The past few years have seen the introduction of some of the most inventive gadgets of our time. From wireless mobile technology and bluetooth, to the iPad and even ‘smart clothes’ (clothes that help the wearer cope with the stresses of daily life), gadget junkies like myself are constantly asking “what’s next?”

Everyone knows that the really good invention ideas come about because someone thinks “I want to do this” or “there must be an easier way to do that”, so in keeping with the theme of my last article, Inventive Technology, I decided to shake things up a bit and ask the real experts – you – what your dream gadgets would be.

This is what you said…

The great popularity, and dare I say obsession with communication has made this a top priority for a dream gadget, with 34% of respondents choosing this option. At joint second place, entertainment and travel claimed 16% each of votes, which begs the question, are people spending more time talking about life and less time living it?

In War of the Wireless, I mentioned that the faster pace of life has meant we have the expectation that we should be able to manage our work, social life and everything in between and still have time to look good – and a lot of you are feeling the pressure just as much as I am. Almost all of you required your gadget to be the Swiss Army knife of life – when given the option of multiple functions for your gadget, you said you want it to make your life easier and be able to use it for both work and leisure, and some even wanted o use it for socialising; little wonder there.

Space – the final frontier?

Hollywood would like us to believe that the future is outer space or on other planets, but only 39% of you agree. 69% of you raised a cynical eyebrow and decided your gadgets were going to be used right here on earth, with your feet planted firmly on the ground. Like true inventors, however, you left yourselves room for manoeuvre and although we may not all end up living in floating villages in the sky, or underwater complexes, you have left these options open and your gadgets reflect this, with 65% of these able to be used in the water or in the air as well.

Whoever said technology couldn’t be green?

That is certainly not the attitude of this audience, which we had already guessed by your responses to the article, Green IT. 55% of you stated that your gadgets would run on renewable energy, kinetic energy or even on CO2. Gadgets made with natural elements were also popular.

So, what are your dream gadgets worth?

Some of the respondents to this survey are either earning way too much or hope to be earning crazy amounts of money. 29% of you priced your gadgets at over £1,000, with 11% being priced at over £100,000! It doesn’t stop there; even dream gadgets need upgrading, or rather 57% of them will – let’s hope that we will all be earning big bucks in the future!

The future is just around the corner…

Or rather, the future according to you is within the next 5 years, at which point 55% of your dream gadgets will have already been invented, and 30% of you have decided that you will be making these gadgets yourselves, or at least patenting them. The more adventurous inventions will take at least 20 to 100 years to become reality, and 10% are not even expected to be available in our lifetime. That doesn’t stop you wanting to create them yourselves; in fact, 43% of you would love to get working on them, but we just don’t have that kind of technology – what a shame.

In all my years of studying and working with technical and non-technical IT professionals, I have found them to be some of the most interesting and ‘out there’ people – especially the real techies. It’s not surprising that some of their dream gadgets are impressive works of technology art and some are just downright fun!

Here are some of my favourites:

The Dream Catcher – it stores your day dreams and allows you to re-visit them.

H-Board – it’s a hover board (refer to Back to the Future II, need I say more!)

Imaginarium – to imagine you anywhere (I’m assuming this is like a Star Trek holo-deck).

Offshore Oil Recovery Rig – it cleans up and recovers oil spills (I think we’d all like to see one of those, especially with the recent situation).

Trans Tech – walls made of glass on which you could display anything. You can change the colour, set images and change the transparency at a touch (no more messy paint, wall paper, or naked shop-front mannequins – perfect!)

High Definition Garden Entertainment Centre – outdoor HD projector, unaffected by glare, so we can watch England win the World Cup and enjoy a British summer-time barbeque all at once (I wonder which is more likely…)

And for the ultimate laugh factor (please turn away if you are easily offended):

The Sun Fun Tanner – to hold breasts in place while sunbathing and avoid those annoying tan-lines (I would love to know the sex of the person who put this forward)!

Image source Wikipedia.
Last night I went to see the new Robin Hood film (not highly recommended) and there are a few battle scenes that made me think about how brutal it was going to war back then. This led me to think about the evolution of technology and how it has revolutionised our lives; not just at home but also at school, work and even in war.

The new tale of Robin Hood is supposed to be an explanation of how Robin Hood became an outlaw. The storyline is based on the tale of a traitor who plots with the King of France to overthrow the king of England. From across the channel they managed to come up with a plan with several trips to and from France and the use of several carrier pigeons.

