4. "Survey: Most Corporate Boards Neglect IT Issues,"
March 22, Computerworld
This might not be saying anything that wasn’t at least suspected, but a Deloitte Consulting survey found that few boards of large companies surveyed take up the topic of IT with any regularity. A mere 10.5 percent of 455 directors at big companies said their boards discuss IT every time they meet. Nearly half of those surveyed said that IT issues come up only as the need arises. CIOs asked to respond weren’t at all surprised by the finding, with some charitably noting that directors might not feel confident in their knowledge of IT to discuss the topic. Not surprisingly, Deloitte found that CEOs have the influence to push IT as a discussion and oversight priority for boards, and suggested that the relationship between the CIO and the CEO is critical. Deloitte also found a "strong correlation" between boards that place more emphasis on IT and better financial performance.

5. "Study Exposes Search Spam,”
March 19, PC World
Companies may inadvertently be contributing to "search spam," the links that pop up when searches are done and that are meant to drive traffic to sites and generate click-through advertising revenue. A research team from Microsoft and the University of California in Davis will present findings about how search spam works and how to avoid being caught up in it at the 16th International World Wide Web Conference in Banff, Alberta, in May. Legitimate companies can wind up with their ads on questionable sites because of redirections that "obfuscate the connection between the advertisers and the spammers," the researchers wrote. A business might buy advertising from a syndicator, who buys space on high-traffic webpages from an aggregator who in turn buys traffic from Web spammers. The spammers set up millions of "doorway" pages that show up high in search-engine rankings and who distribute URLs as comments in user blogs and the like. As a consequence of what they uncovered, the researchers conclude that advertisers’ money funds search spam.

6. "Father of Fortran Programming Language Dies,"
March 20, CIO.com
The industry paused this week to remember John Backus, who led development of Fortran, the first mainstream programming language. He died at his home in Oregon last Saturday at the age of 82. An IBM programmer in the 1950s, Backus was remembered as something of a renegade, wearing jeans to work and to events at a time when IBM was much more formal in its approach. He was also remembered as key to IBM’s push to simplify computer programming. Fortran debuted in 1957 and was seen at the time as an enormous advance. News of his death prompted fond Fortran memories on IT blogs and message boards across the Internet.