerous financial incentives for businesses to offer telecommuting to employees.  If an employer were able to export 25% of their jobs to home based employment, that would represent a quarter less floor space they would have to rent in their office park.   Office space is expensive so that is a significant savings. 

Also, the use of office supplies including everything from pens to toilet paper to employer supplied coffee would drop off dramatically as well.  A work at home employee pays for his own coffee.  That is a small cost but it adds up  The cost of providing an employee with a computer, a desk and office supplies could also all go down somewhat.  While some employers may continue to supply some of those needs to home employees, some savings are still available to employers.

The statistics that the Microsoft survey reported are telling because they represent how much employees dislike the commute and their desire to cut down on their gasoline usage by working at home.  Part of this priority may be due to the price of gas, which makes the cost of holding a job much higher.  If workers have to pay for parking to work in an office, that is another expense that workers resent.  While public transportation is an option for some workers, it is a nuisance and a time investment.  All of this can be compared to the ease of getting to work for a telecommuter who can walk to his or her work station in a matter of seconds and get to work.

It could be that the cost savings of not having to commute to work are so significant that those who responded to the survey answered that they would even take a pay cut to work at home.  In addition to the gas savings, wear and tear on the vehicle is a consideration. Commuting can also be emotionally draining in that heavy traffic takes its toll on a driver.  With the increase of awareness of our need to find ways to live green and not increase carbon emissions, cutting down on the use of gasoline just makes sense.  Workers see these telecommuting as a way to achieve all of these objectives with a change to working at home rather than driving to an office to sit in a cubicle all day long.

There may be some hard to change opinions that employers hold that may be holding back the telecommuting movement.  Many employers insist on being able to monitor employees so assure they are getting 8 hours of work for the 8 hours of pay they shell out.  They believe that an employee who is working at home would goof off and not get as much work done as an office worker. 

Anyone who works in an office setting knows well that few workers actually deliver 8 full hours of work.   There are ample opportunities to goof off at work right under the nose of the employer.  Office socializing, trips to the break room or the rest room and playing on the computer are common ways that office workers pad their time while at the office.  The only true way to measure the success of an employee whether he or she is working at home or at work is by productivity measurements, not by doing time in a cubicle like it was a prison sentence.

Another misconception is that office communications with staff would suffer with employees separated by distance.  In this day and age of digital communications, there is no reason to hold on to that old belief system.  Staff meetings can be conducted by teleconferencing either by phone or even using webcams so everybody can see everybody else.  Email, instant messaging and other digital methods for communications means that a employer can stay as much in touch with employees who are working at home as he would with employees in the office.

The biggest cultural shift in managing a distributed team of employees is learning to measure their effectiveness by actual product or results instead of by time served.  But employees often blossom under that kind of measurement system.  If an employee has "X" amount of work to produce in a given day, the employee can arrange that work to suit their own schedule.  If the employee needs to take a child to the dentist, he or she can work other hours to keep up those work responsibilities.

Telecommuting also enables employers to tap a wider work force.  By employing people who cannot work in an office, employers can keep older workers on staff or make it possible for ladies on maternity leave or disabled workers to make a contribution to the workforce.  Employers can even broaden their pool of potential employees by offering telecommuting jobs that could be done from anywhere in the world as long as the employee has the skills. 

Telecommuting changes the dynamic of how the employer/employee relationship works in ways that benefit both with very few downsides. The more employers realize this, the more this movement will begin to spread in the future.

 It was just a matter of time. It seems anytime a technology company demonstrates tremendous success, the government gets their nose out of joint about it.  Last December it was Intel's turn to see the FTC file a lawsuit against them for anticompetitive practices.  Now an FTC investigation is nothing to sneeze at.   And to say that Intel does not dominate the computer processor chip market would be silly.  In fact, if you ask just about anyone on the street to name a company that makes computer chips, the only company they will be able to name will probably be Intel.

But just being successful doesn’t make you evil.  If the dominance of the computer chip marketplace has resulted from the fact that Intel simply makes a superior product, it is wrong for the government to put a stop to that.  Similarly, Intel may be the only computer chip that people know due to good marketing rather than uncompetitive practices.  Hopefully, that will be what this lawsuit will bear out rather than any dirty dealing by the world's biggest computer chip maker.

