Trevor Floyd

She was one of the first women to shatter IT's glass ceiling and become a top technology executive at Xerox Corp. back in the 1980s. She has been a senior vice president at Citibank, CIO for the city of Phoenix and a director at American Express. So what is the one question that Laraine Rodgers, now president of her own consulting company, Phoenix-based Navigating Transitions, has been asked more than any other? " 'Will you fix my PC?' I get asked that all the time. In the late 1990s, U.S. Vice President Al Gore requested her help with his "reinventing government" program. It's a situation I'm very familiar with," she laughs.

One network administrator tells how she has come home to find PCs sitting on her front porch - new "patients" from friends and relatives who heard through the grapevine that she had a special talent for ridding computers of viruses, pop-ups and spam. There's no doubt that family - and friends of family, and friends of friends of family - gravitate toward their relatives in IT for help with any and all things digital: cell phones, cameras, GPS gadgets, big-screen TVs, electronic pinball games, you name it. Every IT person seems to have a few friends-and-family fix-it stories. We asked IT folks to tell us about their most unusual support requests; here are some of our favorites. Even CIOs can't say no to their loved ones' pleas for tech help. Google guru saves day, basks in adulation Google CIO Ben Fried says that many of the phone calls he receives from his 74-year-old father, an author with 23 history and political science books to his credit, involve questions about either hardware or software. "This is a man whose main tool prior to getting a Mac not that long ago was a 1938 Smith-Corona typewriter," Fried says.

Upon closer examination, Fried discovered that his father had written the first 275 pages of the book he was working on as a footnote - rather than as a document - in Microsoft Word. Fried doesn't mind fielding unusual support calls, like the one he received from his dad complaining that his computer was running very slow. Fried simply copied and pasted the manuscript into a text document - a feat that his father responded to by saying, "Son, you're a genius." After that, Fried says, the volume of calls from his dad's friends stepped up for a while. CIO Jeff Steinhorn describes himself as "the default help desk for my wife, my kids, my friends and my parents." So it wasn't at all unusual for him when his 11-year-old son called him at work with "an emergency situation at home." Steinhorn recalls, "He had just ordered four tickets online to an exciting amusement park we typically treat the kids to once a year, and he needed to get them printed." But the printer wasn't working, and Steinhorn couldn't troubleshoot and fix it over the phone. "I know my son's e-mail ID and password - as every parent of an 11-year-old should - so I went into his account and found the e-mail confirmation number, so that he could take that to the entrance gate and have the tickets reprinted there," he recalls. Hess honcho is family hero Hess Corp. But Steinhorn got more than he bargained for.

The Steinhorn family did make it to the amusement park - several times, in fact, since they had a dozen tickets and never managed to get a refund for the extras. "And looking on the bright side, in the end it was just a printer jam, so the actual equipment failure did not end up costing me anything." Accenture expert makes multiple connections Chris Crawford, a global applications architect for internal functions at Accenture in Chicago, recalls the panicked call he received from a good friend who had just purchased and set up a very expensive sound system for his home. He found a confirmation for 12 tickets at a cost of about $500 charged to his credit card. "I can only assume that he hit Enter a couple times too many," Steinhorn says. "I was much less concerned about the printer than I was about the season's [worth of] passes to the park I had just funded." The story does have a happy ending. His friend couldn't discern any significant difference in sound quality - despite the great amount of money he had paid for the system. Crawford adjusted the wire and was an instant hero. As it turned out, a woofer on one of the speakers wasn't hooked up properly. Crawford says he's especially busy with requests around the holidays when friends and family want to know which electronic gadgets he recommends for gift-giving.

