There are some tools out there that make videocasting really easy. All you need is 12 seconds of your time, a webcam, microphone and a willing or perhaps not so willing co-star:
sreymer on 12seconds.tv
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
So you want to be a podcaster?
One of the questions that inevitably comes out of Web 2.0 workshops is how can I produce my own podcasts?
I have to admit my initial response is a rather skeptical, REALLY?
Why am I so skeptical? Let's look at what a podcast really is. Let's look at the definition from Wikipedia:
"A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added. Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
"The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast", the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred from a personal computer to a mobile device after they are downloaded. As more devices other than iPods became able to synchronize with podcast feeds, the term was redefined by some parties as a backronym for "Personal On Demand broadCASTING"."
Okay, so when I hear a librarian say s/he wants to do a podcast, I interpret it to mean that s/he wants to offer an on-going audio/video program for syndication over the internet. Frequently, that's not what s/he means at all, instead s/he is using podcast to cover any audio or video program. Perhaps s/he just wants to take a video of the end of summer reading. If that's what you mean, there will be another blog post just for you. And the good news is that producing an occasional audio/video program is SO much easier than producing a podcast.
I think the first task of anyone starting a new project is to see what others are doing so you can get a good idea of what works and what doesn't. So, if you haven't done so already, by all means download iTunes, Juice, Ziepod or one of the numerous other podcast aggregators out there. Then subscribe to some library-related podcasts. Unfortunately, many seem to have been brief experiments and are no longer being updated. The only current ones in my iTunes library are podcasts of author/speaker events at some of the larger public libraries: Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles. But do look around and see what you find. I also recommend an archived presentation from the SirsiDynix Institute: A Beginner's Guide to Podcasting: Part 2 - A Creator's Guide. It's over 2 years old already but provides a good overview.
So what do you need to be a podcaster?
1) Passion. This can be a lot of work and thus tough to maintain over the long run. So pick a topic area you really feel passionate about. This advice comes from some of the big name podcasters who've been doing it for years.
2) Set some reasonable timetables and goals. IMO, a real podcast should have new programs at least once a month. You want to reward your subscribers with a regular product. So, let's say you decide to create a podcast highlighting your library's programs for the upcoming month. That means next month's program needs to be available for download by the end of the current month. In the meantime, you need to decide how long the finished product will be - say 1/2 hour; who you'll need to interview - story time readers - what are their themes, potential books?; other children's/teens'/adult program leaders. Next come up with some scripts so you'll know what to ask them. The key is to keep it brief but to come up with something interesting and compelling to bring people into the library for the programs you're promoting. Set aside some time for editing. Chances are not all the interview content will be what you want so you'll want to cut extra, off topic stuff and perhaps hems and haws, coughs, sneezes, dog barking and other extraneous noises. Then you add information about the program to your feed and upload it to your server.
3) Equipment
There are some hardware/software needs.
The easiest way to take care of a lot of your equipment software needs for creating audio and video content is to get a Mac. They all come with built in web cams and microphones and with audio and video editing software. While the quality is not professional grade, it would suffice for most beginners. And the learning curve is not steep.
Two more points for consideration are copyright and privacy issues. One of the possible uses I've heard mentioned frequently for podcasts is recording story time. You can work out for yourselves whether or not you think it would have an appeal in an audio format but regardless of whether you use audio or video, keep in mind that most of your story time books are under copyright restrictions. Making the text available over the internet in an audio format and/or showing the illustrations in a video format would most certainly be viewed as copyright violations without the permission of the author/publisher. Regarding privacy, I'd be very cautious about including people, especially minors, in any internet video in particular without consent.
My final suggestion is to share the load. Put together a podcast team from among staff, board members, friends, etc. I think that will make it more likely that this will be an on-going library project than if one or a few overworked individuals try to add it to existing workloads. Small libraries may want to join together with others in their area/federation to create joint podcasts. You can share equipment, expenses and expertise.
I have to admit my initial response is a rather skeptical, REALLY?
Why am I so skeptical? Let's look at what a podcast really is. Let's look at the definition from Wikipedia:
"A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added. Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
"The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast", the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred from a personal computer to a mobile device after they are downloaded. As more devices other than iPods became able to synchronize with podcast feeds, the term was redefined by some parties as a backronym for "Personal On Demand broadCASTING"."