Part of the grounds for the lawsuit is based on the fact that Intel computer chips have been selected to be the exclusive chip to be used by some of the biggest PC makers in the world including Dell, IBM and HP.  The language of the lawsuit alleges that Intel used "threats and rewards" to strike these kinds of deals.  It would seem clear that it is true that the computer lines that most people buy are powered by Intel chips. 

But it may be getting a little ridiculous to think that somehow one computer maker would be forced to buy into more than one chipset just to give the other guy a fair chance.  A big PC maker has to standardize their hardware or it would be a nightmare to create a consistent product that they could support.  Yes, Dell does use Intel chips which means more Intel chips are sold than any other.  But that may simply meant that Intel has a chipset that works best for Dell rather than any idea that it was Intel that somehow blocked the other chip makers from competing for the business.

The phrase in the lawsuit that is troubling charges that Intel used "threats and rewards" to capture such a large share of the marketplace.  One wonders just how well anyone could use a threat to browbeat a company like IBM into doing things their way.  If Intel sold an inferior product to other microcomputer chips, would IBM really have caved in to Intel because of some kind of threat? 

No, if there is a threat, it is that if IBM went with another computer manufacturer, they would not avail themselves of the design skills and the manufacturing capability that a big chip maker like Intel can provide.  If there was a reward, it might have been a quantity discount that would be given to a huge PC maker like IBM and Dell.  Quantity discounts are not unfair "rewards" or bribes.  They are just good business that are used by just about every retailer in the world.

Despite some of the language of the lawsuit being flawed, there is no reason the FTC should not look into any problems with how Intel does business that reach to the level of attempting to enforce an illegal monopoly on the markets.  In some respects, the FTC filing shows a level of restraint that implies that the agency is out to correct any improper behaviour and that they are not on a "witch hunt". 

It is true that when one particular company becomes so dominant in a market, it is easy for them to overstep their boundaries and behave as thought they owned that market.  If Intel has done that, this lawsuit will do some good at putting more competition in the computer chip market.  Competition in general is healthy for any market and it is the job of the FTC to make sure markets stay competitive in this country.

Part of the restraint shown by the FTC is that there are no monetary damages being sought in the lawsuit against Intel.  If the company is found guilty of what is being alleged, the outcome will be enforced correction to their anticompetitive practices.  That is appropriate even in a very technical field like computer chip manufacturing.

One reason that the FTC is taking action now is that they are beginning to see Intel stating to dominate the newer market for graphics processor units.  However, one of Intel's responses or complaints about the lawsuit is that the investigation into the details of the alleged anticompetitive practices has not been completed yet.  In other words, the FTC filed suit with the intent of THEN researching whether they had a leg to stand on.

Intel correctly pointed out that it is general practice for the investigation into the crime to be conducted before the charges are formally filed.  This is a fair complaint.  After all, without adequate proof or substantiation that the crimes alleged were committed, the FTC's allegations could come up empty.  The FTC felt they needed to move more quickly to stop Intel from using the same anticompetitive practices in the graphic processor markets that are rapidly developing.

The FTC filing is not the only war that Intel is fighting on this issue.  Last May the European Commission laid a pretty hefty fine on Intel for the same crime.  Intel has also been forced to do business differently in Japan because they were found culpable for anticompetitive practices there. 

The number of infractions that Intel is mounting up worldwide tends to lend credibility to the claims of the FTC lawsuit.  Intel has some top level lawyers on their side and they will need them.  This battle will be ongoing at least through the rest of the year.  And when you include the appeals process, it could be keeping Intel's lawyers busy for much longer than that as well.

If you have children or young teenagers living at home, you know who Hannah Montana is.  Hannah Montana is actually a fictional character played by a young actress by the name of Miley Cyrus.  Miley is the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus who you may remember for his country song several years ago, Achy Breaky Heart.  The character is part of a television show that is part of the Disney channel line up. 

The television show, named Hannah Montana, is about a normal teenage girl being raised by her single father.  But she has an alter ego who is an international pop star performing for millions.  Billy Ray Cyrus plays the father of the lead character who is simultaneously the ordinary girl, Miley Stewart and the pop singing sensation, Hannah Montana.

