2009 IT skills and salary report

In conjunction with Global Knowledge, TechRepublic presents this year's IT skills and salary report. Find out about IT employment trends, areas of growth and decline, skills that are in demand, highest-paying job roles, highest-paying certifications, and salary ranges broken down by region, job title, and industry.

For comparison, check out the TechRepublic 2008 IT skills and salary report.

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first published week of:   01/04/2010

3 technical skills every IT admin should have

Not everyone has the luxury of learning the basics of IT at the start of his or her career, and that’s OK. But at some point, you need to learn, or learn more about, a few essentials in order to get ahead.

Many people I know focus on one area of IT -- be it Microsoft Exchange, the AS/400 or database administration. Often these people were former accountants, English majors or blue collar workers who made a career change into IT. They took an interest in something, and they made it their specialty. Unfortunately, all too often the learning stops there.

When you enter IT at this level and focus in only one area, you can get pigeonholed. The lack of broad computer, software and networking knowledge can also make it difficult to troubleshoot problems, design new systems and assess business risks. You simply won’t know or understand all the facts -- it’s like a medical doctor who doesn’t understanding the basics of chemistry and biology. If you claim to be an expert in any arena, you have to know the fundamental elements of your work.

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first published week of:   02/22/2010

3 technical skills every IT admin should have

Not everyone has the luxury of learning the basics of IT at the start of his or her career, and that's OK. But at some point, you need to learn, or learn more about, a few essentials in order to get ahead.

Many people I know focus on one area of IT -- be it Microsoft Exchange, the AS/400 or database administration. Often these people were former accountants, English majors or blue collar workers who made a career change into IT. They took an interest in something, and they made it their specialty. Unfortunately, all too often the learning stops there.

When you enter IT at this level and focus in only one area, you can get pigeonholed. The lack of broad computer, software and networking knowledge can also make it difficult to troubleshoot problems, design new systems and assess business risks. You simply won't know or understand all the facts -- it's like a medical doctor who doesn't understanding the basics of chemistry and biology. If you claim to be an expert in any arena, you have to know the fundamental elements of your work.

Here are three areas essential to your success in any IT career:

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first published week of:   03/29/2010

3D: is it bad for you?
Researchers are studying whether viewing 3D causes eyestrain

The success of 3D movies has been accompanied by complaints from some viewers of headaches and eyestrain. And with 3D TVs, Blu-Ray players, and games coming to the home this year, some experts are calling for more research into the possibility of eyestrain associated with 3D viewing, particularly on smaller screens that are closer to the viewer.

The eyestrain issue “has come up very recently, anecdotally, with people having symptoms of headaches after Avatar,” says Michael Rosenberg, MD, and associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “It was the first time there was a 3D movie that attracted the volume of people it did and had the kind of advanced technology it did.”

3D technology tricks the brain by showing the left eye one image and the right eye another. The brain layers these images together to produce a 3D image. For the latest 3D movies, polarizing glasses filter different images for each eye. In 3D TV sets, battery-powered active-shutter glasses open and shut many times a second in sync with the TV image to show each eye a different picture.   

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first published week of:   04/12/2010

5 Reasons Why Green Tech Has Such a Tough Time In America

We’ve invented a lot of green technologies, but we’ve also failed to embrace them. Is it a cultural thing? So why do we suck so much at green commercialization, while excelling at transforming science projects like search engines, microprocessors and microbes into Google, Intel and Genentech? The reasons are:

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first published week of:   07/19/2010

5 Technology Security Myths, Busted

Think you can hide behind the privacy of an “unlisted” cell phone number? Think again. Maybe you believe you don’t need security software on a Mac or iPad. You’d swear that Firefox is the safest browser in town. Wrong on both counts.

Most of us don’t think about security for our digital devices until something goes wrong, or it’s time to renew an anti-virus subscription. But what the security experts like to call the threat landscape changes all the time, and keeping up is hard to do. So we’ll save you some time. Here are five current facts that you probably don’t know about digital security —but should.

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first published week of:   05/03/2010

Volume 31

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