Okay, so when I hear a librarian say s/he wants to do a podcast, I interpret it to mean that s/he wants to offer an on-going audio/video program for syndication over the internet. Frequently, that's not what s/he means at all, instead s/he is using podcast to cover any audio or video program. Perhaps s/he just wants to take a video of the end of summer reading. If that's what you mean, there will be another blog post just for you. And the good news is that producing an occasional audio/video program is SO much easier than producing a podcast.
I think the first task of anyone starting a new project is to see what others are doing so you can get a good idea of what works and what doesn't. So, if you haven't done so already, by all means download iTunes, Juice, Ziepod or one of the numerous other podcast aggregators out there. Then subscribe to some library-related podcasts. Unfortunately, many seem to have been brief experiments and are no longer being updated. The only current ones in my iTunes library are podcasts of author/speaker events at some of the larger public libraries: Seattle, Philadelphia, Los Angeles. But do look around and see what you find. I also recommend an archived presentation from the SirsiDynix Institute: A Beginner's Guide to Podcasting: Part 2 - A Creator's Guide. It's over 2 years old already but provides a good overview.
So what do you need to be a podcaster?
1) Passion. This can be a lot of work and thus tough to maintain over the long run. So pick a topic area you really feel passionate about. This advice comes from some of the big name podcasters who've been doing it for years.
2) Set some reasonable timetables and goals. IMO, a real podcast should have new programs at least once a month. You want to reward your subscribers with a regular product. So, let's say you decide to create a podcast highlighting your library's programs for the upcoming month. That means next month's program needs to be available for download by the end of the current month. In the meantime, you need to decide how long the finished product will be - say 1/2 hour; who you'll need to interview - story time readers - what are their themes, potential books?; other children's/teens'/adult program leaders. Next come up with some scripts so you'll know what to ask them. The key is to keep it brief but to come up with something interesting and compelling to bring people into the library for the programs you're promoting. Set aside some time for editing. Chances are not all the interview content will be what you want so you'll want to cut extra, off topic stuff and perhaps hems and haws, coughs, sneezes, dog barking and other extraneous noises. Then you add information about the program to your feed and upload it to your server.
3) Equipment
There are some hardware/software needs.
The easiest way to take care of a lot of your equipment software needs for creating audio and video content is to get a Mac. They all come with built in web cams and microphones and with audio and video editing software. While the quality is not professional grade, it would suffice for most beginners. And the learning curve is not steep.
- Microphones/speakers - many Windows laptops also come with built in microphones and speakers. But while the speakers on newer laptops are tolerable, I've never been able to get the built in microphones to work to my satisfaction. There are a number of reasonably priced headsets on the market which will take care of both headphones and microphones. MSL bought headsets from Plantronics. They work pretty well but you do get some popping noises when you speak. I was looking for a portable microphone/recording unit to use to record family oral histories. I recently bought a Zoom H2 from Amazon. It's small and very portable but the instruction manual is so daunting that I have yet to really try it out.
- There's a lot of audio editing software out there. The most commonly recommended free option is Audacity. It's open source with all the positive and negative connotations therein. I've used it a couple of times with no significant loss of hair from pulling it out in frustration. But I can't say I feel like I know how to use it. And of course, there are a number of software products you can buy from fairly reasonable to very expensive. And, do keep in mind that audio editing and video editing in particular require a fast processor.
- Feed creator software - you can create your own XML feeds but it's much easier to buy software to do it for you. That way you just fill in the blanks. I've never gone so far to create any podcasts myself so I haven't used any of the feed creators enough to recommend one. But some of those referred to the most are FeedForAll and JitBit.
- Web space and bandwidth - this is potentially the most costly on-going expense. Audio and video files in particular are much larger than the average library web page. So they require more web space for storage. An NPR technology highlights program which runs 25 minutes is 11.5 MB. If you have 100 MB of web space available, you won't be able to keep more than 8 programs - not a big deal if this is a monthly event update but something to consider if you're recording local oral histories. And most service providers will charge you extra for what they consider excessive bandwidth usage. If your podcast has 10 subscribers who each download your program once a month, that's 115 MB of bandwidth used. You may need to buy additional space and bandwidth. So, you'll definitely want to ask questions of your service providers as to what's available and what are the costs. Also, when you're deciding whether or not to create podcasts, you may want to take into consideration the bandwidth available to your most likely subscribers. Even a relatively small program of 11.5 MB takes hours to download on a dial-up connection.
