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This Business Week article includes a nice slideshow of some prototypes and new products.

The next iPod is rumored to have a full-panel display and a virtual click-wheel. There’s not much reason for a cell phone to have real buttons, especially since the screen could display any buttons needed.

Also, buttons are a key failure point in computer hardware. Dust and moisture can kill a device quickly.

Sometimes students ask me for examples of “white papers”. In IT, a “white paper” is an article or a case study that is posted or distributed by a hardware or software vendor. It usually features at least one happy customer, and discusses the positive points of specific products and services in glowing detail. I often lump corporate web sites into this category.

I usually tell students to avoid citing white papers and marketing literature in their assignments, because these sources are almost always biased towards the company that paid the writers.

This Apple page is a good example of a white paper. I’m surprised that there are no easy-to-find links to PDF or printable versions of this article.

I can’t imagine walking into a business meeting armed with ‘facts’ I found in white papers. That’s the perspective I take when I’m grading - I’m a CXO. That’s one reason why industry magazines are helpful, as their reviews tend to compare products and services on an equal basis. Occasionally, we might see white papers that read like industry research, including comparisons with products and services from other vendors.

Until someone rigs up a crapometer to detect marketing blather, it’s really up to the reader to determine how much trust they will place in a white paper. For my part, I find white papers interesting and funny, but I need to see more authoritative sources before I make up my mind.

I really enjoyed class this weekend with the MBAs! I did get a few questions about why we’re using Bloglines, and what’s it all about, anyway?

As I mentioned in class, I’d like you to try some push technologies during our course, as a means of creating your own form of personal competitive advantage in your careers and business ventures.

You’ll have a chance to evaluate these services at the end of our course, and some of you might continue using push services if they work well for you.

This article at ubergizmo.com is a nice, quick explanation of RSS or Really Simple Syndication. RSS uses the XML data standard to push information about blogs and web content to you.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/rss.php

We’re using RSS to support our business intelligence and research projects. Bloglines combines a fine RSS reader with the Ask.com search engine, so it’s almost like one-stop shopping for your research needs.

Next week, I’ll discuss how to use EBSCO along with Bloglines.

There are many, many RSS readers that you can install on your computer. An RSS reader lets you subscribe to multiple RSS feeds from different web sites, and will pull new content into your reader whenever you run the reader program.

Some people prefer that approach, in which the RSS subscription software is installed on your own computer, or what IT professionals call the client. If you’re concerned that someone might hack into a web-based RSS reader account and read your subscriptions, and you only use one computer on a regular basis, then client-side software is a good choice.

I find this client-side approach difficult to use, as I use several different computers in different locations. So I’ve chosen Bloglines as my web-based RSS reader. Bloglines uses a server-based approach, and it is always updating my account with your blog entries and other items on my blogroll, or list of RSS subscriptions.

I’m requiring your groups to use Bloglines because it works pretty well as a groupware tool, and I can focus on your assignments instead of supporting multiple kinds of RSS readers. I’ll admit that Bloglines isn’t perfect. I find the edit window is quirky, and there’s no spell checker. You might consider editing your posts in Word before you copy-n-paste an article into the edit window.

Bloglines is not the only web-based RSS reader. There’s another one that I’ve seen but haven’t tried called Rojo.com. It uses tagging, a technique that we’ll examine with another service called social bookmarking.

If you want to set up your own server-based RSS reader, but you don’t like Bloglines, I’d suggest My Yahoo if you already use that service or Yahoo Mail, and you could try Google Reader if you are a Gmail or Google News user. There are other alternatives available, so use your favorite search engine to find them.

From CIO Insight: John Parkinson asks an important question - how well can business schools prepare their students to take leadership positions in information technology and innovation?

Graduate education emphasizes meta-learning, or the ability of learning how to learn. A successful master’s degree candidate has demonstrated that they understand and use the course material, and that they can continue to learn and grow as professionals and scholars.

The MBA degree program is fundamentally different from more specific degrees programs. I speak from experience - I earned an MBA as a full-time student at Rollins College in 1988, and I’ve been program chair of an MSIS program for the last 3 years. I also teach dozens of MBA and MSIS students every year. I have a bio page here.

MBA programs provide broad cross-training

An MBA program provides cross-training over several required topics (finance, accounting, marketing, management, law, technology, strategic management) and a handful of specific electives. However, some MBA programs have no electives at all. Other MBA programs have specific areas of interest, such as entrepreneurship, technology, or vertical markets.

A major part the MBA program’s value lies in the integration among the courses. As this is a master’s program, students must do the integrative work themselves, using the frameworks provided by their faculty. This represents the integration of functional areas into business, corporate, and enterprise strategies.

MSIS programs provide managerial and technical preparation

An MSIS program tends to focus on technical skills (telecommunications, software, hardware) and management skills (project management, knowledge management, strategic management). Again, the students follow a framework provided by the faculty as they integrate their knowledge.

If we treat IS as a functional area, and innovation as a process to be managed, the role of the IS professional is to help the organization deliver more value and effectiveness through technology and innovation.

Parkinson’s thesis - that deep scholars are difficult to find - has some merit. Many organizations select CIOs who have demonstrated management ability, but who have limited technological experience. These CIOs are expected to be “quick studies” as they master the technologies and processes that provide value in their organizations.

The MBA degree has often be derided as the “quick study” certificate. Because MBA students get only one or two classes in each of the core functional areas, they learn how to perform rapid analyses that may be sophisticated, but may also lack detail and rigor.

On the other hand, Herbert Simon pointed out that decision-making is usually constrained by the bounds of time, space, and our own cognitive abilities. Managers want to optimize, but they end up satisficing, or making do with less in oder to complete the task at hand. This Wikipedia article has more information and links about Simon’s work, and any good principles of management textbook should discuss Simon as well.

Information systems and technology allow managers to extract more precision and process more data in their everyday work. While IS professionals are essential to this task, they do not necessarily understand the strategic value of the systems they develop, implement and maintain.

In the end, MBAs depend upon IS professionals, and vice versa.

These two USA Today articles discuss the problems frequent travelers have experienced since the TSA and FAA placed additional restrictions on carry on items in commercial aircraft.

Some fliers seem willing to cooperate by checking luggage, even if this means additional delays when they arrive at their destination.

Other fliers state that they try not to check any items at all. I can understand this, as I would be very reluctant to place any electronic items in my checked baggage. Note that Dell Computer advises travelers to completely shut down their laptop computers, and remove the batteries from their devices. Additional care in packing is also necessary.

A few fliers seem willing to forgo air travel entirely. We saw this trend emerge after 9-11, but driving and teleconferences are no substitute for personal presence.

As an IT professional, there are times when I have to physically be at the site. It’s hard to start a remote session into a computer when the hard drive is dead or the power supply is blown.