The show is a comedy and it has become a big hit for the Disney organization.  In fact, not long ago, the Disney organization organized a tour of the country in which the character, Hannah Montana performed as a real musical act for thousands of fans all around the country.  The tour was a massive success as well turning the Hannah Montana TV show into a genuine cultural phenomenon with the young actress, Miley Cyrus right in the middle of it.

So what can Hannah Montana teach us about the internet?  Well, Miley has become a role model for millions of young Hannah Montana viewers.  As she has become older and more articulate, Miley has begun to speak out on issues that affect her generation.  Last year, Miley suddenly deleted her Twitter account and made some pretty blunt statements about no longer wanting social networking to dominate her life.  This dealt a huge blow to the millions of young fans that followed Miley on Twitter who hung on every "Tweet" about every aspect of her life.

Miley has never recanted her views about Twitter.  In fact, whether she is part of a trend or leading it, she has been one of several young celebrates who are turning away from cyberspace.  Just a few weeks ago, Miley made her boldest statements of her views about the internet to date.  She strongly encouraged her army of fans to abandon the internet, get into sports and real social activities. She even went so far as to call the internet harmful to young people and told her fans that the internet "wastes your life."

These are strong words that no doubt hit hard with children and young teens who see Miley as someone to emulate. How someone might react to this kind of advice for teenagers may depend on your own feelings about online applications.  No doubt, parents of teenagers applauded this advice.  What parent has not prayed that their internet connection would collapse so they could see the whites of their children's eyes again?  But one wonders if Miley's opinions line up with solid research into the effect of the internet on the development of children and youth.

Recently a leading UK psychologist by the name of Steve Pope responded to Miley's comments and his observations where highly informative.  Mr. Pope is no Disney pop star.  He knows what he is talking about when discussing the psychology and development of young people during their formative childhood and teenage years. 

It turns out that Miley was right.  Mr. Pope describes the effect of long periods of time on the computer for a child as similar to a line of cocaine.  The time online is intense and it produces almost a high that is almost euphoric.  But when a child comes off of that high, the crash they experience is devastating.

The problems that can develop in a child who is allowed too much time online is that a youth in his or her late childhood and early teen years is going through a tremendous amount of development both physically and mentally.  The child's personality and mental machinery is being honed by experience which includes how the child solves problems, interacts with others, builds relationships and explores the world. 

If a young person performs many of these functions on the internet, they are getting a two dimensional experience of formative experiences that should be experienced in the real world.  Relationships are a good example.  Online relationships develop very quickly and they bring an illusion of intimacy. 

It is very easy for a young boy or girl to develop such relationships on their social network such as Facebook or Twitter and to become obsessed with online friendship.  But because those friendships are only words and pictures on a computer screen, the child's social skills are actually stunted by the experience.

According to Mr. Pope, the impact on the short and long term development of a child can be devastating.  Because internet communications and internet games that kids play provide rapid stimulation, an addiction to short attention span activities can begin to dominate way the child interacts with the world.  While that may not be the entire reason for the surge in Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.) problems in youth, it certainly is not helping the problem.

Many times a child who is too addicted to the internet will lose his or her ability to interact properly with the real world.  The child or youth may become retiring, withdrawn or angry when away from the internet and he or she may have a lot of difficulty concentrating on school or sustaining friendships outside of the internet.

So it turns out that Hannah Montana, A.K.A Miley Cyrus is giving our children some valid advice.  This doesn’t mean that the internet by itself is bad.  In fact, used wisely and under supervision, the internet can be a delightful learning tool and a wonderful way for kids to research topics they are interested in.  If your child is "addicted" to being online, one first step is to be honest and to reference the advice of his or her idols like young Miss Cyrus that to be healthy individuals, they need to have a real life too. 

By striking a balance between online time and healthy activities like sports and social contact with friends, the child can learn to integrate the internet with real life in a healthy way just like mom and dad do.  If so, we will be happy to thank Hannah Montana for some good advice for our kids.  She may be just a Disney kid but it sounds like she is a pretty smart cookie.

There is a dirty little secret most of us keep quiet because it reveals something about us.  It is a problem that afflicts some very good people who demonstrate good habits of diet, hygiene and how they conduct their lives.  But there is one area where people seem to give in to the temptation to live very sloppy and even unsafe lives.  That area is how they manage their computers. 