Trust me

Back in the day you had to rely on people and trust them. If you were planning a war, you had to have faith that if you had arranged something, they would keep their word.

I used to meet my friends at midday on a Saturday under the clock tower of the town’s main square. If they were late, you just had to wait. Nowadays you ring them and re-arrange to meet somewhere else a bit later. Is our reliance on technology making us unreliable people? Are we becoming too dependent on technology?

I would say yes and no. Yes because if I didn’t have internet access I would feel like I was living in the dark ages, which is a little bit excessive and no because of the convenience and countless advantages it brings.

A trip down memory lane

When I was really young I got my first computer, an Atari which I adored! I spent ages playing the old-skool adventure games, where you have to manually type turn left, open the door, carriage return etc. I will never forget the day we added an extra 4 MB of memory to it! A whole 4 MB!! We really thought we’d entered the 21st century! Now we carry our laptops everywhere and technology has made our lives so much more convenient.

Meet in the middle

As with everything you have to find a happy medium. I find it highly rude and annoying that people are tapping away on their crackberry on the tube or even while you’re having a conversation! Not only that, everything has become more temporary. Instead of a love letter, we now get a text; instead of a photo lovingly developed and kept in a frame, we just have a file that could easily be lost or deleted – along with the memory.

On the other hand you can now avoid the Saturday rush at the shops by ordering online, keep in contact with friends living abroad, share files instead of using snail mail and even search for a job! OK that was a blatant plug for The IT Job Board but we have come a long, long way since my Atari days!

Why not share your memories of the good old days as well, or write your own IT blog!

About a month ago I saw a documentary called The Bitter Truth about the arduous turmoil that goes into making chocolate for the UK. It opened my eyes to a modern day form of slavery and child trafficking of which I was totally unaware and completely horrified. The key issue highlighted was how these injustices are lost along the supply chain that makes it very difficult to hold any one group or entity accountable.

More recently, along a similar theme, has been the series entitled Blood, Sweat and Luxuries, which highlights the atrocities and dangers people face not only in producing sapphires, clothing and coffee but also gadgets and other pieces of technology.

Last night’s episode featured a rubbish tip where children rummage through piles of old computers originating from the UK, all of which have supposedly been ‘recycled’. Apparently we are using Africa as a dump! Look out for next week’s episode on Thursday to find out where our gadgets come from.

Is it all really worth it?

Technology giant Apple has been accused of using child labour in the manufacturing of its portfolio of merchandise. It gets worse. Chemicals used in the factories making Apple products have also been harming workers (sometimes blinding them) and there are reports they are not even receiving the Chinese minimum wage, which is reportedly one of the lowest in the world. And it’s not just Apple. Microsoft has suffered similar allegations.

How many more large corporations are doing this? It wouldn’t surprise me if they all were. But until they are exposed nothing will be done about it. Even when they are exposed, the companies in question claim they have put a stop to it. However, this doesn’t prevent it from happening again in the future and many continue to use the same factories and suppliers.

With the level of profits these huge corporations are making, why are people at the bottom are not getting a fair deal? Children are being forced to work, and sometimes it is not even to pay for schooling but merely to pay for food to keep them alive.

Technically, it’s not my fault

The programme makes you feel incredibly guilty about the luxuries we enjoy. But is it our fault? As a consumer, wouldn’t it be great to just walk into a shop and pick up something off the shelf, safe in the knowledge that no abuse of human rights had occurred in getting the item there in the first place. That’s the way it should be.

The government needs to introduce laws to stop this from happening. They need to impose fines and sanctions against companies discovered to be involved with this type of activity. Governments need to ensure companies pay workers more for their labour.

At the same time, companies should also be held responsible because they are the ones producing the products. As a consumer we need more options to show our opposition and that we want to change. In this modern day materialistic society it seems people care more about their possessions than the children suffering in the production of them.

What can we do?

I understand that in many cases boycotting won’t work. But following the publication of this story NY Daily News ran a poll to see if the public felt Apple’s sales would be hurt by the news. Not surprisingly 55% felt it would make no difference at all. But if we stopped buying from them and huge corporations noticed a dent in their profits, maybe they would take notice of these atrocities. Maybe we can do something. We can make a change, we can make a stand, we can stop being so selfish and help make the world a fairer place.

But in reality, will this ever happen? What do you think we should do as consumers? And would you be willing to sacrifice your luxuries for your fellow human beings?

