Scope creep. Team members who don't understand what's expected of them. Poor inter-departmental communication. These are just some of the problems project managers constantly face. So how do you keep projects under control? CIO.com asked dozens of project managers and project management experts to find out. Here are their top 13 suggestions for dealing with the challenges all project managers face at one time or another—and for keeping projects in check. . "Nothing kills IT projects faster than poor management. It's tough because most developers aren't suited to management and most managers are clueless regarding developer types, but it's worth the effort." . Not only must you choose the right project manager, but you need to "support your project manager with the right team members (business analyst, QA manager, etc.) so the project manager can [properly] manage the project and [doesn't] do all the work."
Is your video giving you the evil eye? The evil video stabilization software, Defishr renders your fish-eyed video into the flat-horizon variety without a whole lot of work on your part. Defishr costs $99, and has a free demo. I tried correcting three fish-eyed videos from different cameras with Defishr, and it worked very well on all of them. The interface is simple, and lets you preview the either the original video, the de-fished video, or both side-by-side. If the video has stabilization problems, Prodad recommends that you take care of those after using Defishr. That said, I took care of it up front with decent results. Jitter and other artifacts are more noticeable in de-fished video. While Defishr comes with 14 profiles, including one generic, to handle a number of cameras, you can also create your own by recording the provided calibration grid, then feeding the video to the program. There's an embedded link to an instructional video in the separate calibration module. Defishr does have some rough spots, all interface-related. It's apparently not bright enough to discontinue the looping playback when you want to export a file. The program sat there, failing to export until I cancelled said export, stopped playback manually, and restarted the export process. The inability to paste in the product serial number rather than type it in is a nuisance, but at least it's just a one-time nuisance. Also, without the third-party codecs Defishr wants to add to your system during installation, Defishr wouldn't open MP4 files, even though I have Xvid installed to handle that particular codec(and the reason I initially skipped installing the others).
Yahoo recently made waves when CEO Marissa Mayer revoked all work-from-home arrangements and mandated that employees show up at the office. However, the real-world data Mayer reportedly based her decision upon is not a valid metric for work-from-home performance. According to reports, to determine how much time remote workers spend connected to Yahoo. She found that many were connecting infrequently, if at all, implying that those working from home were doing more "home" and less "work." Hopefully Yahoo's CEO looked beyond the virtual private network (VPN) logs before making a decision. VPN logs alone are not enough to prove that people working from home are slacking off, because connecting to the company network is not the same thing as delivering results.
A federal judge today ignored convicted hacker Andrew Auernheimer's leniency plea in sentencing him to 41 months in prison for illegally accessing email addresses and other data belonging to more than 120,000 iPad subscribers from AT&T's networks. U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton of the District Court in New Jersey also sentenced Auernheimer to an additional three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay AT&T more than $73,000 in restitution for damages stemming from his actions. The sentence is the maximum that federal prosecutors had sought against Auernheimer. their client only deserved months of non-custodial probation, at most, for his offenses. They had argued for leniency on the grounds that Auernheimer's actions were not motivated by fraud and did not cause any direct harm to AT&T's systems.
Microsoft said it will start automatically pushing Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to customers Tuesday as a last-ditch move before it drops the original 2009 edition of Windows 7 from support next month. , including security updates, after April 9, next month's regularly-scheduled Patch Tuesday. Although Microsoft has made Windows 7 SP1 available via Automatic Updates—Windows' default consumer update service—for more than two years, customers were required to approve the new version before it installed. .
in this mobile-influenced computing era, complete with desktop interfaces and a variety of user-experience options designed for solid desktop productivity. distribution is surely among the more popular flavors with business users, of course, and this week, fans of the free and open source operating system have a chance to do their bit to help make it even better. on which fans and users can help improve the software. No training or experience is required, so if you appreciate what the Ubuntu developers and community have accomplished so far, now's the time to lend a hand.
, and Microsoft is getting serious about convincing people to buy or subscribe to the new productivity suite before the trial ends. For the past few weeks, Microsoft has notified preview users about the close of the free Office test period by using an alert bar below Office’s menu ribbon. Now, however, Office Preview users are seeing pop-up windows alerting them that their product has expired. You can still close these pop-ups and continue using the Office 2013 preview, but the days of working on Microsoft’s dime are numbered. 12 days from now. When the preview period does end, Office Preview apps will enter a read-only mode.
