Stories by Anne McCrory

Premier 100: Keeping your IT career on the move

Ever wonder how you can be ready to step up and become CIO if the boss leaves? Ever question whether reporting to your company's chief financial officer is in the best interest of the IT department, or your career? A panel of IT career experts answered these and other questions from attendees at Computerworld Inc.'s Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference yesterday. Some of the highlights from their remarks follow.

Crossroads attendees trade tips, concerns

Some 400 business and IT executives converged on The Wigwam Resort here this week for Open Systems Advisors Inc.'s annual Crossroads Conference, which ended last night. Here's a sampling of what the attendees talked about during the event.

Boeing Offers Steps for Successful Front End

One group at Boeing Co. in Seattle managed to change a big, slow company into a fast and nimble one to build a unified front end for customers on the Web.

Ubiquitous? Pervasive? Sorry, They Don't Compute

I just found out that ubiquitous computing and pervasive computing aren't the same thing. "What?!?" you're saying. "I'm shocked." Yes, brace yourselves. This time it appears to be the scientists, not the marketers, who adopted everyday terms to describe their once-futuristic technology, making things very confusing now that other folks are using those ordinary words - sometimes interchangeably - without their particular nuances in mind.

Guest column: Get real! Today, virtual is an outdated word

"That's virtually impossible," I told my mother. "There's no way I'm going to be able to get that done in time." "It was a virtual nightmare," the woman on the bus was saying. "You should have seen the crowds." Sound strange?

Get Real! Today, Virtual Is an Outdated Word

"That's virtually impossible," I told my mother. "There's no way I'm going to be able to get that done in time." "It was a virtual nightmare," the woman on the bus was saying. "You should have seen the crowds." Sound strange?

Guest Column: Ban ugly language shortcuts 4ever

Y2K meant different things to different people. Guess what it meant to me? Let's call it "the ugly acronym."

Ban Ugly Language Shortcuts 4ever

Y2K meant different things to different people. Guess what it meant to me? Let's call it "the ugly acronym."

So many acronyms, so little difference

First, there was CRM. Now, there's ERM, PRM and even EBRM.

Guest column: Jargon Judge: Gibberish arising from the Web

OK, this Internet thing has gone far enough. I adapted to cyberstuff and e-everything because they were descriptive, clear and -- in the beginning -- clever, even. But I refuse to allow dot-com to be used as a verb, or to call steel-and-sheetrock malls brick-and-mortar stores.