I think exposing the hidden truth and informing us well-off westerners is a good first step but the programme did little in the way of offering solutions. An article in The Guardian suggested we should all be expected to do a stint in an African mine. Maybe that’ll teach us…?

Next week the renowned European event InfoSecurity is taking place at Earls Court, London. It’s always a popular event and a good way to share knowledge and network regardless of whether you work in IT security or not.

IT Security has always been a serious issue but as everything moves towards in the cloud technology, it has become more important than ever.

And why wouldn’t cloud computing grow in popularity?
There are no overheads, which means huge cost savings; everything is much faster, more efficient and easily scalable. But with it comes many risks.

The IT Security Snowball

Viruses, data leaks and down time, IT security is a big enough problem for businesses as it is. Compliance is always a chore because not only are there many laws and regulations that as a business you need to comply with, but you also need to prove you are compliant. You need to keep records of absolutely everything, managing and storing all this data then becomes a problem. Ultimately, the security snowball effect begins, creating a lot more work for ourselves.

All in a day’s work

Working from home is a topic we have briefly discussed on the blog. It would be better for both the employer and employee by saving the time and energy of travelling to and from the office. A key consideration is identity management – are you who you say you are? And can you log in safe in the knowledge that you can work securely?

All the passwords in the world cannot account for the actions of people and human error is inevitable. We recall the time that two MPs left vital disks on a train, which sparked a heated debate over data protection and security. Whether it was a paper or electronic file, it would have happened anyway, that’s what humans do, we make mistakes.

It’s not personal

Identity theft, fraud, hackers, phishing scams… When it comes to personal internet security the list is also endless.

I’m sure we have all received emails asking for money or claiming we have won the lottery – if only!

I’m not justifying it, but faced with the old fashioned image of a thief in a mask robbing a painting or bank with plenty of money fills me with a strange kind of nostalgia and empathy. But stealing from innocent, hard-working individuals is just wrong.

Risky Business

IT security risks are a natural by-product of our modern 2.0 world. Yes there are risks involved and yes the consequences of it all going wrong can be devastating, but the benefits of in the cloud technologies and services by far outweigh the cons.

What do you see as being the next big threats in IT security? As IT professionals you will know better than the average person how to stay safe online, but if you have any unusual tips or stories to share, leave a comment or write your own IT blog. Or if you’re heading down to Infosec, let us know how it goes. I also came across this IT blog about the future of security.

Humankind over the last few generations has been fortunate enough to see technology grow by leaps and bounds. Gone are the days of sitting around a campfire trying to invent the wheel, rather we are now pushing the boundaries of technological progress and aiming high.

I invent, you invent, we invent.

When people think of inventors, they picture frazzled old men with singed hair and dodgy accents. Well, I did anyway, until I started researching this article. In fact, an inventor might be a wisened genius (Leonardo Di Vinci), a female visionary scientist (Marie Curie), or a forgetful young boy (Frank Epperson).

Inventions are the result of careful planning, research and years, maybe decades of hard work – well, sometimes. Dictionary.com defines an inventor as “one who devises some new process, appliance, machine, or article”; no mention of effort or timeframe. It’s little surprise that some of the major inventions of all time have been accidents!

Technology is great!

Maybe one of the most significant happy accidents of our time so far has been the creation of the world-wide web (not to be confused with the internet). The use of HTML has fundamentally changed human behaviour and interaction, and although usually prettied up with the use of extra tools, the language that is the corner-stone in the creation of the web, is still going strong, and contemporary web browsers can be seen to incorporate many of the original Mosaic GUIs and experiences.

Other accidental technological inventions high on my list include plastic, without which we wouldn’t have had anything to record movies on, among the hundreds upon thousands of other uses that plastic has in our daily lives. Vulcanised rubber and safety glass are other greats that don’t often get mentioned, even though they have revolutionised the way we travel; imagine having to change your car tyres every time they cracked due to adverse weather, or having your windscreen shatter at every pothole.

Another recent and amazing turn of events comes from research at Oxford University’s Institute of Psychiatry, where Dr Emily Holmes is using Tetris to erase painful and traumatic memories. I’ll bet Alexey Pajitnov didn’t expect that!

