Hill Associates Telecom Newsletter

Identity theft tutorial
The New York Times has produced a series of videos about identity theft, which shows how easy it is to steal someone's identity. It makes those Citibank commercials very real. In this video, 18-year-old Shiva Brent Sharma explains how he became an identity thief.

Which celebrity do you look like?
MyHeritage is not your typical genealogy site. Yes, it provides free services such as the ability to create your own family site for sharing information, software to create and upload your family tree, and an extensive search tool that covers hundreds of databases. However, it also applies advanced face recognition technology to personal photos. To illustrate how this works, it is letting users find out which celebrity they most look like. MyHeritage has uploaded thousands of images of celebrities from around the world. Users then upload a picture of themselves, which the face recognition software compares to the celebrity images. It's cool, it's quick, and it's free. Try it now!

MyHeritage hopes that once users try out this feature, they will also take the time to discover the other cool features and subscribe.

Business continuance and security continuance are hot
Protecting data is not just for the Fortune 5000. Every week brings another story of lost data. (A related story from a March issue of Information Week highlights the costs associated with security.) The challenge can often be greater for smaller companies as they wrestle with how to deal with budgets as well as data protection. This article from USA TODAY focuses on small businesses. Hear even more about confidentiality, integrity, and availability (the C-I-A triad of security) in our podcast.

Net neutrality: The debate continues
The topic of net neutrality will be with us for a while. Our first podcast on the topic was back in May in tHAWT episode 5. The debate appeared to be over when video franchising regulations dropped net neutrality, but no, the debate continues. Senator Ted Stevens created quite a stir with his comments, which we discussed at some length in tHAWT episode 11. The associated blog post continues the discussion and points to sites offering some interesting perspectives.

The Web continues to have some fun links on the issue. A favorite is still the Ninja. On the opposite side of the debate we have a more pedestrian animation. Recent articles include one in Fortune where the author proposes that the cable and telephone companies are losing the public, and they need a new spokesperson. One thing is clear: net neutrality will be debated for some time.

RFID
RFID is a very promising technology. A recent Sacramento Bee article provides some general uses of RFID. The National Cattlemen's Beef Association has joined other organizations such as the USDA to develop the United States Animal Identification Plan, which proposes that ranchers voluntarily use RFID and other technologies to track the movement of cattle. Such technologies can prevent the passage of infectious diseases to humans. RFID has also been used to limit bar fraud. See our podcast series for much more about RFID technology and its applications.

Understanding the lifecycle of corporate training
This week we begin a series of blog posts on training in the corporate environment. Over 25 years of providing training to the telecommunications sector has given us tremendous insight as to where corporations tend to operate effectively and where they tend to stumble when making training-related decisions. This series will look at the training lifecycle and suggests strategies at each stage of the lifecycle for getting the maximum return on the training investment. Read the first entry in this series here.

Just what you need, more ways to watch TV!
Convergence is not just about voice and data anymore. Skype (www.skype.com), the voice over the Internet application, now supports videoconferencing, file sharing, application sharing, and instant messaging. Similar things can be said about Yahoo IM and AOL Instant Messenger, to name a few. And now there is an application that permits users to place-shift their television (i.e., watch it across the Internet from a different location) using Skype! (Think Slingbox.) Continuing in this theme, SightSpeed has launched the latest version of its product, which combines video and audio calling (including off-net), video email and blogging, and place-shifted television without the hardware. Best of all, many of these features are available for free. Check out PC Magazine's review of SightSpeed's product. It's definitely worth a look!

Personal searching and security?
Microsoft has Defender and an internal firewall, Google has Ad-Aware and Norton Antivirus software on its site, and now Yahoo and Symantec are teaming up to offer personal security products to consumers. This article identifies a teaming arrangement that allows users to secure their computers; these efforts will hopefully help reduce the number of unprotected computers on the Internet. If only the Vatican had these safeguards.