To quote an acquaintance who is a 30+ year  journeyman in IT management, “the last year wasn’t just the worst I’ve ever seen, it was Armageddon”. From that perspective any improvement no matter how meager is a welcome trend

As one might expect, the outlook for 2010 appears upbeat only in comparison to an anxiety-filled 2009. To assess the current state of affairs, we first asked IT executives in our November survey of 139 organizations in the U.S. and Canada whether their companies made any changes to their IT operational budgets over the past three months. As Figure 1 shows, the answer for nearly half of the organizations was “Yes.” While 19% increased their IT budgets, 29% continued to squeeze costs out of their spending plans as they approached the end of the year.

This is a bearish outcome. At best, it is more upbeat than responses to the same question at this time a year ago, when 35% were reducing budgets and only 11% were increasing spending plans. At that point, however, business leaders were worrying about the possibility of a global financial meltdown. This year, IT organizations are continuing to restrain spending as they approach year-end. Despite this, many of those same organizations anticipate a green light to raise spending in the year ahead. (Internet News)

This is good news for those of us who have earned our keep in IT, and great news for Tightwads too. With a little new investment, we’ll see more recycled gear on the market.

Many of us enjoy tinkering or hacking as much for the process as for the resulting product. It’s particularly rewarding when you hack together something that actually does it’s job better than anything you can buy.

Scanning books usually requires either a slow page by page process, or destroying the book to use a sheet feed mechanism. Instructables has a slightly different take on how to do the job using a could of cheap cameras and assorted dumpster finds. The result captures two pages at a time, and there’s no waiting for a scan. I can think of a library near me that could use this….

After suffering through scanning many of my old, rare, and government issue books, I decided to create a book scanner that anybody could make, for around $300. And that’s what this instructable is all about. A greener future with more books rather than fewer books. More access to information, rather than less access to information. And maybe, years from now, a reformed publishing/distribution model (but I’m not holding my breath…).

I’ve built two of these things now, and this instructable covers the best parts of both of them. You can build a book scanner using only hand tools plus a drill. I realized that not everyone is comfortable with using all the different hand tools you might need to make it. So I scanned a book on using hand tools that should answer all your questions. (Instructables)