- a video camera
- video editing software
- a fairly new computer with fast processor
- a web server with even more space and greater available bandwidth for downloads
Two more points for consideration are copyright and privacy issues. One of the possible uses I've heard mentioned frequently for podcasts is recording story time. You can work out for yourselves whether or not you think it would have an appeal in an audio format but regardless of whether you use audio or video, keep in mind that most of your story time books are under copyright restrictions. Making the text available over the internet in an audio format and/or showing the illustrations in a video format would most certainly be viewed as copyright violations without the permission of the author/publisher. Regarding privacy, I'd be very cautious about including people, especially minors, in any internet video in particular without consent.
My final suggestion is to share the load. Put together a podcast team from among staff, board members, friends, etc. I think that will make it more likely that this will be an on-going library project than if one or a few overworked individuals try to add it to existing workloads. Small libraries may want to join together with others in their area/federation to create joint podcasts. You can share equipment, expenses and expertise.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Security Tip - F-Prot Antivirus
Hi. Long time no see. I just wanted to fill you in on a good product. F-prot Antivirus (http://www.f-prot.com/) is a very good and simple antivirus product I have been using for a few months now. I used to use it back in the early-mid 90s (ancient computer history) and I have recently run across it again. I'm glad I did. It is $5 per PC per year. It that price, I am able to run antivirus on all my public stations now.
I get the corporate edition which provides 10 licenses for $50. There are two installation options. First, you can install a version that will check the Internet to upgrade signature files. Or you can install a version that will check a local shared drive for the signature file. There are a set of fairly easy instructions to setup the shared folder and keep it populated with the current signature file.
I installed the Internet checking version on a server, created a shared folder on that server, arranged for F-prot to put the signature file in that folder, and then all the other stations have the "LAN update" version on them and they check that shared folder to upgrade their signature file.
The reason you would want to do this is so that you don't have every station downloading from the F-prot Internet site when an upgraded signature file becomes available. You would just have one station downloading the file and then sharing it with all its associates on the LAN. This makes for a more efficient use of your WAN connection.
I hope you're all staying nice and warm these days. I'll be back in touch next year.
I get the corporate edition which provides 10 licenses for $50. There are two installation options. First, you can install a version that will check the Internet to upgrade signature files. Or you can install a version that will check a local shared drive for the signature file. There are a set of fairly easy instructions to setup the shared folder and keep it populated with the current signature file.
I installed the Internet checking version on a server, created a shared folder on that server, arranged for F-prot to put the signature file in that folder, and then all the other stations have the "LAN update" version on them and they check that shared folder to upgrade their signature file.
The reason you would want to do this is so that you don't have every station downloading from the F-prot Internet site when an upgraded signature file becomes available. You would just have one station downloading the file and then sharing it with all its associates on the LAN. This makes for a more efficient use of your WAN connection.
I hope you're all staying nice and warm these days. I'll be back in touch next year.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Security Tip - Windows PE
Good job on the new look for your blog, Suzanne.
A couple weeks ago my sister-in-law brought me her PC that would no longer boot. These things get dumped on me from time to time with a request to recover all their documents, make it work, and tune it up so that it runs faster than it ever ran before. My sister-in law is a sweetheart, so I figured I would have a go at it.
I started by trying a variety of the boot options provided through the F8 boot menu. Mostly the boots just ended at the same blank screen, but one presented the BSOD, otherwise known as the Blue Screen of Death. The BSOD is an error screen that happens so frequently on MS operating systems that it has its own acronym. The error message on my sister-in-law’s machine suggested some sort of video problem.
So I’m figuring the PC is dead, I’m going to have to do a fresh install of Windows XP and maybe replace the video card, but I want to save whatever I can from the disk so she can get her documents back. So I pull out the Windows PE disk.