RIP IT

Not all technological inventions are considered to be the saviours of the modern world. In fact, some have been downright failures. Take ‘Audrey’ by 3Com, for example. The Internet Appliance that was set to change the way we used our kitchens forever, flopped just as hard as her predecessors. What about the MiniDisc? Although it found some popularity in Asia, the rest of the world raised dubious eyebrows and looked away for the most-part. But my favourite has to be Sinclair C5; the battery-powered vehicle was mercilessly ridiculed by media and populous alike in the 80s. Designed for Britons, nevertheless the C5 had problems with cold wet weather and hills, and reached a top speed of 15mph, leading to it being told to get on its bike after only two months of production.

Weird and wonderful…

As you may have guessed by now and from my previous article, War of the Wireless, this writer has a soft spot for techno-gadgets. As such, I couldn’t end this post without including a few of the more ‘interesting inventions’ that have never really taken off – you will have to use your own judgement as to whether these are truth or myth.

At third place: The Flying Saucer Camera; this was supposedly invented for the Air Force to allow pictures to be taken of flying saucers so scientists could judge the source and make-up of such objects.

Runner up: The automatic opening and closing toilet bowl lid. This little bit of magic detects when a ‘depositor’ is approaching and opens the lid, then closes it when the person is done and has left. It’s a shame we can’t fit a chip to remind men to put the seat down…

The winner: Finally, at first place has to be the Momenta PC. Supposedly developed by Microsoft, it looks like a hi-tech necklace (little wonder it’s my favourite), something they would be wearing on Star Trek. Apparently they come in different colours and styles, just like netbooks. Wifi features, body sensors and a touch gesture interface means that it can be used anywhere, at anytime. I’m still not quite sure how, but it looks pretty!

So, what do we know?

An inventor can come from any background and any discipline, all they need is the right setting and an idea, no matter how wacky – and what better way to get that than by getting a fresh start in a new job. The IT Job Board has a range of new positions available daily to broaden your horizons and bring out the genius in you. Apply today and take your next steps on the road to success!

Following International Women’s Day on March 8th the media has been scattered with women’s stories and issues. You may have noticed the government’s advertising campaign to close the gender pay gap or new television programmes including Girls on the Frontline or Last Woman Standing.

The IT Job Board decided to jump on the bandwagon and investigate women IT by surveying IT professionals across Europe.

The numbers speak volumes

In all territories the majority of survey respondents stated that the number of women working in their IT department is 1-3 (38% in the UK), followed by none at all (20%), despite the fact that most survey participants work in IT departments of over 21 staff members.

One encouraging statistic that emerged from the survey is that most IT professionals feel that the number of women in IT is increasing (45%).

Working culture – the UK IT industry

When asked whether conditions were equal for men and women working in the industry the response was virtually 50:50, however the answers differed somewhat when we broke it down by gender.

Almost all women responded using the phrase ‘boys club’ and stated that it was tough being a female in such a male dominated environment. They cited fewer opportunities both in terms of training and salary, having to tolerate sexist, old-fashioned attitudes and stereotypes.

On the other hand, the males’ answers were divided between those that were sympathetic to a female’s position in the industry and those that felt favouritism exists for women. One sentiment was that female employees get an ‘easy ride’ with more time off sick or leave to have a family.

Interestingly, when we drilled down further, the men that were supportive of women and understood the difficulties they faced all have children.

The nature of the industry

It is evident that women working in the IT industry face the age old classic that women in any other industry face: the prejudice of having maternity leave. Yet fathers to be could face the same dilemma when a new law comes into force in April 2011 extending paternity leave to six months.

Two differentiating factors between women in IT and women working in other industries did emerge from this survey:

1) As we commented in our blog Are you working overtime? working in the IT industry has always demanded long hours and often unpaid overtime, which can be virtually impossible if you have family commitments. As women still bear the main responsibility for childcare, this will inevitably affect their career.

2) The fact that a culture of an old working men’s club is still going strong within the industry.

Having children is an essential part of the circle of life and it is completely absurd that women should be penalised for this.

Battle of the sexes

So my conclusion is this:
Wake up guys, we are now in the 21st century, and like it or not us women are quite capable of doing anything you men can do.

This, in my mind, actually makes us the stronger sex – but I would say that, wouldn’t I?!

The men who do respect women in the industry are those that are comfortable and confident enough within themselves that they have nothing to fear from women entering the industry.

Solution?

Our findings from the Green IT survey revealed that many of you feel working from home would not only be better for the environment but would also allow a better work life balance for both sexes.

Regardless of sex it is important you get a fair deal in the workplace and that does not only mean the right salary but also fair working conditions.

If not, you know where to go! www.theitjobboard.co.uk