IT PRO Monthly Roundup: February

Are we approaching spring already? The month seems to have flown by. Although that might be because February has just 28 days...

In last month's roundup we ended with Twitter, so this month we will also begin with Twitter. Stephen Fry told us what many of us secretly thought he was already that he is the Vice President of Twitter'.

Some readers may still be confused about what all the fuss is about. If that's the case, check out IT PRO's handy guide to how it could be a useful aid to business productivity.

You may also remember that we had a bit of snow at the beginning of the month which paralysed the country. If businesses haven't sorted out their remote working policies they had better sort them out before our next bout of snow.

Internet safety and content regulation was also a big issue this month, and will continue to be an issue because of the delicate issues of child abuse and freedom of speech involved.

Hopefully, 100 per cent of Britain agrees material such as child porn is wrong, and many do believe the work of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) is perfectly valid.

Children's charities have called on all ISPs to agree to block sites that the IWF says should be banned, rather than the 95 per cent that currently do.

Self-regulation of the internet industry seems to have worked in the main so far, so whether the government forces the other five per cent to follow the IWF remains to be seen.

February was also the month of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Black Hat in Washington DC and VMWorld in Cannes. And IT PRO was there to cover the worlds of mobile, security and virtualisation at all three events.

Is it possible to get through a roundup without any mention of Apple, Microsoft or Google?

That's pretty unlikely of course. And we can't this month because Apple shareholders were talking about Steve Jobs during a special gathering, Microsoft was upsetting workers it made redundant by trying to get money back off them and Google's Gmail had a bit of a funny turn.

For a week-by-week view of what February had to offer us, check out our weekly reports below.

Week in Review 6 February - How the snow broke Britain

Week in Review 13 February - Keeping the internet safe for kids

Week in Review 20 February - Barcelona to Washington and back

Week in Review 27 February - Gmail fails, the world winces