The windows PE disk is something I have just started using, but I can already see that it will be a common tool for a variety of tasks managing a Microsoft environment. Have a look at www.windowspe.com or just search “Windows PE” to find out more. It’s an operating system on a CD. You put it in your CD drive, you boot it, and you have a MS environment to work in. It’s just a command line, but there is a lot you can do with this. Here is what I did with this troublesome PC.
I intended just to copy the entire contents of the hard drive to an external drive. I booted Windows PE to the command prompt, plugged in the external drive, and copied the entire hard drive successfully to a folder on the external drive. I was then free to do a fresh install on the PC’s hard drive because I had captured all my sister-in-law’s documents.
But my sister-in-law has kids, and there is a general principle known to people who manage PCs that PCs don’t work for very long in households with kids in them. So I plugged the external drive into my own PC and ran a virus and spyware scan on the folder of files copied from the offending PC. I found a couple dozen hits. I then went back to my sister-in-law’s PC and, using Windows PE, manually deleted all the couple dozen files that my scanner had identified as malware on the external drive. When I booted her PC off the hard drive again, after deleting those couple dozen files, the PC booted just fine. I then updated her virus scanner, installed and ran the Spybot spyware scanner, and presto she has her PC back.
I have been doing some other things with the Windows PE disk as well. Most interesting is that the Windows PE disk has enabled me to stop using Ghost to image and deploy PCs. More on that later.
A couple weeks ago my sister-in-law brought me her PC that would no longer boot. These things get dumped on me from time to time with a request to recover all their documents, make it work, and tune it up so that it runs faster than it ever ran before. My sister-in law is a sweetheart, so I figured I would have a go at it.
I started by trying a variety of the boot options provided through the F8 boot menu. Mostly the boots just ended at the same blank screen, but one presented the BSOD, otherwise known as the Blue Screen of Death. The BSOD is an error screen that happens so frequently on MS operating systems that it has its own acronym. The error message on my sister-in-law’s machine suggested some sort of video problem.
So I’m figuring the PC is dead, I’m going to have to do a fresh install of Windows XP and maybe replace the video card, but I want to save whatever I can from the disk so she can get her documents back. So I pull out the Windows PE disk.
The windows PE disk is something I have just started using, but I can already see that it will be a common tool for a variety of tasks managing a Microsoft environment. Have a look at www.windowspe.com or just search “Windows PE” to find out more. It’s an operating system on a CD. You put it in your CD drive, you boot it, and you have a MS environment to work in. It’s just a command line, but there is a lot you can do with this. Here is what I did with this troublesome PC.
I intended just to copy the entire contents of the hard drive to an external drive. I booted Windows PE to the command prompt, plugged in the external drive, and copied the entire hard drive successfully to a folder on the external drive. I was then free to do a fresh install on the PC’s hard drive because I had captured all my sister-in-law’s documents.
But my sister-in-law has kids, and there is a general principle known to people who manage PCs that PCs don’t work for very long in households with kids in them. So I plugged the external drive into my own PC and ran a virus and spyware scan on the folder of files copied from the offending PC. I found a couple dozen hits. I then went back to my sister-in-law’s PC and, using Windows PE, manually deleted all the couple dozen files that my scanner had identified as malware on the external drive. When I booted her PC off the hard drive again, after deleting those couple dozen files, the PC booted just fine. I then updated her virus scanner, installed and ran the Spybot spyware scanner, and presto she has her PC back.
I have been doing some other things with the Windows PE disk as well. Most interesting is that the Windows PE disk has enabled me to stop using Ghost to image and deploy PCs. More on that later.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Why Twitter?
A couple of questions keep coming up during Web 2.0 sessions when I talk about Twitter:
The first difference from email is that you're limited to 140 characters in a twitter posting. So, you'd better be able to make it brief. Even URLs are routinely shortened. The good thing is you don't have to wade through pages of prose to try to figure out if this is something you need to know. Some people attempt to get around this limitation by sending out tweet after tweet. But I think the preferred procedure if you want to wax eloquent is to do it in a blog post and just send a link via Twitter.
