B&N, Microsoft team up on Nook, college businesses
An infusion of money from Microsoft Corp. sent Barnes & Noble Inc.'s stock zooming Monday, as the software giant established a way to get back into the e-books business.
The two companies are teaming up to create a subsidiary for Barnes & Noble's e-book and college textbook businesses, with Microsoft paying $300 million for a minority stake.
Shares of Barnes & Noble jumped $10.41, or 76 percent, to $24.09 in morning trading. The opening price of $26 was a three-year high. Microsoft's stock rose 2 cents to $32. Read more...
US gov agencies & colleges are now demanding access to Facebook accounts
According to a report by MSNBC, US government agencies and colleges are now demanding access to applicants’ Facebook accounts — through friending and/or actual password requests. No longer can users hide behind Facebook’s privacy options, because if you want a job or a college degree, you have to give up the goods.
The good news is this isn’t happening everywhere…yet, and hopefully it won’t spread too far. For government jobs that involve high level secrecy for the sake of security, I completely understand surrendering your online information. As for college students, if they’ve made an effort to be private, universities have no right to ask for such sensitive information. It’s like asking to log into email accounts five years ago or demanding a student’s diary. In other words, it is unacceptable. Read more...
7 key skills new IT grads are lacking
Greg Taffet is scouting for talent.
Taffet, the CIO of U.S. Gas & Electric Inc. in North Miami Beach, Fla., brought on four new staffers in the past six months and is looking to add 11 more to his current team of 20. His list of open positions includes an EDI programmer, a risk management programmer, a CRM programmer, a business analyst and an assistant IT manager.
Taffet says he doubts any new college grad could easily fill any of those roles. Undergraduate and graduate programs aren't able to keep up with the needs of enterprise IT shops, he says.
"It's a horrible statement to say, but there's just not enough time to [learn in college] all the skills that people need to be successful. We are expecting more and more, and universities are supplying more, but we're asking for still more," Taffet says.
What "more" do Taffet and other IT leaders want? They continue to value the "soft skills" -- particularly communication skills, customer service skills and an understanding of how to behave professionally -- that have topped their list for years. Read more...
IBM aims cloud services at universities, colleges
IBM announced a cloud-computing service on Thursday that will let universities and colleges build custom private clouds that can be integrated into public cloud services. IBM also has a similar initiative underway for K-12 schools.
The IBM SmartCloud for Education, as it's called, "is an infrastructure service," says Mike King, vice president of global education industry at IBM. The service is built on IBM hardware servers and uses open software from the Virtual Computing Lab which is built by and for education under a collaboration project that started a number of years ago with North Carolina State University. Some technology developed by IBM has been donated to the Apache Foundation. Read more...