John Brandon

A help desk can be a real lifesaver for employees, not to mention a productivity boost. If a keyboard stops working or Outlook keeps crashing, a technician is just a phone call away. Even complex problems can usually be resolved internally, and relatively quickly, without the need for an outside vendor.

Yet, help desk technology is typically slow to evolve. Many large organizations still track tickets in complex, aging systems that aren't adept at pinpointing recurring problems, don't work well on the latest smartphones or tablets, and don't provide detailed reports about average call times or how long it takes to resolve issues.

The IT department is often at the forefront of an organization's technology innovation -- but not always. When it comes to the concept of a standard desktop -- every employee's core install consisting of an operating system, applications, hardware drivers and a security suite -- IT has moved at a snail's pace.

Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT, says companies have tended to live with older software because it works well enough for their needs and because they don't want to incur the expense of upgrading to the latest releases in this era of "making do with less."

Upgrades, system migration, support headaches -- IT folks are probably dreading the next major Windows rollout. Yet Windows 8, which is scheduled to move to the beta stage in late February and will likely launch in the fall, does offer several compelling new features for both IT and end users.

The Metro interfaceBy far the most talked-about aspect of Windows 8 is the Metro interface. Designed for touchscreen computers and tablets, and built to use HTML5 and CSS3, Metro ties into Internet apps like SkyDrive and Flickr. As with Windows Phone 7, you can swipe to navigate through tiles showing live Web info like stocks and news as well as more traditional apps.

For such a small device, the plastic, handheld USB flash drive can cause big security headaches. Even if you have robust end-point security and establish rigid policies about employee use of these drives, employees still find a way to copy financial reports and business plans for use at home. While other security breaches are more traceable, a flash drive is more difficult to monitor, especially after the employee leaves work.

Some security professionals suggest a radical approach to locking down USB flash drives. Sean Greene, a security consultant at Evidence Solutions, advises his clients to use a clear silicone caulk and fill every USB port on every PC to prevent USB attachments. He says the only way employees can transmit sensitive business documents is by email, a method that his clients can easily monitor.

Just as Netflix and its customers are ditching plastic DVD media, Blu-ray discs and players are growing in popularity. The two trends seem incongruous, so what gives?

The Blu-ray format is holding its own, say analysts--and that isn't likely to change anytime soon. What has changed, the experts note, is this: Streaming video services are becoming more reliable and more popular. The causes? ISPs are boosting their bandwidth capacity, more devices and services to pipe video to your living room via the Internet are coming to market, and Hollywood is increasingly offering popular on-demand content, making it more widely available.

For this year's roundup of cool summer tech gear, I dived into a local pool to snap photos, played a round of golf and grilled up some tasty steaks. Yes, I have a tough job.

But it was all for a good cause: finding the best equipment for gear-heads to enjoy the great outdoors. This well-tested summer gear is perfect for adventurous techies who like to run, swim, camp, hike, play golf and more.

Hackers never sleep, it seems. Just when you think you've battened down the hatches and fully protected yourself or your business from electronic security risks, along comes a new exploit to keep you up at night. It might be an SMS text message with a malevolent payload or a stalker who dogs your every step online. Or maybe it's an emerging technology like in-car Wi-Fi that suddenly creates a whole new attack vector.

hacker

A new IT challenge is emerging: building a vast infrastructure for electric vehicles, or EVs. Information technology is needed to give the electric car a much-needed push -- handling the vast data processing required to optimize power utilization from the generation plant all the way down to an individual owner's garage. These functions are needed to make the new cars successful, analysts say.

New EV models from Chevy and Nissan, with Ford and BMW following this summer, can already connect to a smart grid and transmit a wealth of data about battery usage and driving patterns over 3G. Toyota and Microsoft jointly announced in early April that they are co-developing an Azure-based service to provide data to Toyota EV drivers.

Djay for iPad is one of the best iPad apps around. It allows you to use your iTunes music library to create amazingly professional-sounding audio recordings--just scratch out some tunes and throw together a playlist for parties--while facilitating smooth transitions between songs.

Compared with the Mac and iPhone versions of Djay, the iPad app has fewer features but is better suited to the tablet interface. In testing the app with dozens of songs--including new tunes by Duffy, Future of Forestry, and plenty of dance songs--the app lived up to its name: you really can be a DJ using a digital interface that features two matching turntables.

Password management is not exactly the most exciting subject in the world. Yet, when you really need that one password for some arcane ancestry site you found last year, a password manager can be a major help. Agile Web Solutions' 1Password 3 is one of the best password management tools I've used. Several robust and powerful features make it nearly indispensible. Yet, at the end of the day, what I liked most was that 1Password did not change our daily computing habits all that much.

Managing passwords

Adobe's PDF format has won the electronic paper war--and with vigor. These richly formatted documents are now routinely used by real estate agents, insurance companies, and major corporations to distribute everything from simple flyers to complex legal contracts. Creating a PDF is often extremely easy. In fact, nearly every Mac application has a print-to-PDF option. Yet, once the PDF is created, it's often hard to make changes to the document or trim it down to a more manageable file size.

PDFpen Pro 5 is a powerful Mac-only tool that helps you edit PDF files. It's much more affordable than Adobe Acrobat Pro (which costs $449), but provides many of the same features.

Like ReelDirector, iStoryboards from Oscar Stringer lets you create a simple video that shows how the scenes in a recorded video will play out. But that's about where the similarities end. Reel Director is a much more advanced app that's really useful for mobile moviemakers. iStoryboards lacks features and is plagued with bugs and performance issues.

Here's how iStoryboards works. Let's say you want to shoot a YouTube video with friends. Your movie might consist of a chat between friends, who are startled by some guy who jumps out from around a corner. With iStoryboards, you could script out a storyboard that shows a photo of what happens in each scene. You can then add dialogue and any actions that occur as captions to those photos.