Another difference is that Twitter posts are ephemeral. They're usually gone after 48 hours. They don't clutter up your inbox. Of course the downside is that if there's something you're interested in pursuing further, you'd better bookmark it or else you're going to have a hard time tracking it down later. But I was able to track down by a graphic I'd liked but neglected to save by contacting the person who'd sent it out. Within an hour, I had it.
Finally, email contacts tend to be fairly limited. Even if you subscribe to wired-mt, there are a lot of people on the list you never hear from. And while there are ways to check, most of the time you don't even know who's out there reading the emails you send to a list. With Twitter you know who's following you and getting your tweets. You decide who to follow based on your interests. In many cases, whoever you follow will also choose to follow you. And vice versa. So you can end up with people on your Twitter network that you didn't know at all before you started following and being followed. You can make some useful contacts. And, once again, using the principles of social networking, you can make a lot more useful contacts by seeing who others in your network are following and following them too.
RSS vs. Twitter
I think the biggest difference between RSS and Twitter is that RSS is really just one way communication while Twitter can be more two-way. And those who really use it effectively set it up as a two-way communication tool.
Say you're in a library looking for new ways to promote your new acquisitions and/or activities. You have an RSS feed from your catalog of new acquisitions. You can use a tool like TwitterFeed to take the RSS feeds and make them into Twitter posts. You can do the same thing with RSS feeds from your library's blog. If nothing else, this can be a fairly easy way to reach additional potential library users. And you probably will get some followers especially if you promote your Twitter page. You can also set up two way communication by following your followers. If these are library users, you can find out about their interests. You can also get feedback to your RSS enabled posts or to any questions you may direct toward them.
Let me give a recent example of what I think is the great potential of Twitter. When I initially signed on, I started following a number of libraries to see how they were using Twitter. Some had accounts but weren't using it at all. Others tweeted about an occasional event at the library. I found one library would send out 20 or more tweets in a day each referring to a new book or DVD. I thought this was overkill and used this library as an example of how you might not want to use Twitter in a couple of recent Web 2.0 sessions. But I felt bad about using them as a negative example without telling them so. This library wasn't following me, nor could I find an email address on their website. So, I used Twitter. I was soon contacted by their branch manager. I learned how they were attempting to use Twitter. He was interested in the feedback. And I've made a new contact who's experimenting with a lot of interesting social networking applications in his library in Arizona. Might we have connected sometime without Twitter? Possibly, but this was definitely faster.
It really is all about making connections. And Twitter seems to be one of the more useful tools for doing that at this moment in time.
- How is this different from email and email lists?
- How is this different from RSS feeds?
The first difference from email is that you're limited to 140 characters in a twitter posting. So, you'd better be able to make it brief. Even URLs are routinely shortened. The good thing is you don't have to wade through pages of prose to try to figure out if this is something you need to know. Some people attempt to get around this limitation by sending out tweet after tweet. But I think the preferred procedure if you want to wax eloquent is to do it in a blog post and just send a link via Twitter.
Another difference is that Twitter posts are ephemeral. They're usually gone after 48 hours. They don't clutter up your inbox. Of course the downside is that if there's something you're interested in pursuing further, you'd better bookmark it or else you're going to have a hard time tracking it down later. But I was able to track down by a graphic I'd liked but neglected to save by contacting the person who'd sent it out. Within an hour, I had it.
Finally, email contacts tend to be fairly limited. Even if you subscribe to wired-mt, there are a lot of people on the list you never hear from. And while there are ways to check, most of the time you don't even know who's out there reading the emails you send to a list. With Twitter you know who's following you and getting your tweets. You decide who to follow based on your interests. In many cases, whoever you follow will also choose to follow you. And vice versa. So you can end up with people on your Twitter network that you didn't know at all before you started following and being followed. You can make some useful contacts. And, once again, using the principles of social networking, you can make a lot more useful contacts by seeing who others in your network are following and following them too.
RSS vs. Twitter
I think the biggest difference between RSS and Twitter is that RSS is really just one way communication while Twitter can be more two-way. And those who really use it effectively set it up as a two-way communication tool.
