Computerworld explains why non-compete clauses in contracts are dangerous.

The good news is these contracts are hard to enforce in many countries and even in the US, courts recognise these clauses as unfair and can refuse to enforce them.

Rob O'Neill's front page story on today's Computerworld draws on research by US-based Objectwatch saying the total cost of IT failure in New Zealand is $5.4 billion a year. The story is not online at the time of writing.

Objectwatch's CTO, Roger Sessions calculated the cost globally, for the US and for New Zealand saying the number includes the indirect costs as well as direct costs.

The number seems unusually large for two reasons:

• First. For a country with around 4.3 million people Sessions' waste amounts to around $1280 per person or roughly three percent of GDP* – in plain English that means IT failure wastes one out of every 20 dollars earned in New Zealand.
• Second. According to IDC numbers in a press release issued in August New Zealand's total IT market was worth $5,911 million in 2008 and is growing at 3.6 percent. So Sessions' statement could be interpreted as saying the money spent on IT is wasted.

On this basis we'd be better offer dumping computers and switching back to trusty old adding machines.

* That's my calculation. I used the Investment New Zealand estimate of GDP.

An interesting piece at Computerworld about the father of modern management and the first person to use the phrase "knowledge worker".

I'm not sure about describing Drucker as a life coach – it is a term I've learnt to mistrust.

Peter Drucker as Life Coach: Book Shares His Wisdom.

The optimistic interpretation of the latest Olivier Job Index information technology figures says while the number of job ads continues to fall – the rate at which job ad numbers are falling has slowed. In other words, things are getting worse, but not dramatically so.

Robert Olivier says things are stabilizing.

The Olivier Job Index measures the number of advertised job. In June the number of tech jobs fell 1.9 percent from May. They were down almost 57 percent from the same time a year ago. Both numbers represent a faster decline for tech jobs than for the overall job market.

According to a report last week in The Australian (Tech employment pool drying up (story no longer online) by Jennifer Foreshew) only 16 percent of senior managers in Australian corporations expect to hire staff in the next 12 months and about a third intend to reduce their headcount. Foreshew spoke to a number of companies who made similar comments about a lack of new work.

Official figures issued by Australia’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) on Friday say the number of IT professional job vacancies dropped 7.5 percent in June compared with May. Year-on-year the total number of jobs declined by 63 percent.

New Zealand IT positive

A report in today’s Computerworld New Zealand (New Hudson survey shows IT more positive by David Watson) draws on quarterly figures from the recruitment firm Hudson. It says a net 16.4 percent of employers intend to increase permanent staffing levels in the June to September quarter. That’s up from the previous quarter’s 7.7 percent figure.

Computerworld Australia reports IT job advertisements continued their slide in May, which is bad news for tech-oriented knowledge workers. Overall job ads fell by 4 percent in May and 52 percent for the 12 month period ending in May. The number of IT job ads fell 58 percent over the 12 months. The numbers are taken from Olivier job index

The good news is the decline is is slowing down and part-time and contract positions were up during the month.

via IT jobs slump 5% in May: Olivier – Computerworld.

Computerworld lists the grubbiest jobs in information technology.

You may be ordered to crawl into the nastiest corners of your office — or to explore the nastiest corners of the Web. You may be required to stare zombie-like at a network monitoring console, waiting (possibly hoping) for the alarms to go off, or be chained to an endless series of spreadsheets and Word docs, looking for minute differences in data. You may end up berated, belittled, or sobbed at for circumstances that have nothing to do with you.

Even dirtier IT jobs: The muck stops here – data crisis, engineers, IT jobs, malware – Computerworld

One day a device will do for newspapers what the iPod did for music. I haven't seen it yet.

Mark Fletcher at the excellent Australian Newsagency Blog does a great job of warning people in his industry about the disruption they face from digital technologies. In this post he points to a ComputerWorld story about the future of ePaper, which the author says is "just around the corner".

E-paper has potential. It could disrupt publishing business models which are already under attack from the internet. Australian, and other, newsagents need to keep an eye on how publishing technologies develop.

Just as iTunes killed off record shops, a newspaper and magazine equivalent could reduce newsagencies to selling lottery tickets and bus cards.

It threatens everyone working in newspapers, magazines, books, related businesses and their associated food chains.

But I question whether ePaper is "just around the corner". Moreover, I question whether this kind of ePaper is the most pressing threat.

I've been a professional technology writer since 1980. In that year I saw my first voice recognition system and the first example of what are now called electronic books.

The proud makers of the 1981 voice recognition device told me the hardware would be "ready for prime time" within two years and keyboards would quickly be a thing of the past. In 2008 voice recognition technology is still around two years away from prime time.

Likewise, in 1981 electronic book makers were confidently predicting we'd soon be cuddling up at night with their hardware. It's 2008 and to date I still haven't seen anything as impressive or as easy to read as ink stamped or squirted on crushed, dead trees. One day we'll get there – not yet.

In the meantime, the internet continues to build momentum delivering news and other information to desktops, laptops and handheld devices like Apple's iPod-derived iPhone. Although none of these are anything like as satisfactory an as paper, people can and do use them to read news.