Megan Santosus

I'd be the first to tell you that maternity leave

Times are tough for CIOs. Along with dwindling IT budgets, their power and influence is on the wane as well. Having shelled out big bucks on technology just a few years ago--with little evidence of a direct payback--many companies are reeling, and the guys in charge of the technology are the most obvious scapegoats.

If you want to be a better leader of your IT staff, then it's best not to rely on that staple of leadership books, the profiles of military leaders such as Attila the Hun, George Patton or Colin Powell.

Business conditions are so universally dismal that the corporate slogan for most American companies might as well be

As an organization consumed by the collection and analysis of information, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is keenly interested in IT on the cutting edge. So in 1999 the agency got into the high-tech venture capital business by launching In-Q-Tel Inc., an independent, private and nonprofit organization charged with identifying and investing in technologies "that serve U.S. national security interests."

The popular pastime of cruising the mall in search of a deal may become an endangered activity thanks to a new technology developed by Andersen Consulting. The firm is tinkering with a handheld device that automatically scours the Internet for the lowest price of just about anything whose price is listed online. With the Pocket Bargain Finder, a value-minded shopper simply scans the UPC bar code of an item displayed in a store. Within seconds, the miniature cell phone dials into a Web server that uses the Excite search engine to hunt the Internet for the same item at a cheaper price.

The Media Laboratory at MIT's campus in Cambridge, Mass., is a veritable playground for technophiles. With an annual budget of nearly US$30 million (more than 90 per cent of which comes from 160 corporate sponsors), the lab explores how computing can become part of everyday life.

Aromatherapists aren't known for their technological prowess, but the discipline of healing physical and emotional ailments with essential oils derived from plants and herbs is pretty information-intensive. Enter "Essential Aromatherapy", a self-paced CD-ROM course developed by Essential Training Solutions Ltd. of Daventry, England. By covering the basics of aromatherapy in a well-planned if not terribly sophisticated manner, the course offers a good model for designing self-paced training.