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Social media use at work exploding, but beware alarmists

Jessica Stillman — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:01:43 +0000

It only takes a peek around the desktops of the average office today to see that social network use at work is way up. But by exactly how much is this growth impacting corporate networks? Firewall company Palo Alto Networks analyzes the traffic on its customers’ networks semi-annually to answer questions like this, and this week it released it’s latest findings, summarized in the infographic below.

The headline takeaway is that employees are shifting from being passive observers of social networks while at work to active participants, dramatically increasing their use of these networks (in fact, total social networking traffic more than tripled). But despite BusinessWeek claiming social-mad employees are hogging bandwidth, don’t be too alarmed about the increase in usage. All that posting and game playing only accounts for a total of about one percent of Internet bandwidth, and Palo Alto Networks is stressing that while some people are certainly slacking off, an increasing amount of social networking use is also for legitimate work purposes. File sharing is way up as well but also only accounts for about one percent of total network bandwidth.

“At first glance, the shifts in usage patterns may imply that there is a significant drain on productivity and a strain on the networking infrastructure, possibly jeopardizing other, more business critical, bandwidth sensitive applications. Clearly social networking applications are being used for both business and personal purposes, but the overall impact to the bandwidth infrastructure is small,” says the report. A more serious risk than wasting time or bandwidth may be threats to data security. The report suggests networks are harder to secure than many IT pros imagine.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr user Franco Bouly.

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InterContinental uses hotels as incubators and relies on the cloud

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:05:37 +0000

InterContinental Hotels Group, the luxury hotel chain, has spent the last five and half years creating a technology platform for its business that helps it span multiple brands, cultures and continents, according to Tom Conophy, EVP and CIO of the hotel company. Speaking at the GigaOM Net:Work conference Thursday, Conophy explained that the team of developers built the platform themselves and it now acts as the back-end for everything from reservations to buying liquor from the minibar.

“A hotel is a microcosm of a corporation,” he said explaining how the company has a variety of different technology needs. However, he’s sensitive to the fact that InterContinental doesn’t own most of the hotels it manages, which means he doesn’t force technology down the throats of the hotel owners. Instead he lets different hotels act as incubators for ideas, believing that successful ideas will get adopted.

“We have research friendly hotels that want to the latest trick and that gets people’s attention,” Conophy said. From there it can spread like wildfire as one hotel owner talks to another. He went on to explain to any entrepreneurs hoping to get their foot in the door at the hotel chain, that they should be prepared to explain how they are different from their competitor and send someone who isn’t a “junior level salesman.”

He also predicted that the bandwidth in hotels would increase over time, although he didn’t get specific or explain if hotels would keep charging exorbitant rates for that access.

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Photo by Pinar Ozger.

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Internet Bandwidth Is a Finite Resource

Charles Hamilton — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 21:00:11 +0000

A while back, I suggested that Flash, and more generally, video, was being too heavily used on the web. Despite the lively discussion that ensued from that post, I still stand by my original opinions. And a recent post from a Flash developer sparked another vigorous discussion, with many of the commentators feeling that Flash is on the way out.

Since the dawn of the Internet, it’s been an article of faith that connection speeds will get faster and costs will drop. We might be seeing the end of that trend. If predictions are correct, we’ll be facing a mobile bandwidth shortage in just a couple of years.

Once upon a time, web developers knew that we had to keep graphics to a minimum, since many Internet users had slow dial-up connections. Today, we’ve become dependent on multimedia, which, in many cases, is a crutch for those who don’t have the time or just don’t want to bother to write effective site content. This is a bad idea. Sites with content that is wholly, or mostly, contained in videos are probably not reaching:

Most of the people who use mobile devices, including iPhones. Over 50 percent of Internet shoppers are using mobile devices, most of which don’t support Flash, and have small screens that don’t display images — especially moving images — well.
Many people with mobile connections who have data plans that cap bandwidth use. Exceeding those caps can be very expensive. You and I are probably already considered part of the “mobile workforce,” and this category is growing rapidly. One-third of all workers are anticipated to be mobile by 2013. These users will likely be on capped connections.
People who don’t install Flash for security reasons.
People with old browsers.
People with visual disabilities.
People who are behind corporate firewalls.
People who use software or browser add-ons that block multimedia content.

If you’re a web developer, or are updating your web presence, try not to get too dependent on video, audio and other bandwidth hogs. I like a friendly multimedia experience as much as anyone. But do yourself a favor and ask these questions.

Is this video (or audio) really necessary, or is it being included because it’s easier than actually writing a cogent description of what the site is about?
If you must include a video, then what will people see if they can’t load the file? Will the site degrade gracefully? That is, will people see helpful alternative content?

It’s possible that faster, better and cheaper bandwidth may be on the horizon. Google seems to want that. But they are also pushing projects to increase the efficiency of the web. So living with limited bandwidth may be the next “inconvenient tech truth,” and we should plan our web projects accordingly.

