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Comment Use an ECM (Score 1) 367

Admittedly, this is a suggestion that only a large, committed organization can implement, but it is sane:

Drag email worthy of retention into an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system.

You can find ECMs nowadays that are well integrated with your email client (and may even allow users to ignore that they are moving information out of Exchange). You can think of Exchange as merely a staging area for all incoming information; anything with long-term business value should be expected to end up in the ECM where it can be shared, portalized, linked to wikis or other knowledge management applications, filed by project or business area with related information in other content types, searched six ways to Sunday (Exchange is woeful at this), etc., etc.

If you're able to do this, then you shouldn't miss the other 95% (I'm pulling that figure out of the air), the dreck that's left behind in Exchange, when it's aged out and shredded.

If you're not able to do this, and you're trying to adapt your email repository as a long-term knowledge archive, at best you'll have an individual repository for yourself, not your team or your organization, that can't be easily shared or integrated with other related knowledge.

That's why you shouldn't mind the retention limits established in Exchange. As to why they should be established at all, consider that the organization has no business interest in maintaining a gigantic archive that is 95% worthless, poorly organized, poorly indexed, unsharable crap and that, if a legal discovery request ever does hit, will be an unbelievable burden to sift through. Plus, the retention deadline gives people an added incentive to move the valuable stuff into the valuable place.

The Internet

Submission + - Barrier to Web 2.0: IT Departments (computerworld.com)

jcatcw writes: Wikis, social networks, and other Web 2.0 technologies are finding resistence inside companies from the very people who should be rolling them out: the IT staff. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in London had to bypass IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to end users. Both Morgan Stanley and Pfizer are rolling out Web 2.0 projects, but it took some grass roots organizing to get there.
Biotech

Electrical Field Treats Brain Cancer 136

amigoro writes "A device that specifically targets rapidly growing cancer cells with intermediate frequency electrical fields doubled the survival rates of patients with brain cancer, according to an article apperaring in PNAS. The device uses electrical fields to disrupt tumor growth by interfering with cell division of cancerous cells, causing them to stop proliferating and die off instead of dividing and growing. Healthy brain cells rarely divide and have different electrical properties than cancerous brain cells. This allows the device to target cancer cells without affecting the healthy cells. Essentially no device-related side effects were seenin the clinical trial."
Space

Submission + - Fermi Paradox Could Predict Humankind's Future

An anonymous reader writes: The Fermi paradox says that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist, at least one of them should have colonized the entire galaxy by now. But since there is no evidence of this, humankind must be the only intelligent life in the galaxy. The Space Review has an article on how the Fermi paradox can be applied to human civilization. It says that, like the extraterrestrials, humans have three choices: colonize the galaxy, remain on Earth, or become extinct.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Regrowing lost body parts coming in the future

[TheBORG] writes: "There are two stories on Yahoo! News about regrowing lost body parts. One is about regrowing lost fingers & limbs and the other one is about regrowing teeth. The story about regrowing lost fingers and limbs talks about the experimental use of powdered pig bladder to regrow fingers and eventually lost limbs for soldiers and others in need from information that Pentagon-funded scientists hopefully learn from studying the salamander. The story about regrowing teeth talks about how Japanese scientists used primitive cells (not quite as early as stem cells) and injected them into a framework of collagen (the material that holds the body together). Once grown to a certain point, scientists implanted the growths into mice where the teeth developed normally."

64% of Online Gamers Are Female 187

According to a report discussed on 1up, a new study by the Nielsen folks finds that more than half of the 117 Million U.S. online gamers are women. From the article: "The study's announcement release doesn't break down what games they're playing, though we expect sites like pogo.com, which feature a multitude of Flash-based games are rather high on the list. Even more surprising is how many older gamers are playing. While the teenage market dominates in numbers, the study says more than 15 million gamers, about 8%, are actually at least 45 years old."

Mass Microsoft Defections to Apple Possible 722

An anonymous reader writes to mention a MacWorld article covering research by the Forrester group. Their report shows that mass dissatisfaction with Microsoft and its products could lead to defections from the company. From the article: "Over all, only Apple and Tivo saw their brand trust rise in the last two years, according to the report. The final tally saw Bose, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic and Sony earn the highest marks, while Microsoft, Gateway and LG ranked lowest. The low scores for Microsoft could mean good news for Apple as consumers showed their distrust of the Redmond-based software-giant."

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