Once, for instance, he was summoned to a former CEO's home to fix a phone. (He plugged it back in.) But he's also gone above and beyond answering calls for high-tech help. He even started an internal blog at Accenture where colleagues post their favorite tips and recommendations. "I like computers so much that it's fun to be an expert," Crawford says. "It can also come in handy as an ice breaker at cocktail parties." Amerisource Bergen ace gives new meaning to "software support" Tom Murphy, senior vice president and CIO at Amerisource Bergen, a $70 billion pharmaceutical services company based in Valley Forge, Pa., says he has certainly received his fair share of tech fix-it requests throughout his career. He has been asked to fix colleagues' personal work-life balance issues, and once, he recalls, he even had a request to see if he could help fix a marriage. "For whatever reason, people have always approached me to discuss personal issues," Murphy says. "To me, the best part of my job is helping to fix the real 'software' - i.e., human - challenges."

Google today rolled out Social Search within the Google Labs site. The Google Labs page explains that with Social Search, you "sign in to Google and do a search. Google announced the new experimental search tool at last week's Web 2.0 Summit.

If there's relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called 'Results from people in your social circle'." Limited by Your Social Circle Ok. I'm game. It only took one search for me to figure out that my 'social circle' needed some work. I clicked the button on the Google Labs page to 'Join this experiment'. Now, when I visit the main Google search page I get a special Google Experimental Labs logo to let me know I am using the cutting edge Social Search capabilities. As far as Google Social Search is concerned, your 'social circle' is defined by the contacts you have built up in Gmail and the sites that you have linked to in your Google profile. I have a Gmail account and a Google profile, but I don't rely on either regularly so the network of contacts I have established there is scarce at best.

Social Search can incorporate people you're connected with in Twitter, FriendFeed, or LinkedIn, but only if you have established those connections within your Google profile. My search results demonstrated to me that I will have to invest some time expanding my social circle within Google in order for Social Search to provide any value to me. Social Search is a sort of hybrid approach to real-time search indexing and social networking which provides posts and content from contacts in your social network within your search results. Where's Facebook? It isn't hard to see then that the proverbial elephant in the room is the conspicuous absence of content from Facebook, the biggest social networking site there is. Aside from pulling publicly available content from your social circle to include in your search results, Social Search borrows from the six degrees of separation concept leveraged in LinkedIn to provide content from the social circle of your social circle as well.

Interestingly, when Microsoft and Facebook announced that Bing would begin providing real-time indexing of Facebook status updates, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg stated that no money changed hands in the arrangement and that Facebook is "not trying to make money on data." Sandberg's statement begs the question 'if Facebook isn't trying to make money on data, what is the hold up with coming to a similar deal with Google?' A follow up question also comes to mind: 'if Google Social Search doesn't include posts and content from the biggest social networking site, how much value can it really provide?' Innovative Approach Google Social Search brings some unique elements to the concept of web search and real-time indexing. I spoke with Robert Scoble, technology evangelist and social networking guru. He explained that with Twitter searches you get results from everybody, with FriendFeed you get results only from your friends, but with Social Search you get results from two levels- your own social circle and the contacts of your friends in your social circle, expanding the sphere and providing greater value. He likes what he sees so far from Google's experimental service. Scoble pointed out that this approach "could eliminate spam." Restricting your search to only your direct social circle limits the potential results, but the Twitter-style search of indexing every public post provides too much opportunity for spam. He said "If I am following you I know you won't spam me, and you won't have spammers in your network.

According to Scoble, the Google Social Search approach will weed out spam. If I start getting spam from you, I can just drop you from my social circle." Users will be more discriminating about who they connect with, and more diligent about protecting their own reputation. In a video overview of Google Social Search, Google stresses the ability to customize the social circle and opt out of any service. As with all things social networking, Social Search has to walk the tightrope between sharing information with the social network, and protecting privacy. Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience.

He tweets as @PCSecurityNews and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com.

In the days leading up to NASA's crashing of two halves of a space probe into the moon, doubters turned to the Internet to express fears that the lunar bombing would have negative effects on the Earth. In a quest to find out if there's water on the moon , NASA sent two separated halves of a spacecraft crashing into a permanently dark crater on the south pole of the moon this morning. Scientists and astronomers were quick to step forward to refute any rumors and quell concerns, but rumors are still circulating online. The crashes were meant to send up a huge debris plume that could be measured and analyzed for evidence of water ice hiding in the cold, dark crater.

