Miles Associates LLC

 I have to admit that I had never thought much about Twitter before reading this blog entry.  But reading it makes me want to check it out.  Which I might do in my spare time…  (I wonder what year that might happen ).

The Business Value of Twitter | Advice and Opinion

Sesame Workshop expects dramatic results:

• cut spending on hardware and support by over 90%
• reclaim 2 racks in a cramped data center, and
• reduce power consumption by 15 percent.

Monster Savings from Virtualization on Sesame Street

Noah Broadwater, VP of information services for Sesame Workshop , likes using open source virtualization tools for several good reasons—starting with green ones that have nothing to do with Oscar the Grouch.

Broadwater recently faced a budget crunch at the same time he needed new Web servers and was physically running out of room in his data center. His solution: new HP blade servers based on Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise server software, which builds in Xen’s virtualization software (Xen is the leading open source alternative to VMware’s offering.)

…Happy with the results from virtualizing the Web servers, Broadwater planned a substantial virtualization project to make over his other servers, starting with his test and development boxes, beginning about one year ago.

Criminals Hack CEOs with Fake Subpoenas

…thousands have fallen victim to an e-mail scam in which senior managers such as Anastassiadis are told that they have been sued in federal court and must click on a Web link to download court documents. Victims of the crime are taken to a phony Web site where they are told they need to install browser plug-in software to view the documents. That software gives the criminals access to the victim’s computer.

This type of targeted e-mail attack, called “spear-phishing,” is a variation on the more common “phishing” attack. Both attacks use fake e-mail messages to try to lure victims to malicious Web sites, but with spear-phishing the attackers try to make their messages more believable by including information tailored to the victim.

Here’s more (and nicely practical) advice on this topic (a topic one didn’t need to worry about much not that long ago…)

How to Defend Your Online Reputation: Five Tips
It’s not what other people think of you that matters. It’s what they can find out about you on the Web that will affect your ability to get a job or promotion, rent an apartment, buy a house, be accepted into the school of your choice, or find the love of your life.

Five Things Don Tapscott Has Learned about Collaboration
Wikinomics author and consultant Don Tapscott believes that transparency is power and that the benefits of collaboration outweigh its drawbacks.

Something for everyone again this month!

Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification for April 2008