How can you make your web projects more bandwidth-efficient?

Image from sxc.hu user CDWaldi

Connectivity From Very Rural Places – Part 2

Aliza Sherman — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:00:56 +0000

In Part 1 of this little series of posts, I talked about my move from Anchorage to Tok, Alaska. I went from acceptable Internet speeds at a fairly reasonable price ($60-ish/month) to barely 512K up and down, a 10 Gig monthly limit and $180/month plus $30 per Gig over the limit. As a web worker (read: Bandwidth Hog). I’m still reeling from the adjustment and keeping a careful eye on my bandwidth usage daily.

So how have these connectivity challenges and unexpected expenses affected my web work? And how am I compensating for these…developments?

1. Images

There is no way around uploading and downloading images. With all of the blogging I do, images are key to my work, and although I could link to images using a URL instead of embedding them, it is less reliable so I’ll stick with uploading. Luckily, for the most part, the image sizes aren’t over a MB each, however, when they are, I find that it is too much effort to size them so upload them anyway.

When it comes to images, they are the lowest on the totem pole of bandwidth chompers, so I’m not changing much in this area. If I’m down to my last MBs of bandwidth allowance before the end of any month, I may suck it up and start sizing images although the benefits will be minimal.

Verdict? Not giving up the pics.

2. Audio

I’ve been podcasting professionally and have to upload or email an MP3 regularly to my producer. I also need to upload my own podcasts to LibSyn although I’ve been a bit remiss with that lately since it is usually about Second Life (see “Second Life” header below). The pro-podcasting show MP3 is between 5-6 MB per segment.

Was able to email the files the other day which is a plus. Must do this 1-2 times weekly. So that is 4-8 files or up to 48 MB per month.

Verdict? Got to do audio.

3. Video

The first week I arrived here, a DVD also arrived for me. It contained a 330 MB television commercial for a client. My charge was to use mDialog’s mLoader to compress it and upload it onto mDialog, then convert the compressed file using QuickTime into a .mov file and upload to YouTube.

mDialog’s uploading app is slick, and it was doing a great job compressing the video, but alas, the file was still too large for my connection. Maybe I could have waited a few hours, however, I was also worried about frittering away so much of my bandwidth allowance on a single file.

When it comes to my own blogs, video is something I don’t want to give up. I may have to suck it up and pay an extra $30 for a Gig overage just to keep my personal videos on my blogs. Yet I must be careful to limit myself to just a Gig over per month or my monthly Internet expenses will get out of control.

Verdict? Farm out heavy video uploads to my contractors in more bandwidth-rich places. Suck up any extra expense for uploading my own videos.

4. Video and Audio Skype

Besides video chatting with my folks who are in Florida, I am video chatting and audio Skype-ing with colleagues. And recently, I attended a Tweetup in Anchorage via video Skype.

At first, I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to get clear audio, much less video. But other than the very occasional buggy sound or picture, my overall Skype experience from rural places has been pretty impressive.

Verdict? Skype rules for rural connectivity!

5. Second Life

Ever since I heard I was moving to Tok, I began researching to see what Internet access solutions would be available to me, I’ve panicked about my Second Life activities. Would I have to give them up? I shuddered to think, especially when my Second Life Web-based machinima TV show – REAL BIZ in SL – was starting to take off. In fact, we had the entire month of January booked in advance with guests from around the world (companies and nonprofits using Second Life).

I finally had my show manager push back all the guests until February when I knew (or hoped) I’d be in Anchorage rather than risk getting to Tok and finding out my avatar wouldn’t budge.

The other day, I finally tried to log into Second Life, expecting it to be a futile effort. I got in. I was also able to get onto Skype audio at the same time.

I made a note before logging in of my bandwidth usage to see what I was in for. Turns out a little over half an hour on Second Life with Skype is almost comparable to several hours on video Skype. Each ate up about half a Gig. If I limit my video Skyping or Second Lifing to 2x a month, that means 1-2 Gigs of my 10 Gig allottment gone.

Verdict? Be strategic and frugal, definitely not bandwidth happy, but don’t totally give up Second Life.

6. Bandwidth Paranoia

Every time I get a particularly large file attached to an email now, I look at it with a sinking feeling. “How much is that going to cost me?” is the first thing that runs through my head. And “Do I really need that file?” follows shortly after. I have to admit I’ve stopped downloading funny photos and videos from friends already.

For business, I respond to anyone sending me something that seems large and ask them to send it my my assistant or a colleague for viewing, vetting, optimizing, sizing or distributing in any way. I’m preparing everyone on my team with their new role as “Large File Handler” as needed.

Verdict? Paranoia will save me money.

Once I get my next bill, I’ll know if I have to be even more stringent with my big file policies and processes. When I saw my first DSL bill at $258, I almost choked. That was the last month of December along with the entire month of January paid in advance.

I’m just a high-speed gal in a slow-speed world. You just do what you gotta do.

What are you paying for connectivity? And could you still do your job without it?

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