But detractors were quick to post online warnings about possible negative effects of the experiment. With NASA still hopeful to one day create a viable human outpost on the moon , it would be helpful for anyone there to find water rather than haul it up from Earth. Amy Ephron, an author and screenwriter, wrote an article for the Huffington Post earlier this week, questioning NASA for taking the risks associated with sending two spacecraft crashing into the surface of the moon. "Who did the risk assessment? Ephron was far from alone in her concerns. I mean, what if something goes wrong?" asked Ephron. "I could say something scientifically lame and ask, 'What if it gets thrown off its axis?' or something funny and suggest something (that I actually sort of believe), like, 'What if it somehow throws off the astrology?' Or that we're not risking - as we have the earth with continued experiments of this kind - sending the solar system out of balance.

The Chicago Surrealist Movement posted an online petition , which was signed by 560 people, calling for NASA to halt the bombing of the moon. Faith Vilas, director of the MMT Observatory , said she's been amazed by such negative reactions to the mission. And people against the LCROSS mission started their own Twitter presence with @helpsavethemoon . While some people said they felt NASA's plan was simply too aggressive an attack on the Earth's orbiter, some claimed that the impacts would change the Earth's tides, throw the moon off its axis or even affect women's menstrual cycles. There's simply no danger, she added. "The moon is impacted by nature and meteors all the time," said Vilas. "Nature has done much more damage to the moon than we just did. What we did was nothing. We were not likely to have any effect on the moon at all.

We didn't have much of an impact at all." Bruce Betts, director of projects at The Planetary Society , said in an email to Computerworld that this morning's crashes will have no negative impact on the moon or the Earth. "The spacecraft are far too tiny compared to the moon, in fact, to have any significant effect on the moon's orbit or dynamics," he added. "The impact might be likened to a gnat hitting the windshield of a truck."

It's hard to imagine NASA could face more challenges than the ones it stared at in October. On the cloudier side, the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee said NASA faces significant challenges in continuing the manned space flight program. On the good side, the space agency had a couple major successes first with the NASA LCROSS satellites successfully crashing into the moon looking for water and then the Ares X rocket launch that went off without a hitch at the end of the month. Then the GAO said NASA network faces myriad security problems.

That was the conclusion of the Augustine Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee report delivered to the White House today. Here's a look at those NASA stories and more from October: NASA's future: Now the space battle beginsWhen it comes down to it, NASA is the most accomplished space organization in the world but its human spaceflight activities are at a tipping point, primarily due to a mismatch of goals and money. The report's 157-pages worth of findings will now be debated and in the end, dictate the future of NASA and space flight operations. The short test flight - about 2 minutes - will provide NASA an early opportunity to look at hardware, models, facilities and ground operations associated with the mostly new Ares I launch vehicle. NetworkWorld Extra:12 mad science projects that could shake the world10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmos "Frickin fantastic" launch of NASA Ares X rocket NASA saysWith a hiss and roar NASA's Ares X rocket blasted into the atmosphere this at about 11:33 am EST taking with it a variety of test equipment and sensors but also high hopes for the future of the US space agency. NASA network security torchedWhile NASA may be focused on keeping its manned space flight plans intact, apparently it has seriously neglected the security of its networks.

NASA teams with Air Force to step up commercial space paceAs it looks to significantly reshape its future, NASA today said it would partner with the US Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a technology roadmap for use of reusable commercial spaceships. Watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office issued a 53-page report pretty much ripping the space agency's network security strategy stating that NASA has significant problems protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the information and variety of networks supporting its mission centers. The study of reusable launch vehicle, or RLVs will focus on identifying technologies and assessing their potential use to accelerate the development of commercial reusable launch vehicles that have improved reliability, availability, launch turn-time, robustness and significantly lower costs than current launch systems, NASA stated. NASA spacecraft crash into the moonNASA' Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellites (LCROSS) took dead aim and crashed into the moon around 7:31 am ESD. Watching the results on NASA TV, scientists were pleased with the impact of the two satellites. The study results will provide roadmaps with recommended government technology tasks and milestones for different vehicle categories. The impact of the $80 million LCROSS satellites into the moon was to create what the space agency hopes is an ice-filled a debris plume that can be analyzed for water content.

