If you're even somewhat of a computer geek, chances are that the holiday season marks your annual rite of computer related help requests from friends, in-laws and family. For all you amateur IT helpdesk staffers, Ross Mayfield has 8 tops to make your life a little easier. Mayfield is CEO of Socialtext, a startup that does something exotic called "Enterprise Social Software".

The red line in his advice: keep it simple, stupid! Kill all software that's known for its security issues and/or complexity: use a Mac, switch to FireFox and abandon Outlook for webmail.

His final piece of advice (Don't set them up with a blog) goes further than just this one over-hyped technology. Don't shove some cool technology down your friends throats just because you think it's cool or usefull. Technology is here to make life easier. Tech for the sake of tech was something of the last millennium.

29 Dec 2004