Good times, bad times

Who has had a stonker and who has had a stinker in the last fortnight?

Good times

Reggie from Steljes

A job in IT sales can be a stepping stone to a number of careers - but not many go on to become pop stars. That was until a Steljes sales support assistant went on The X Factor and very nearly won. Reggie N Bollie, who were mentored by Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, came second in the recent series, and it emerged that before fame, Reggie worked in distribution.

X Factor runners-up have a history of doing much better than some of those who won (who remembers Joe McElderry?) so perhaps the duo are set for big things. If not, we're sure there will always be a job for Reggie in the channel. After all, who doesn't love a singing salesman?

Consumer tech

January is the best month for cobblers, as years' worth of shoe leather are worn away in just three days at the world's biggest consumer tech show, CES.

From a robotic cocktail maker to smart fridges, bendy TVs and speakers only the listener can hear, this year's extravaganza boasted a line-up of gizmos that would put Inspector Gadget to shame.

Scores of UK vendor, distributor and reseller execs who made the trip to Las Vegas will be returning to Blighty this week with a fresh perspective on technology, a briefcase full of business cards, and a bad case of shin splints.

Flash storage

"Flash! Ah-aaah! Saviour of the universe!" so sang a chorus of IDC bean counters as they unveiled their latest storage analysis.

The analysts claim that flash storage is the future as customers snub high-end storage systems in favour of the technology. The external storage market fell 9.8 per cent annually to $1.57bn in Q3, driven by a slump in the value of traditional hard disks, IDC said. But the decline would have been worse were it not for flash.

Bad Times

UK VARs

A study carried out shortly before Christmas found that UK resellers are considerably less happy with their manufacturer partners than their stateside counterparts are.
Research from industry body CompTIA finds that just one in five VARs over here gave their vendors the highest possible satisfaction rating. This was half as many as did so on the other side of the pond.

Although we can't help but wonder whether the data was suitably adjusted for the respective gloominess index of the two nations. And if you're not sure what we mean by that, we suggest you ask 100 Americans and 100 Brits if they're having "a super day" and compare the responses.

Passwords

If you've ever struggled to come up with an effortlessly memorable combination of at least one lower and upper case letter apiece, a number, a symbol, a Greek letter, a Japanese character, and a crude caricature of a gameshow host, you won't be surprised to hear that "passwords are broken".

That is the view of KPMG security bod David Ferbrache, who has predicted that the industry will move towards "a more sophisticated approach" to security in the not-too-distant future. As this year brings an increase in cyberattacks from extortionists and terrorists, the familiar protection method may begin to decline in effectiveness and popularity. Ferbache hopes that passwords will ultimately begin to die off "in a few years".

Cloud and selfie sticks

One is fluffy and the other is pointy but both techs are plummeting in popularity when it comes to how often they're searched for on Google.

That's according to our recent analysis of data on Google Trends, which provides a snapshot of cultural trends over time by charting the relative popularity of search terms since 2004. Perhaps a victim of its own ubiquity, cloud computing's score peaked at a perfect 100 in 2011 but is now languishing at 38.

The selfie stick has suffered an even steeper fall back down to earth, with its score dropping from 100 to 55 over the past six months. Mercifully so, for anyone who's struggled to sidestep the hordes of selfie-stick-wielding tourists in Piccadilly Circus to grab their lunchtime sarnie.