The space agency said on Oct. 15 it will start a series of 17 flights to study changes to Antarctica's sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. NASA takes ice hunt Earth-boundWhile NASA is crashing into the moon to look for ice, it's also looking for the frozen stuff here on Earth, only in a much more conventional way. The flights are part of what NASA calls Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year project that is the largest airborne survey ever made of ice at Earth's polar regions. The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields and updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million, NASA stated. NASA says 200-yard long asteroid will miss EarthNASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid known as Apophis and now say it has only a very slim chance of banging into Earth. NASA Ares rocket battles lightning strikesNASA's Ares I-X test rocket has been delayed today in part because of the number of lightning strikes in the area - 154 since last evening, NASA said.

That's because NASA built an enormous lightning protection system at the Kennedy Space Center that will not only protect people and equipment but collects strike information for analysis by launch managers. While NASA can't control the weather, the Ares launch pad and surrounding area as well protected from lighting strikes as can be.

I just got back from the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles and I am very excited. The attendees included developers, end users, graphic artists, small businesses … you name it. This event attracted some 6,000 people, each paying between $595 to attend for a single day and $1,695 for late registration to attend all three days.

Adobe brings Flash apps to the iPhone The event occupied the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center, every conference room and theater in the complex, and took over the enormous Nokia Theater opposite the LACC for various presentations. There was a lot to be impressed about and one of the technologies getting a lot of attention was augmented reality (AR). AR is the technique of overlaying graphics on an image of the real world such that the graphics enhance and recontextualize the scene. In short, it's a massive show and, considering the harsh economic times, an amazing success that underscores the vibrancy and scope of the Adobe market. AR has been used for years in the military in heads-up displays in fighter aircraft where the pilot's view is enhanced with markers highlighting other aircraft (note that data such as airspeed that is also shown on heads-up displays is not, strictly speaking, augmented reality as it is not an integrated part of the visualize context of the scene). The connection between the Adobe conference and AR is that developers favor the use of Flash content to provide the visual overlay for an AR scene. Alliban, who works for Skive, a London digital agency, which does some amazing work, showed a number of his AR projects that were visually stunning as well as one project that, should you have doubts about the business potential of AR, should change your mind: The USPS Virtual Box Simulator. The whole Flash model combined with the impressive 3D features now available in a number of Adobe products (check out the 3D functions built-in to Photoshop CS4 Extended – amazing!). At the conference, a great presentation by Jesse Freeman and James Alliban showcased some impressive examples that explored both the artistic and business potential of augmented reality.

Developed by AKQA, an international digital agency, the Virtual Box Simulator is a Web application that lets you check whether something you want to ship will fit in one of the USPS flat rate shipping boxes as well as order real, physical boxes. You then print out a "target" – a black and white image that the AR application uses to determine the scene geometry. To use the Virtual Box Simulator you need a Web cam pointing at a table. When you hold this target so the camera can see it, the target is displayed on your computer screen is overlaid with a semi-transparent USPS box - move and rotate the target and the virtual box also moves simultaneously. You can change box sizes and alter the transparency of the virtual box and, when satisfied, use the same Web application to order your shipping supplies. If you can lay the target (and therefore the virtual box) on the table and place the thing to be shipped on the target it is very easy to whether the thing actually fits the box.

While you might say that if you had the actual boxes to hand you could easily test the real fit and therefore the Virtual Box Simulator is more for show that misses the point. Augmented Reality looks like it is about to take off, big time. The point is that this is actually useful and useable and applies to the real world, it isn't just an art project or a test of the technology. Not only are people talking about the concept and producing useful examples, but the marketplace is making the building process easier with libraries that combine Flash with AP such as FLARToolKit and the library wrapper FLARManager. I expect to see a lot more augmented reality not only at next year's Adobe Max conference but in the real world as well.