Of all the magical things a smartphone can do, I rank business-card OCR among the highlights. Think of it: Instead of manually transcribing each and every card into your phone or desktop address book, you simply snap a photo and presto: an app transcribes everything for you. that it "worked with impressive accuracy." I'll second that: After CES last January, I used BCR on a huge stack of cards, and it worked almost flawlessly—especially on cards with light backgrounds and dark text. Talk about five bucks well spent.
The countdown for Microsoft to end support of Windows Phone 8 and 7.8 has already started, and the two mobile operating systems could be orphaned as soon as the second half of 2014, according to Microsoft's own support calendar. indicates Windows Phone 8 and 7.8 are already past their lifecyle start dates. According to the listing, Microsoft plans to end mainstream support for Windows Phone 8 in July 2014, just 16 months from now, and support for Windows Phone 7.8 will end later in September 2014. Regarding the schedule, Microsoft said it “will make updates available for the operating system on your phone, including security updates, for a period of 18 months after the lifecycle start date. Distribution of the updates may be controlled by the mobile operator or the phone manufacturer from which you purchased your phone.” Microsoft hasn't made any commitment to updates for every compatible device. If you’re looking to buy a Windows Phone 8 device now on a typical two-year contract, Microsoft's statement could mean that by the end of your deal, you'll have a handset that is no longer supported with software updates. If still offered, the updates could be intermittent and, as Microsoft noted, “update availability will also vary by country, region, and hardware capabilities.”
From what I can tell, regularly turning a hard drive on and off can wear it down. But so can running it around the clock. For that matter, you can kill a drive by leaving it off and untouched for too long (I've actually done that). In other words, these things are fragile, and there's little agreement on how best to treat them. I checked with two experts on hard drive technology, and got two very different answers to the leave on/turn off controversy.
Die Leser haben ihr liebstes Gadget gewählt und das Verdikt ist eindeutig: Eine neue Spielkonsole und eine revolutionäre Datenbrille sind begehrter als alle Smartphones dieser Welt.
Wer WhatsApp installiert, soll demnächst auch dafür zahlen müssen. Die Entwicklerfirma will noch in diesem Jahr ein Abomodell für iOS-Geräte einführen. Glück hat, wer bereits Kunde ist.
Wer Ashton Kutcher in der Rolle des Apple-Gründers Steve Jobs sehen will, muss sich noch gedulden. Der Premierenstart wurde auf unbestimmte Zeit verschoben.
Der US-Student Cody Wilson arbeitet an der Schusswaffe aus dem 3D-Drucker. Nun hat er eine Lizenz des US-Justizministeriums erhalten. Er darf Waffen herstellen und verkaufen - theoretisch.
Männer, fangt an zu sparen, denn dieses Jahr habt Ihr die Qual der Wahl: Soll es Googles revolutionäre Datenbrille sein, Apples schicke iWatch oder doch lieber die lange ersehnte PlayStation 4?
«SimCity» startete holprig. Serverprobleme bremsten die Spieler aus. Die Kritik war heftig. Unser Gameredaktor meint, dass es sich dennoch um eine der besten Simulationen handelt.
Der Lösegeldtrojaner ist zurück. In der Schweiz häufen sich die Fälle von plötzlich gesperrten Computern. Die Besitzer werden von Unbekannten zur Kasse gebeten.
Evolution statt Revolution: Was Apple bei den letzten iPhone-Vorstellungen passierte, gilt nun auch für Samsung und sein neues Flaggschiff. Ernüchterung macht sich breit.
Adblock Plus ermöglicht ungestörtes Surfen und gehört zu den populärsten Erweiterungen für Web-Browser. Nach dem Rauswurf aus dem Google Play Store befürchten die Entwickler Schlimmes.
Samsung hat sein neustes Flaggschiff enthüllt. Das Galaxy S4 gibt sich konservativ und setzt auf Upgrades statt Revolution. Wir konnten das Gerät bereits testen.
Datenbrillen sind nicht nur für die ungewollt Gefilmten ein Problem. Wie dieser witzige YouTube-Film zeigt, kann es auch für den Träger selbst gefährlich werden.
Samsung hat in der Nacht auf Freitag das neuste Galaxy enthüllt. In unserer Diashow sehen Sie die Evolution der Samsung-Handys von 1988 bis zum jüngsten Spross - dem S4.
Der beliebte Instant-Messenger entert das BlackBerry. Im ersten Jahr ist der SMS-Ersatz gratis, danach wird jährlich ein Franken fällig.
Sie hacken fremde Computer und spionieren ihre Opfer über deren Webcam aus: Die so genannten Ratter. Die wenigsten dieser Cyber-Spanner wurden je gefasst - und es werden immer mehr.