Say you're in a library looking for new ways to promote your new acquisitions and/or activities. You have an RSS feed from your catalog of new acquisitions. You can use a tool like TwitterFeed to take the RSS feeds and make them into Twitter posts. You can do the same thing with RSS feeds from your library's blog. If nothing else, this can be a fairly easy way to reach additional potential library users. And you probably will get some followers especially if you promote your Twitter page. You can also set up two way communication by following your followers. If these are library users, you can find out about their interests. You can also get feedback to your RSS enabled posts or to any questions you may direct toward them.
Let me give a recent example of what I think is the great potential of Twitter. When I initially signed on, I started following a number of libraries to see how they were using Twitter. Some had accounts but weren't using it at all. Others tweeted about an occasional event at the library. I found one library would send out 20 or more tweets in a day each referring to a new book or DVD. I thought this was overkill and used this library as an example of how you might not want to use Twitter in a couple of recent Web 2.0 sessions. But I felt bad about using them as a negative example without telling them so. This library wasn't following me, nor could I find an email address on their website. So, I used Twitter. I was soon contacted by their branch manager. I learned how they were attempting to use Twitter. He was interested in the feedback. And I've made a new contact who's experimenting with a lot of interesting social networking applications in his library in Arizona. Might we have connected sometime without Twitter? Possibly, but this was definitely faster.
It really is all about making connections. And Twitter seems to be one of the more useful tools for doing that at this moment in time.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
using delicious links in your web page
Do you have a Delicious account with all kinds of great links that you'd like to share with others via your website or blog?
Delicious provides several tools on their website to make this easy to do.
Tagrolls put your tags into a tag cloud. The larger tags are used more frequently:
You can play around with some of the settings to customize for your website.
Delicious provides several tools on their website to make this easy to do.
- Click on Help in the upper right hand corner
- Click on Bookmarking buttons and add-ons for your browser or website? under Need Tools?
- Select the tool you want and copy and paste the html code into your web page/blog editor. You'll need to use the Edit Html section.
- Warning - these rely on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to make them look pretty and aligned. What you have set in your blog or web page will probably override the CSS from Delicious. This can make it look really goofy. That's one of the reasons I changed the template for this blog.
Following are examples of Linkrolls and Tagrolls and how they'll look integrated into a blog.
Tagrolls put your tags into a tag cloud. The larger tags are used more frequently:
You can play around with some of the settings to customize for your website.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Do You Trust Your Tech?
I ran across an interesting article last month. A survey was recently conducted in which IT workers were asked whether they use "their IT privileges to gain access to employees' confidential data". One in three admitted to doing so. Have a look at
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99515/do-you-snoop.html for a little more detail. If a third of them are admitting to it you would think the number actually doing it would be somewhat higher.
It is hard to provide a tech solution for privacy from your system administrator. It can be done but it is a lot easier and cheaper just to trust your tech. It is what we do at my employer and my clients. All these places do have personnel records, for example, and I should not have access to them, but I do. I don't even need to be in the building to see any of it, as long as it is an electronic file.
But look at it from the tech's side. If for some reason the trust fades, then the tech is automatically a suspect simply because he has had access to the confidential information. So it is not a very good situation for the tech either. I don't anticipate providing any good solution to this though anytime soon.
Sorry there is not much of a tip here but I thought you would enjoy hearing about the high moral standards of the average tech these days. Truth be told, I suspect this would be accurate for the population at large, if they had similar access to your information.
Note to my own employer and clients: My lips are sealed.
http://windowsitpro.com/article/articleid/99515/do-you-snoop.html for a little more detail. If a third of them are admitting to it you would think the number actually doing it would be somewhat higher.
It is hard to provide a tech solution for privacy from your system administrator. It can be done but it is a lot easier and cheaper just to trust your tech. It is what we do at my employer and my clients. All these places do have personnel records, for example, and I should not have access to them, but I do. I don't even need to be in the building to see any of it, as long as it is an electronic file.
But look at it from the tech's side. If for some reason the trust fades, then the tech is automatically a suspect simply because he has had access to the confidential information. So it is not a very good situation for the tech either. I don't anticipate providing any good solution to this though anytime soon.
Sorry there is not much of a tip here but I thought you would enjoy hearing about the high moral standards of the average tech these days. Truth be told, I suspect this would be accurate for the population at large, if they had similar access to your information.
Note to my own employer and clients: My lips are sealed.
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