There is good news for good people with bad computer habits.  You can change.  But first you have to make a list of some of the worst computer habits that a lot of us fall prey too.  If you read through our list of bad habits and find yourself saying far too often, "Yeah, I do that", it might be time for a personal assessment and for you to take action to clean up your act in how you manage your personal computer and online life.

Bad Habit #1 - No Plan for a Disaster

For some reason we seem to think that nothing bad will ever happen to our computer systems.  And yet consistently, bad things do happen.  When a disk drive fails or a virus hits or something else awful happens, you need a plan to get back in business as quickly as possible.  But we procrastinate on this essential part of computer ownership because it might involve some cost and you have to set it up to happen routinely.

Recovering from a disaster means backing up your unique data to more than one location.  That means backing it up to an online site that takes care of the problem regularly.  But it is smart to also perform backups to an external hard drive on a regular basis.  Also, keep in mind that you probably don't have to back up your operating system and your licensed programs.  If your computer crashes, you will recover those important components from the installation disks that came with your system.  But do develop a storage program so you can find your storage disks when you need them. 

If you have a plan in place to recover the programs you need, you just have to back up things that are unique to your online or computer life like your files and things you download that you don’t want to lose.  A well designed file folder system where you centralized all unique data so it is backed up will do that trick.  You can also have a folder in that file system that has backups of your email addresses, your bookmarks for your browser, your email folders and your security settings.  Those are crucial elements of a healthy computer system that you don’t want to have to recreate after a crash.

Bad Habit #2 - Who Owns Your Start Menu?

When you start your profile on your computer, things begin running without you having to tell them to do so.  Some of that stuff like your internet security software are things you want to start without permission.  But a start menu can easy get "cluttered up" with other applications that want to start up right away, whether that is what you wanted to happen or not.  People that write applications love it when their program starts right away when you log on.  That means their program gets a chance to advertise to you and accomplish the will of it's masters.

The problem is that too many things running in your start menu slows your computer down because it chews up memory.  Also, if you let just anything take ownership of your start menu, spy bots and malware also like to live there and commit mayhem for your online life. 

The solution is to learn how to clean out your start menu.  There are utility programs for this that allows you to see what is running continuously in your system and then they allow you to clean that menu out.  Make it a good habit to keep the number of things in your start menu to a minimum. Your computer will run better and safer if you do.

Bad Habit #3 - Sloppy Passwords

As much as we are lectured over and over not to do this, most of us use the same user name and password for every site we have to get access to online.  That means that if someone "cracks" that code for one site, they can get into your bank accounts, your credit card online access sites and your Facebook account. 

We also are very lazy about ever changing our passwords.  Experts tell us to change them frequently, at least a couple times a year and to pick passwords that are not obvious.  The best kind of password is a combination of letters and numbers that have no obvious meaning.  But it can have meaning to you.  Of course, you have to be able to remember your security codes.  But don’t use the same ones and change them often.

Bad Habit #4 - Static Electricity and Food.

How often have you scolded your kids for eating while eating at the computer?  You yell at them for this because you know how easily they could spill milk into the console or drop crumbs in your keyboard.  But we seem to think the same rule does not apply to the adults.  Adults are just as big of slobs as the kids are and food at the computer is an invitation to a disaster. 

Food that could get inside you computer is a fire hazard and it can eventually damage the system.  Not only that, all of those greasy finger prints on the keyboard are disgusting and could reduce how long that keyboard will last.  So live up to what you tell your kids to do and keep the food in the kitchen where it belongs and not at the computer.

While we are on the subject, it is a terrible habit to walk to your computer and sit down only to feel static electricity discharge as you touch the machine.  Computers are machines and they have lots of metal in them that conduct electricity wonderfully.  It is very easy for static electricity to travel through your computer and destroy a hard drive or fry something else important inside the computer.  Replace that bad habit of allowing static electricity to discharge on the machine by touching a doorknob or a static removal pad before touching the computer.  That one good habit can save you hours or days of problems down the road.

These are just a few of the bad habits we allow ourselves to get into when using our personal computers.  If you begin to view your computer habits in the same way your diet or exercise program that you maintain for your health, your computers health will benefit as well.  So pay attention to your how you use your PC and how you conduct yourself online.  If you replace those bad computer habits with good ones, the number of problems you have with your technical life will drop off dramatically.

