Attack of the Podcasters

• By Lafe Low
• 06/01/2007

The editorial content is focused on "serious" bloggers and podcasters, not just your average, everyday geeks. Larry Genkin, CEO of Larstan Publishing Inc., the magazine's parent company, figures total circulation in all formats will reach 250,000 within the next year. The digital edition and the podcast edition are free. A print subscription, however, costs $79 per year ($99 international). The fact that a magazine of that nature is still coming out on paper and ink should be proof positive that actual, corporeal magazines will never go away. Check 'em out at www.bloggerandpodcaster.com.

Virtual Gains
Virtualization continues to gain respect and momentum as a technology and soon figures to be an essential component of any organization's IT infrastructure. Storage virtualization, disaster recovery and SAN management vendor DataCore Software Corp. has partnered with Centia Ltd. Centia distributes the smart "Access" and virtualization tools. This gives DataCore a huge leg up in the U.K. and boosts Centia's value proposition.

By adding a virtual storage layer, DataCore essentially does for storage what VMware Inc. does for servers and what Citrix Systems Inc. does for desktops. Under the terms of this freshly minted agreement, Centia will distribute DataCore's storage virtualization, disaster recovery and continuous data protection solutions.

Investment Firm Issues Web Warning
Would that other companies were so proactive -- investment services broker AXA Distributors LLC is beefing up its Web site and refining online processes to mitigate the likelihood of fraud.

These three major upgrades ought to help AXA Distributors keep a tight grip on its Web site:

• The Message Center gives each registered representative specific details about his book of business, including an e-mail record of all client-related transactions.
• The Staff Access Level Mechanism lets firms decide on the types of information that individual reps can view, including client account information, policy details and underwriting details. This ought to help newbies and veterans alike.
• The E-mail Subscriptions Mechanism lets reps receive notices about product updates and money manager changes.

AXA is also distributing the following "Tips for Reps to Protect Privacy and Security":

• Whether prompted or not, change your password every 90 days.
• Don't share your ID and password unless absolutely necessary. If it's necessary, periodically review your account activity with the user to ensure that your information, and your clients' information, is safe and secure.
• If you access the AXAdistributors.com Web site, or other secure sites, from a computer that's different than the one you use regularly, be sure you've completely logged off the site. Just to be safe, you should shut down the browser before leaving the work area.
• If you don't currently use anti-virus and anti-spyware or security software on your computer, consider doing so. If you do, make sure it's up to date.

Sound advice -- and demonstrating that kind of proactive thinking about security ought to make AXA's customers feel safe having the company manage their moola.

Share and Share Alike
Archiving e-mails and documents is a requirement in this world of regulatory compliance. Just keeping them in a massive digital shoebox won't do you much good when it comes time to retrieve or manage all those files.

Using SharePoint as a repository works well, but you can't just drag and drop documents to store them, work with discrete message properties like message addresses and subject lines as SharePoint metadata, classify content for search purposes or sort and filter metadata -- or can you? Colligo Networks Inc. is pumping up SharePoint with a new e-mail content management system that's an Outlook add-in called Colligo Contributor. It will perform all the above functions and organize your content without leaving Outlook. Sharing with SharePoint just got better.