Common Paradox Tech Blog

Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 7, figures to play a big part in IT spending next year, says investment group Goldman Sachs. The reason, Goldman says, is because of pent-up demand for new hardware like servers and PCs stimulating an increase in Windows 7 upgrades, ComputerWorld reports.

Goldman came by its prediction through a survey comprised of 100 IT executives from Fortune 1000 companies. Some 94 percent of those surveyed said they intend to upgrade to Windows 7, with 32 percent saying they’ll do so in 2010, and another 28 percent indicating they’ll make the jump in 2011. The remaining 34 percent pegged 2012 and beyond as the expected upgrade time frame, but Goldman reckons most of them will migrate in 2012 rather than waiting much longer.

One other reason Goldman believes IT spending will rise is because 36 percent of respondents said they believe their spending with Microsoft will increase, compared to 15 percent and 24 percent in the last two surveys (June and August, respectively).

Image Credit: fixmypersonalfinance.com

We heard strong reports for online traffic Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but today, comScore added definitive spending numbers that indicate that holiday shopping online is picking up this year. For the holiday season-to-date, nearly $16 billion has been spent online, which is a 3 percent increase versus the same period last year. The most recent week ending December 6 reached $4.6 billion in holiday spending, which surpassed any individual spending week in 2008 but was still below two individual weeks in 2007. comScore reports that $887 million was spent on Cyber Monday, but decreased steadily as the week continued.

In an interesting twist to the usual online spending reports, comScore dug a little deeper with respondents on the influence of social media on their holiday shopping behavior. According a survey taken last week, 28 percent of shoppers surveyed said that social media has influenced their purchases. Consumer-generated product reviews, like those seen on both retail sites and standalone review sites was the most common form of social media that had influenced holiday purchases (13 percent of respondents), followed by an expert product review (11 percent).

Google has been actively collecting feedback on Google Wave with an ongoing survey, which was distributed via email, the help center, and Twitter. Today they’ve published the initial findings for public dissection.

So far results indicate that users love the concept of Wave, appreciate the collobartion features, and like the extensions, gadgets, and robots. On the flip side, however, the most perplexing part of the Wave experience is that users’ friends and contacts don’t have access to Wave. Respondents also complained of speed issues and indicated a desire for integration with more tools like email.

Based on our experience with Google Wave, the results that Google has published are spot on and point to some of the reasons why the system is both a game changer and, on the other hand, still not ready for mainstream attention.

Google does say that they will be acting on your feedback and opinions:

“With these responses and other data, we’re organizing our team around the core issues that are important to making waving better. We’re working hard to scale our systems so you can invite your friends and colleagues to wave with you. We’re also thinking about how to integrate with existing communication and collaboration tools. And since we all know that fast is better than slow, a large portion of the team is working to make Google Wave faster.”

Do your Google Wave likes and dislikes fall in line with survey data? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Image from watch4u on Flickr

Reviews: Flickr, Google, Google Wave

Tags: Google Wave, trending

An anonymous reader writes to share the findings of a recent transatlantic survey which suggests that the recession is pushing workers to be a little bit more accommodating when it comes to sharing, viewing, or stealing sensitive information from the company they work(ed) for. “Pilfering data has become endemic in our culture as 85% of people admit they know it’s illegal to download corporate information from their employer but almost half couldn’t stop themselves taking it with them with the majority admitting it could be useful in the future! [...] The survey entitled ‘the global recession and its effect on work ethics,’ carried out for a second year by Cyber-Ark – found that almost half of the respondents 48% admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them and 39% of people would download company/competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes to share the findings of a recent transatlantic survey which suggests that the recession is pushing workers to be a little bit more accommodating when it comes to sharing, viewing, or stealing sensitive information from the company they work(ed) for. “Pilfering data has become endemic in our culture as 85% of people admit they know it’s illegal to download corporate information from their employer but almost half couldn’t stop themselves taking it with them with the majority admitting it could be useful in the future! [...] The survey entitled ‘the global recession and its effect on work ethics,’ carried out for a second year by Cyber-Ark – found that almost half of the respondents 48% admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them and 39% of people would download company/competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It might sound hard to believe for those of us who attended grade school back before broadband, cell phones, and the social networking phenomenon, but according to a new report, as many as 340,000 kids and teens are regular victims of cyberbullying, a term that didn’t even exist not that long ago.

"We know the consequences of online bullying are just as traumatic as those of face-to-face bullying," said Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of the charity Beatbullying. "We want all social networking sites, Internet service providers, and mobile phone companies to take measures to identify and remove offensive material."

Beatbully’s survey pinged 2,094 respondents between the ages of 11 and 18, nearly two-thirds of which said they had been witness to some form of online bullying. About half of them said they know of people setting up fake profiles, and 20 percent said they had seen hate groups set up with the sole intention of bullying someone.