If you like to use social networks like Facebook and Twitter, you already know that you will sometimes get a contact that is a little strange.  It might be a friend request from someone you don’t know and that nobody else you know is in contact with.  Many times it is some marketing scam that you just ignore.  On some occasions, it is a hacker who got into a friend's account and is trying to hack further. 

One word the kids use for people who lurk around networks like that is a "creeper".  But there may be a new kind of creeper snooping around your account who is not just someone with time on his hands.  It might be a spy.

The vast networks that Facebook, MySpace and Twitter represent are probably just more than the feds can resist.  According to some reports that are just now coming out, the Obama administration has under advisement a plan that would let clandestine federal agencies go undercover in all of the popular social networks.  And these spies are not coming in there for tips on how to play Farm Town.  They are there to do some serious spying.  This is not spying on the Russians, the Chinese or the Iranians.  These agents are there to spy on us.

This invasion of our cyberspace hang outs is being granted to a number of spy agencies in the government including US Marshals, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.  If you are not thrilled about these creepers lurking on your Facebook profile, you better get used to it. 

Now, this is not the first time a government agency began to drool over all of the public information on social networks.  You would have to expect the IRS would want to be able to search these web sites to find out what they can about taxpayers that they are investigating.  But the IRS did have the discretion to limit their use of information available on social networks to research only.  They were not ready to create a fake ID and represent themselves as a social networking citizen to see what they could learn.  The spy agencies this most recent ruling sets loose on us do not have such scruples.

This kind of spying that allows agents to pose as something other than what they are has been used in other kinds of cybercrime situations.  It is a very common technique when trying to crack a child porn ring for agents to create identities on porn forums and post links that offer illegal child porn to the smarmy under life that they interact with on those sites.  Then when one of the poor souls clicks on one of those links, that is all the spy agent needs to make a bust.  It’s a slick operation when it works to catch a pervert.  But one has to wonder if we want them using these skills in the much larger worlds of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Now, the spies have one minor ethical problem that gets in the way of them staging a full scale undercover raid of social networks.  Most of the most successful social networks require that you sign a "terms of service" agreement before using the site. This is a legal document that most of us never read.  But one stipulation that is in those terms of service documents states the user agrees not to create a fake profile that has a name on it that is not the true name of the user. 

Well that kind of rule can put a real crimp in the style of any self respecting spy.  After all, they are not going to get very far with a profile of "Bond - James Bond" and a profession of "spying on innocent citizens on Facebook."  They won't get a very big friends list that way.  If a government agent agrees to the terms of service and then creates a decent profile that hides who he is, that breaks the law which is not that great an idea if you are in law enforcement.  Not only that, it violates their relationship with the social networking site who is hosting them.  A lawbreaker and a bad guest may run into some trouble before they can make their first bust. 

But if the agent puts the truth on their profile, that goes against the whole idea of a spy operation.  This problem is currently being kicked around at the federal level and they have to resolve it before they allow spies on our social networks.  Perhaps they can put a caveat in the terms of service clause that you cannot create a fake idea that adds, "Unless you are a spy, which is very cool".  That would work.

At this point, the plan to flood Facebook, MySpace and Twitter with spies is still in the development phase.  But those of us who are very active in these networks should be on the alert.  To be fair, if federal agents do go undercover in cyberspace, they probably will not be there to stalk law abiding citizens like you and I.  There have been a number of stories in the news in the last year or so about people who committed real crimes like robbing banks or running drugs and then bragging about it on their Facebook pages.  These will probably be the bad guys that will be the primary targets of law enforcement officials.

If the FBI or one of the other agencies suspects someone has information on their social networking pages that has more details about criminal activity, Facebook and the other sites are well known for being ready and willing to cooperate with law enforcement to turn over that information if the requests are made properly.  So spies in Facebook will probably never bother most people. 

But it still will be a good idea to continue to be careful who you allow on your profile and to lock down your private information.  You may already to doing that to keep your profile away from creepers, stalkers and your mum.  Now you can do it to dodge the roving eye of government spies when they try to poke their nose into your online life as well.

Your First Home Office Network

"Telecommuting" - it's the only way to fly! Being able to work from home will change how you think about work. And setting up a home network is easier now than ever. Gone are the days when you had to study wheel vs. ring vs. serial diagrams - network capable devices today are made with multi-tasking capabilities built right in. This will be a snap.

