My frolleague Richard Voaden sent this article my way this afternoon…

Ian Watmore – who is now in charge of a Whitehall efficiency drive – gave a scathing assessment of the previous government’s IT record.

The article suggests that expensive IT projects made policies sound “sexy” and that certain suppliers had a vice-like grip on the world of Public Sector IT. As these articles often do, the idea of open source software is thrown in as a potential money-saver, suggesting that the UK Government relies too heavily on Microsoft products. Anyone for Symphony?

But this is my favourite part of the article…

His “personal” view, he added, was that Apple products, which he said he used at home, should also be used more in government.

Now hang on a second… the words “save cash” appear very near to the top of this article. While I might be considered to be a bit of an Apple fan-boy (while still being left unimpressed by the iPad) I wouldn’t agree that spending money with Apple wasn’t the best course of action in the middle of an economy drive. Has Mr Watmore never visited the Apple store? I know it’s hard to see the product details with every computer surrounded by tourists reading their e-mail and treating the place like a free and trendy cyber-cafe, but surely he must know that Apple products do tend to be on the pricey side.

Also, using something at home isn’t always a good reason to use the same item at work. For example, we own a Breville sandwich toaster.

Regular readers of dadams.co.uk will know that I’m a big advocate of getting the right kit for unified communications solutions. Whether you’re working from home, in a private office, in an open-plan environment, or constantly on the move, it’s very important to get a device that suits you and allows you to manage your modes of communication. When working from the Camberley office, I use Sametime Unified Telephony as much as possible – for all my outgoing calls, and a considerable number of incoming calls. But some people will insist on calling my BlackBerry – which is annoying if I’m already on an SUT call. And personally I don’t like holding a mobile device up to my ear.

My equipment of choice at home is a Plantronics MCD100 speakerphone, and if I get myself organised I switch on a Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset to take the calls on the ‘Berry. If I’m in the office, a speakerphone isn’t the right thing, so I use either the Voyager Pro or the Savi W430 in conjunction with SUT.

A few weeks ago I made contact with Jabra – we’re often asked about end-user solutions to work alongside Sametime and SUT, so it’s good to be able to talk about a range of headsets and speakerphones. My contact at Jabra kindly arranged to send me some samples, and I picked up the box of goodies today. It contained:

• Jabra SPEAK 410
• Jabra PRO 9470
• Jabra GO 660
• Jabra BIZ 620

So far I haven’t had a chance to try out the BIZ 620 corded headset, or the GO 660, but more on that later. First out of it’s packaging was the SPEAK 410, a USB speakerphone. It ships with a black zip-up case – a nice touch. The USB cable is stored by winding it into a recess within the 410′s casing, thus making it very tidy for placement on a desk (no surplus cable) and for storage in the case. The 410 features touch-sensitive call-control, volume and mute buttons, and LEDs to show the volume and mute status.

I used the 410 on a few calls during the morning – the sound I was hearing was excellent, and I asked people about the sound quality their end – all confirmed it was crystal-clear. Okay, I haven’t done any comparisons against other speakerphones, but I have to give the 410 top marks. Click on the small image to see a larger version.

Next out of the packaging was the PRO 9470. How can I best describe it? It’s a headset with a base-station which features a touch screen. The base-station connects to a computer via a USB cable, and has inputs for desk telephones and Bluetooth to connect to mobile devices. So the big value proposition of the 9470 is that you can take / make calls from a variety of phones but use just one headset. The touch screen allows you to configure the base-station and its connections, and to select a device and pick up calls.

The box contains a lot of stuff, but the set-up takes just a couple of minutes, and within quarter of an hour I’d taken two calls on my ‘Berry and made an outgoing call using SUT. While I prefer speakerphones to headsets, the convenience of having one headset to manage calls on SUT and the ‘Berry is terrific – so I’m going to give the 9470 an extended run over the next few weeks. Headsets aren’t great for demos – speakerphones are – but I will take this baby out for customer visits.

The headset itself if comfortable to wear, swappable for your preferred ear (I’m left-earred), and features touch-sensitive volume and mute controls.

