If you have staff who “take a mile rather than an inch”, I would suggest you have recruitment problems (Communication control, letters.computing.co.uk).

I manage a company that imposes no restrictions on the sites employees can access on the internet from work and we have not had any problems.

People spend time on the net when things are slack, but as long as they deliver their projects as expected, I don’t care. It is all about empowerment and responsibility rather than treating employees like children.

If your employees are not delivering, I would suggest they have bigger problems than being distracted by social networking sites. If they are delivering, why do you care when and how they take their brain breaks?

If your employees are not pulling their weight now, I’m fairly certain they will find other distractions if you block their net access. Such actions do not cure any problems, they merely drive the symptoms elsewhere.

Hugh, submitted on the web

I take issue with Andrew Thomas’ letter about the use of social media in business (Trusting sociable staff, letters.computing.co.uk).

Phone calls are open and obvious in their nature, sitting and tapping at a keyboard is not. We have an acceptable use policy at my firm, we are open about why it is necessary and have presented each member of staff with the policy and talked it through with them to prevent abuse. This is vital to all businesses as this issue is a people problem rather than a technical one.

However, despite this, several staff members have spent hours a day posting on Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, and the like. We eventually stopped access to these sites other than during the lunch hour. This involved buying expensive software and is a cost that should not be required.

We do not live in an ideal world, Mr Thomas. There will always be staff who take a mile rather than an inch and this has to be controlled – it is called management.

Alistair, submitted on the web

I must take issue with Andrew Thomas, founder of Social Media in a Corporate Context, when he says that if staff are trusted with a telephone, they should be trusted with social networking software (Trusting sociable staff, letters.computing.co.uk).

Using a telephone is a highly visible activity – visible in terms of colleagues and visible in terms of phone bills. If someone were to abuse the use of a phone, the evidence would be there for all to see and hear.

My company is trying to minimise call spend as far as possible as this may be seen as a perk of the job and personal calls could eat into the bottom line. Any spend that doesn’t move the business along can end up costing people’s jobs.

Updating a Facebook entry or using Twitter is a hidden activity at the desktop. If someone is typing away, without looking at the screen would anyone else be able to distinguish between someone finishing a report to a tight deadline, or someone involved in a hectic session of: “Last weekend was amazing – what are we doing this weekend?” We can run a proxy server report, but then we step into the trust issues raised by Mr Thomas.

Social networking has its place. However, without a cohesive business strategy for its use, there are any number of caveats and there needs to be a balance between a trusting, social-networking environment in the office – with responsible use – and a free-for-all that results in the work becoming of secondary importance and the viability of the company suffering.

Besides, anyone who works in manual labour will often have no access to social – or any – networks and there is no issue of morale or trust there.

Mark Evans

Mobile payments sound great to those who regularly take their mobile when shopping rather than a handful of cash, but there is no legislation that will enable you to resolve incorrect billing when it occurs (Carphone Warehouse to launch mobile payment services, www.computing.co.uk/2238929).

When you discover you have been charged an incorrect amount – or an unsolicited amount – you will find there is very little you can do about it other than ask nicely for your operator to give you the details of the perpetrator, which inevitably will be a premium-rate phone number to a faceless company with no address.

This technology sounds great, but I for one will be making sure my network provider understands that I will not be using my phone for this purpose and that it should either block all possibility to charge my account or understand that I will expect it to repay any money taken without my consent.

If there is not a cast-iron guarantee that disputes are resolved by the networks, this is going to be open to abuse by unscrupulous companies out to make a quick buck.

Sally H, submitted on the web

According to a recent letter in Computing, “Working in IT isn’t what it used to be” (letters.computing.co.uk). Thank goodness for that.

Gone are the days of supporting slow, clumsy PCs that took forever to do anything useful, and when they did, quite often would crash and lose 90 per cent of your work. Gone too is the jobsworth support guy wasting time faffing about with IT kit not fit for purpose.

Now IT on the internet is raging ahead and if new or existing businesses grab it with both hands, they will reap the rewards. This is in complete contrast to the continued decline in shops on the high street. E-commerce is still on the rise and there are still many opportunities for new web sites in niche markets that are yet to be exploited.

It is sad to hear an existing business say: “Yes we have a web site,” but that’s it, it’s just a web presence. That is where many existing, established bricks-and-mortar firms are going wrong. Forget the shiny shop front, the new showroom is your web site.

We are in a world recession; like you said: “Continued growth in IT being the only positive”. IT has improved in leaps and bounds, moving so fast it is leaving many behind. Will you keep up?

Dave Walker

The answer to the question “Why do large IT projects fail?” is because they are large, of course! (Why IT and the real world don’t mix, editor.computing.co.uk).

There is no excuse for designing large, all-encompassing systems that take years to develop, over-run on cost and scope and then fail. Design should be about small systems that deliver a small but quantifiable benefit and have built-in connectivity.

Tools such as web services, XML and RSS to name but a few, can be used to break up large systems into smaller, more manageable chunks.

After all, that’s how the web is built, with discrete bits of functionality and benefit stitched together by “survival of the fittest” standards rather than imposed ones.

John Royle

The answer to Bill’s question asking how many email systems are up as much as Google’s Gmail (Frugal with downtime, letters.computing.co.uk), is: the vast majority of them, if they are well maintained and monitored.

Given the large user base of Googlemail, one would expect more resilience to be incorporated into the design. No excuses Google, only solutions. Now, if only Transport for London and National Rail could follow the same advice.

Brendan Steenkamp

The first white paper was written in 1959 about computers being joined up to share information over the telephone and to allow people to access this information (World wide web turns 20, www.computing.co.uk/2238150).

While the white paper didn’t call it the world wide web, nonetheless the idea was already there. Also, I was using bulletin board systems in 1986 – so did these people invent the internet? Well, yes, the name more than anything else.

Allan Turnbull

Where did that awful word “outage” come from? (Top 10 worst internet outages, www.computing.co.uk/2237272).

We now have power outages here in the UK thanks to the Americanisms sneaking on to the BBC. At one time they were called cuts.

Ron, submitted on the web

Those who pay money for Google Mail are apparently guaranteed 99.9 per cent uptime over a year and Google typically sees 10 minutes a month of downtime (What if Google Mail had been your corporate IT system? www.computing.co.uk/2237122).

Even if you add the four hours last week to the typical two hours per year down, it is at 99.93 per cent uptime. How many other email systems are up that much?

Bill, submitted on the web