You need:

* A Broadband or better Internet connection

* A wireless-capable router

* Perhaps a switch or a hub

* Your PCs, be they desktop, laptop, or mobile

* Printers and speakers, whatever peripherals you'll be using

* Possibly ethernet cable, with either the plastic clip connector or USB

* network cards and adapters

Instead of connecting the Internet directly to one computer, you'll be connecting it to a router. Most routers these days are gateways as well, with several ethernet ports (they look like large telephone cord jacks) and USB ports (they look like flat, rectangular holes with a bit of metal on one side), in addition to a wireless antenna.

Once you get Internet going to a router with an antenna up, that should be it. Get on your computer and use the software to see if it can find a wireless signal. You might need to configure it first - if so, connect one computer by ethernet to the router and open a web browser. In the address bar, type the IP address of your router - these vary by manufacturer, but should be one of http://192.168.0.1 (the last two digits may vary, but will usually be either .1.1, .1.0, .0.0, something like that). Find out the default user name and password for your router (should be listed in the instructions) - it will usually be 'admin' for username and either 'admin' or 'password' for the password. The first thing you will want to do is change that default setup so anybody in the neighborhood can't just sponge your connection!

In some cases, you might not want to go full wireless. An ethernet connection is recommended for scenarios with one desktop computer downstairs and the router upstairs, since wireless signals might not pass freely through the floor. Bluetooth gadgets plugged into USB ports will also assist for scenarios like speakers and printers, where you only need a direct connection from one machine. Other things like switches and hubs might be needed if you have several wired computers or printers going to one place which is inaccessible to WiFi.

You will want to turn on the highest level of encryption you have available. WPA-2 at least is recommended. Your router and all concerned computers should be able to sort each other out through DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). Give both your router and each computer on the network a unique name - this makes it easier to monitor what's going on, and also helps with security.

Some tips for a productive home office environment: Have the most reliable set-up you can get. Invest in a headset and speaker for those marathon conference calls. Have a comfortable chair and perhaps a couch handy for reading or for laptop work - don't live like a potted plant. Keep office space and pay space separate. Have an office with a door and be sure your housemates know when the door is shut, you're busy. Avoid the temptation to rank your office space last and end up in some dingy corner of the basement - pick a room with a nice, big window. Have a second storage device to store back-ups of important data. Oh, and don't forget to get out once in a while!

The Top Time Management Tools

Time management seems at first to be a modern concept, but really it isn't. The first step in time management is keeping track of it, and so every time-keeping device going back to the dawn of recorded history is a time management system. Even Stonehedge! Stonehedge was originally built to track the seasonal equinox and solstice cycles so farmers knew when to plant their crops. Even a sundial counts.

Time management tools can be broken down into four generations:

First generation ones are clock and alarms. Yes, your alarm clock, that vile thing you slap into silence every morning, is one. Extensions of this concept are digital devices which can sound alarms when a task is done.

Second generation tools are calendars and appointment books. These can be both paper and digital. The digital version is infinitely more useful, because you can set reminders for deadlines and errands. Calendar tool software runs the gamut from PDAs to laptop and desktop accessories. A calendar tool should come by default with just about any operating system sold - there's even plug-in apps for phones now.

Third-generation tools are planners, organizers, and controllers. These are done more on an industrial scale - for instance, software an office would use for dispatching mobile units and keeping shifts covered. However, a simple thing like a software to-do list or a desktop notes application uses the same concept on a personal scale.

Fourth-generation tools are the personal skills you use to combine the above three categories and use them wisely and effectively. In some cases, this can also involve timers and control systems. Some tech professionals use a time-tracking system to be able to bill clients by the hour. Anything you use personally, even tying a ribbon around your finger to remind you of an appointment, counts here too.

One of the chief problems with time management is that people tend to spend too much time playing with this stuff. If you're spending more time making a to-do list than you are getting the things on it done, that's too much fiddling. The key to effective time management tool usage is to only undertake a new system if its needed. Try using the device or software for awhile and see if you get some results with it. Wait a couple of weeks to let the "honeymoon" period pass, and see if it's really helping you.

Above all, the key is discipline. With good discipline and focus, you are your own best time manager.