What: NY Times article about cable companies providing (or not providing) faster broadband service in the US
Posts it is related to: So You Think You’d Like to Telecommute?
Bottom line: For those who desire to, or already do work from home, and need high speed Internet to get optimum performance from various applications for file sharing, video conferencing or web conferencing, it appears that faster broadband is a real and relatively inexpensive prospect for cable companies to offer. Cable companies in the US could increase their offered speeds by 5 to 10 times quickly and without much capital investment. However, companies that are upgrading available cable services are also giving a hefty upgrade in price to cable customers and other companies are not upgrading at all for fear that better Internet service will cause customers to downgrade or get rid of their cable TV services. It seems that lack of competition and fear of falling profit margins is affecting customers’ ability to get better, faster Internet service. Knowing that cable companies can upgrade available service relatively inexpensively makes me even more skeptical about Time Warner’s proposed (and currently being tested) tier billing for bandwidth usage.  Cable companies may raise the cost and lower the ability of virtual workers to work effectively.

What: NY Times article on Google Voice
Posts it is Related To: None
Bottom line: Soon Google will be launching Google Voice  to new users. If it lives up to its promises, this could be a major time saver for people with multiple phone numbers (home, cell, office, work cell, etc.) and who have to manage phone calls and voice mails from various people and contexts.  Google Voice will also likely be a major disruptor for existing companies that provide services like voice mail transcription and perhaps even Skype’s cheap international call services. Here are some of the features that Google Voice will offer–all for free! Users will get one phone number to hand out that will then ring all cell phones, landlines, and SMS services. When the phone rings wherever you are, you can choose to answer, block the call, listen in to a voicemail to decide if you want to pick up after all, or send the call to another phone such as your cell phone so you can pick up as you are running out the door. Voicemails can be sent via SMS or email through free voice to text transcription services. Users can listen to voicemail either through their phones or online and can even personalize outgoing messages for different callers. Voice features include free conference calling on any phone and options for international calls that are possibly cheaper than Skype’s already cheap calls. Google Voice might add a whole new level of “mobile” to mobile telephony.

What: Article on the rebound of spam
Posts it is related to: Do you plan for technology breakdown?
Bottom line:  Bad news for organizations in their efforts to increase IT security and keep costs low–spam is on the rise again. Although the closing down of an ISP responsible for a majority of spam last November cut the amount of junk email, the percentage of spam has been steadily rising since then. Spam levels are almost back to where they were last October, or about 94% of all email. The problem isn’t just with an increase in spam, but in the new technologies spammers are using. Having learned from the shut down of their last ISP, spammers now seem to be building decentralized networks that will be harder to crack. The bad news for IT security is that spammers seem to have developed new location based spam which directs those who click on a link in the email to a local headline based on the user’s IP address. The fake news page purports to have a video relating to the local news or crisis. If the user clicks on the video link, their computer is infected with a virus.