Stories by Bill Snyder

IT is moving to the cloud -- and so are the jobs. Here's how to cash in on the hot trend in tech hiring

Forward-thinking firms like Kraft didn't wait for employees to bring in consumer tech, but led the effort themselves

It's not a myth. The technology industry is in the midst of a hiring surge stronger than any we've seen since the days of the dot-com boom. InfoWorld's interviews with economists, technology executives, job seekers, and hiring board managers indicate that employment in the tech sector is up a solid 10 percent this year -- by some bullish estimates, closer to 20 percent. And despite the tendency of the media to fixate on California's Silicon Valley, the hottest job markets are in places like New York and Washington, D.C., where firms in financial services and the federal government hire droves of IT hands.

If you read much about tech, you've undoubtedly been told by some snarky writer that if you're not headed for the cloud, you're hopelessly unhip, behind the times, and probably overweight. You know -- the cloud, that repository of all things digital contained on giant servers owned by someone else out there in cyberspace.

Over the years, I've had plenty of beefs with Microsoft software: It can be buggy, it's bloated, it attracts viruses like candy attracts flies and it nags you more than your Mom ever did.

School is just about to start, and if you have a kid heading for college you're probably grimacing at the thought of all those bills. You're on your own when it comes to soaring tuition and housing costs, but there are ways to spend less on your student's technology needs while still giving them what they need to succeed.

By the end of this year, the world's population is expected to hit 7 billion. That's a huge number, but it pales in comparison to the 60 billion to 100 billion photos Facebook has reportedly stored on its servers.

I love my hometown of San Francisco. Great weather, great views, great food. But terrible radio. So when I'm driving, I've developed the habit of tuning into Pandora on an iPhone that I link to my car radio. Like a lot of other AT&T customers, I've been moved from my unlimited data plan to measured service. Yes, that was my choice, but what has the metered plan done to my music habit? And does that mean I made a mistake?

The good thing about being an adult is you get to make your own decisions. The bad thing? You get to make your own decisions - and live with the consequences.

Wave your smartphone; buy a latte. Sounds great, doesn't it? But before running off to participate in Silicon Valley's next new thing, you might want to think about a scary downside to mobile commerce: the vulnerability of smartphones to hackers.

Google and Sprint didn't exactly cover themselves in glory last week. The much hyped integration of Google Voice and Sprint fell flat on its face, embarrassing both companies and irritating an unknown number of users who simply couldn't make the two systems talk to each other.

Locking down your home Wi-Fi network with a password is like making sure you eat your broccoli. It's probably good for you, but you probably think it's not much of a priority or a big deal. Well, it's time to make an attitude adjustment. It turns out that you can cause yourself a good deal of trouble by leaving that door to your system unlocked.

Given how much confusing and often contradictory information has been filling the media over the last week, it wouldn't surprise me if some iPhone users were calling in priests to exorcise the demons of privacy invasion.

There I was at the San Francisco Giants game the other evening, when my buddy decided to do something a bit silly -- but memorable -- and handed me his little Flip camera. I'm not going to share the YouTube link, but the video is pretty good, considering the lighting was weird and it was a very chaotic environment. There's no way that I would have done nearly as well with my iPhone.

Most of the time I only hear from my credit card companies when I owe them money or when they want to sell me a new service. That's changed; now I'm being bombarded with notes telling me that a company I never heard of has been successfully hacked and these still unknown bad guys now have my name and e-mail address -- and maybe more.