TR Hot 5: Expand the dev team with a second X chromosome

I'm Sonja Thompson with TechRepublic's Hot 5, and during this episode -- on April 16th, 2010 -- we're going to count down the hottest discussions of the week. Stay tuned.

Jack Wallen was recently asked to find a help desk solution for the IT consultant firm he works for. He thought, "No sweat!" but when he started investigating a little bit, he discovered that there are a LOT of them out there to choose from. So, based on Jack's experience, he put together a list of the 10 most critical factors to consider while searching for a help desk system. Now, of course he included budget, e-mail compatibility, and security, but for the full list, you'll have to check out the post. That's what you call a tease.

Mark Kaelin brought the whole "Is Microsoft a monopoly?" question to a close when he presented the poll results with this sharp looking graphic. Out of the 913 TechRepublic members who took the poll, 45% said "Nope, because there are other operating systems out there and that little thing called freedom of choice." Did you hear that, Microsoft? No Monopoly, no passing Go, no collecting $200... Oh, that's not what he was talking about? Never mind....

Jumping Jack is back in a flash with this post about 10 obscure antivirus tools worth checking out. Why? Well, because they work (for one), plus they typically cost less and scarf up a fraction of the CPU processes. So, what do we got here... BitDefender, Dr. Web CureIT!, ZoneAlarm -- and yep, you guessed it, you have to check out the post to see what other obscure antivirus tools made his list. Hey, be happy -- I'm going to include links to all of the hot 5 discussions in the blog notes.

Jason Hiner, TechRepublic's Editor in Chief, had a hot post this past week about Ubuntu -- or rather Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu -- and how it can provide a great example to Microsoft, Apple, and all of those chief technology officers out there who are paying attention. Jason said that Canonical methodically produces incremental upgrades to its OS, it's transparent about its goals and plans, and releases its software on schedule. That's impressive, right?

At the end of his post, Jason included a poll, asking the TR community, "Which upgrade cycle do you prefer on the software you manage?" At the time of this recording, a fairly high majority of respondents had selected the option, "Incremental upgrades at least twice a year." 

And the hottest post of the week was written by Justin James about "Where are the female programmers?" So, J.Ja did some digging and shared some interesting facts he found about the IT gender gap, as well as theories about why more women aren't in IT, is it really a problem, and can we reverse this trend.

Now, there's a lot of great information in the post, more than I can summarize eloquently in just a few words. And then there's the feedback that J.Ja received in the discussion thread, where the TR community shared their thoughts about the IT gender gap. With close to 200 comments -- yeah, they had a lot to say. I especially liked the responses from the TR lady programmers in the house, like Violetw who thinks that women are probably getting into something more useful to humanity. She said, "Face it men, women are just smarter and tend to do better things with their lives. I'm still in IT because, well, I'm like a man in some ways... terribly self-centered, after all." Ha! 

Of course I'd also like to give a quick shout out to the TR members who posted the most comments over the past week, and as a side note -- they're all fellas, so come on ladies, you gotta step it up! The hot 5 posters this week are NickNielsen, mafergus (welcome to the Hot 5, Mike), Neon Samurai, Palmetto, and santeewelding.

That's all for today, but be sure to tune in next week for another TR Hot 5.