As I mentioned earlier, I haven’t had a chance to try the Jabra GO 660, which is a Bluetooth headset plus USB dongle. Matt Newton is going to test-drive this device over the next few weeks. But I will mention something rather nifty that comes in the box – a charger which fits in your car’s cigarette lighter, and which has a USB port in one end (into which fits an adapter which in turn slots into the 660 headset). A very nice addition.

So, I’ll close by saying thank you to Jabra for supplying these samples to try out with SUT, and if anyone wants to know more about these or other headsets for unified communications projects, please let me know.

Upgrading to a major new version of Firefox is carried out with a certain amount of trepidation. After years of using Firefox I have it ‘how I like it’, and that includes my favourite theme Camifox. And here’s the first piece of bad news… Camifox is not being updated for Firefox 4. That’s a shame.

An upgrade is very likely to expose some non-supported plug-ins, and it’s likely to give Mrs A a case of the wobbles – as Firefox is installed on the family iMac, an upgrade for me is an upgrade for everyone.

But ignoring these minor disasters, here’s a quick run-down of some of the more prominent new features:

• Tab groups – I usually have loads of tabs open, often because I want to read something later or have something open that prompts me to do something on my to-do list. I have a number of things I always need to have open (Facebook, Twitter, Connections Profiles), but the other stuff doesn’t always need to be visible. So the ability to group tabs together, hide a set but have the ability to return to the tabs is extremely useful.
• App tabs – having established that there’s pages I always want access to, wouldn’t it be great if they could be pinned onto the tab bar with no close button? Yes… and that’s what app tabs are for. Nice.
• More screen real-estate – the new layout of Firefox 4 provides a bit more vertical space… not a lot, but any reclaimed real-estate is a good thing.
• Tabs on top – as the name of the feature suggests, the tabs are moved to the top. This provides even more reclaimed real-estate… but it may take a bit of getting used to.
• Switching to tabs from the ‘awesome bar’ – if you type in the name of an open tab, Firefox shows that it’s a tab rather than an address in your history, and gives you an option to switch to it.

The following screenshot shows the new menu button (available on Windows and Linux, the Mac version retains the standard OS X menu), tabs on top, and three app tabs. Note that Twitter glows blue because the page has updated in the background.

Firefox 4 is rumoured to be faster than it’s predecessors – I haven’t witnessed any noticeable difference yet. All-in-all it’s a worthy upgrade, even without my beloved Camifox.

The IBM Collaboration Solutions UKI (that’s UK and Ireland) Technical Sales team are hosting a number of events through April and May 2011. The TechJams are focused on covering many parts of the IBM Collaboration Solutions portfolio, including:

• Customising and extending Connections 3
• Cloud-based messaging and collaboration (that’ll be LotusLive)
• Exceptional web experiences
• Collaborating using mobile devices
• Unified communications and collaboration

Two dates are set so far, 5th April and 20th May – both in Lotus Park in Staines – but more dates and locations will be added soon. If you’d like to attend, add a comment and I’ll give you a contact e-mail address.

If you are an IBM Business Partner we’d love to see you there, but the entry fee is to escort a customer whom you have invited. IBM customers can attend free-of-charge.

It’s about this time of year that daffodils start to emerge and our thoughts turn to Lotusphere Comes To You. But this year the events aren’t billed as Lotusphere Comes To You – instead they will go under the name of ‘Get Social, Do Business’. We’ve announced five (yes, five) dates:

• 13th April – Warrington – hosted by Polymorph
• 4th May – Edinburgh (hopefully without the added delights of a volcanic apocalypse this year)
• 18th May – London

Polymorph’s event (which is actually still named LCTY) is open for registration. I spoke to Polymorph’s Head of Sales and Marketing, Andy Dunbar, today – the draft agenda is looking great and the final tweaks and confirmation of speakers will make it even better.

Registration and further details of the remaining IBM-hosted Get Social, Do Business events will be posted here soon. In the meantime, mark your diaries and check my Twitter updates for further news.

Update: click here for venues, the agenda and registration.