I agree with Simon Perry’s comments on the virtuous circle benefits for telehealth (The opportunities and risks of telehealth in the NHS, quocirca.computing.co.uk).

As a university lecturer, I frequently teach the topic to student nurses. I emphasise that this equipment provides tools that enable us to deliver healthcare in much the same way as we use electronic equipment to provide healthcare in hospitals.

As healthcare professionals, we must not allow the technology to replace patient contact. Used correctly, the benefits should allow us to reduce unnecessary visits and hospitalisations, allowing us to use freed-up time to visit patients who require interventions and care. Human contact is an essential component of healthcare and we must not forget how important it is for both patients and care providers.

Ray McKinnie

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

A six-page guide to corporate social media etiquette is probably a positive thing (Social Networking – business opportunity and threat?, quocirca.computing. co.uk). Where it would fail would be if the six-page guide were issued as an edict from a company that does not trust its employees and does not care if its employees know it.

Twitter, Yammer, LinkedIn, Facebook and so on are valid communication tools used both internally and externally to share, collaborate, inform and research. As is, for instance, a telephone. Yet how many companies issue staff with manuals on how to use a telephone?

If you trust an employee enough to pick up an inbound phone call, then you should trust them with social media. And likewise if an employee feels trusted, valued and engaged with their employer, they are less likely to use social media to bring that employer into disrepute.

Andrew Thomas, founder, Social Media in a Corporate Context

The government’s new proposal to have greater IT access in primary schools is all very laudable, but will it be a long-term, sustainable project or an eye-catching, one-off political strategy (Educating a workforce for the future, www.computing.co.uk/2242223)?

Laptops For Teachers was, on the surface, a good idea. But when those laptops reached the end of their useful lifecycle, who was left with the bill for replacing them? Schools, of course. As they will be the next time, and the time after that. Too many people view IT projects as a one-off investment rather than something requiring constant investment on a cycle of replacement.

Tony Forder

I found Vincent Offer’s recent letter of the week very interesting (Three Rs must come before IT, letters.computing.co.uk), and his closing line “IT is not the god of learning it is made out to be” received a nod of approval from me.

ILT – information learning technology – is one of the current buzz terms in education. The government has been throwing money at it for years, and is desperate to recruit new IT teachers.

However, not many IT professionals are prepared to take a 30 per cent-plus pay cut to move into teaching – as I did seven years ago. While teaching is highly rewarding and never dull, it has its share of frustrations and stress; not least of which is the government’s fickle attitude and the lack of funding in key areas.

The problem is that ILT seems to be considered the silver bullet. Just as many commercial businesses think that introducing a computer system will magically fix their poorly implemented paper-based systems, many seem to think that introducing computers into the classroom will magically create interesting and productive lessons.

So often in schools the opposite is true – due to the lack of properly trained and experienced IT teachers – and as a result, students are put off IT and do not pursue it to a higher level.

It is fantastic that children and young adults have constant exposure to IT in the classroom, and think nothing of producing presentations, professional-looking documents, web pages and even simple databases. However, when it is at the expense of basic literacy and numeracy, it should sound alarm bells.

A university-based colleague recently expressed grave concerns about the abilities of first-year undergraduates with grade A at A-level maths, who are having to be taught the basic mathematical skills they need to complete the first year of a computing degree.

It is unfair to make the sweeping generalisation that educational standards are falling, but the decline of literacy and numeracy is all too clear.

Richard Hind

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

Recently, one of my PCs was infected with a virus. A few days earlier I had updated to Windows Service Pack 3, performed all the other updates, checked the firewall was on and the anti-virus definitions were current. After visiting a link from a Google search, a page opened and there was a short delay. I could sense that something was being downloaded, although I was not confronted with the usual warning bar along the top of the Internet Explorer window.

From this point on, Internet Explorer would redirect to an advertisement for some unheard-of anti-virus package that said my PC was infected. After further research and trying known fixes, the virus remained. I had to spend two hours reinstalling the operating system, drivers and other software. I do not use Firefox because it does not support the ActiveX controls that I need. Linux is not an alternative as I use some Windows-only software.

Then I saw the BBC Click TV programme, which said 25 per cent of UK PCs could be infected by botnets (BBC programme builds botnet, www.computing.co.uk/2238434). This is worrying, and I feel let down by the likes of McAfee and Microsoft, which have failed to protect people from attacks. Surely these large companies with high-level programmers can come up with a system that is robust enough to ward off some clever Russian boys in their bedrooms?

I don’t see that I should have to spend even more money on additional security tools. I have considered doing all my web browsing within VMware virtual machines, but the extra time loading it up after the host machine has booted means the temptation to use the big blue E on my desktop has been too great to resist.

Jason Davies

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

IT and the real world do not mix because there is no logical point of interface between the two (Why IT and the real world don’t mix, editor.computing.co.uk).

That doesn’t stop most people from trying to batter IT into the real world, instead of recognising that technology should engage indirectly with the real world, as an important contributor to information systems. And IT projects fail because they are wrongly established from the start and lack the necessary mix of people, process and technology.

Colin Beveridge

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