This raises the question of whether social networking sites are doing enough. Over half of the those who claim to have been bullied said the incident took place on MSN, now renamed Windows Live Messenger. But Microsoft contends that "as with any communication service, these online communication tools are misused by a tiny minority."

In other news, "O’Doyle rules!"

Image Credit: jameselston.blogspot.com

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Kwanzoo

Quick Pitch: Create something interesting that will be talked about online – and then shared amongst peers on social networks: That’s Kwanzoo’s proposition to marketers who want to tap social networks for friendly referrals amongst peers

Genius Idea: Kwanzoo, currently in private beta, offers marketers, advertisers, and small businesses a potentially powerful and viral way to leverage social media channels for quick and easy campaigns.

Say you want to try and engage your fans on Facebook, followers on Twitter, blog readers, or customers in an email newsletter with a quiz or poll. You could use various tools and widgets made for each service, but Kwanzoo’s all-in-one, plug-and-play solution makes it faster to create and brand your poll, easier to make the content shareable, and simpler to measure campaign results.

The three step process lets you select a quiz or poll template, customize it, and then publish it as a landing page to your site that you can then promote via social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. You can also embed it in blog posts, use them in lieu of banner ads, or share the polls and quizzes in email newsletters. When respondents engage with the content, they can also share the results on Twitter or Facebook, and you can capture lead information and measure the social results with campaign metrics.

The service is not yet available to the general public, but you can try it free using one of the 500 free beta test accounts that Kwanzoo is offering to Mashable readers. Head over to their site, click the button to request an invitation, and then enter “Mashable” in the “Where did you hear about us?” box. The first 500 people will be notified via email with account information starting tomorrow early afternoon.

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Reviews: Facebook, Mashable, PHP, Twitter

Tags: kwanzoo, social media marketing

The traditional music industry has long been busy building the image of music pirates as scofflaws and reprobates, the type of people that would kick granny to the curb and steal candy from babies; an evil that must be crushed at any cost. Pity the industry didn’t actually expand that same energy trying to understand them as consumers in an emergent marketplace, thus better positioning themselves to meet the needs of that market rather than threaten it with a cudgel.

A United Kingdom research group, Demos, did just that, and surprise, surprise, they discovered that those people who confessed to pirating music were also those who spent the most on music. Pirates spend, on average, $126 per year on CDs, MP3s, and vinyl. Non-pirates (landlubbers?), on the other hand, only spend, on average, $72 per year.

Interestingly, only 10% of the respondents fessed-up to having illegally downloaded music. But, as the study was conducted in Great Britain, where the repercussions for illegal downloading are way more severe than in the United States, it’s surprising any did. (The Performing Rights Society (PRS), Great Britain’s RIAA doppelgänger, is presently pushing legislation to ban from the Internet any one caught illegally downloading music three times–a modern day version of walking the plank.)

Respondents indicated they were willing to buy more music, provided the price is right. It might be that, as consumers, they’ve recognized that downloaded music is a quality notch or two below CDs, and pricing should better reflect that differential. The tipping point appears to be 73 cents, at or below purchasing becomes more likely.

"Politicians and music companies need to recognize that the nature of music consumption has changed and consumers are demanding lower prices and easier access to music,” says Peter Bradwell, a Demos researcher.

Image Credit: blong219/Flickr

According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an overwhelming majority of Americans feel text messaging while driving should be made illegal. Not only that, but over half surveyed said those caught sending a text while behind the wheel should be punished just as harshly as drunk drivers.

"If you’re going to drive, drive; if you want to talk or text, pull over to the side of the road," Constance Drake, 71, of Toms River, J.J., said in a follow-up interview with the New York Times.

Americans don’t seem split on the issue, at least according to the poll. Only 3 percent of respondents saw nothing wrong with texting and driving at the same time, while the other 97 percent disagreed. And around 80 percent said it should be made illegal to talk on a cellphone while driving, unless it’s a hands-free phone. That’s up from 69 percent in a 2001 ABCNews poll.

What’s your stance on texting or talking on a cellphone wile driving? Tell us in the comments section below.

Image Credit: gtchannel.com

One of the biggest challenges of staying within a budget is not even knowing what you’re allowed to spend. That’s exactly the situation most IT managers find themselves in, suggests a new white paper by Digital Fuel.

The study the white paper is based off of pinged over 130 IT managers who were directly involved with the related costs and budgets of more than $10 million. And while 84 percent of the respondents classified detailed insight in IT costs as critical, more than half of those polled complained that their level of IT cost visibility isn’t where it should be.

This type of environment presents a frustrating challenge in figuring out how to manage IT costs, as evidenced by the respondents indicating that coming up with a cost-model and breaking down the IT costs ranked as the most difficult. IT managers who took part in the study also noted a strong desire to better assess cost inefficiencies in their IT departments.

Image Credit: photobucket.com nalekezana