[LINK]

[Alastair Rankine]

>
>
>Two techniques beloved of IT spin-doctors:
>1) offer an "exclusive" to encourage uncritical acceptance of the story;
>2) choose unschooled, inexperienced or non-technical journalists.
>
>Eg:
>http://www.computerworld.com.au/idg2.nsf/All/97AA47AF29FF21804A256AAE000582EF!OpenDocument
>Library opens new chapter with IP telephony
>

The body of the article certainly reads like Cisco marketing literature, 
which tends to emphasise features (such as power-over-ethernet) that 
other manufacturers don't have. Fair enough for Cisco, not so good for 
IT journalists (or their readers, for that matter).

BTW the power-over-ethernet feature is a good indicator of press-release 
journalism. To be honest I can't see why it is so important apart from 
being:
- relatively easy for non-technical types to understand;
- something that Cisco had a proprietary solution for, before the 802 
folks standardised it; and
- useful to deflect reliability/availability concerns away from the rest 
of the network infrastructure

Hence if this topic rates a mention, you're probably looking at a 
relatively poorly-researched article. Switch operating system is another 
such topic.

>Three months to install the phones. What were they doing the other two
>months, twenty seven days?
>
Upgrading their routers and switches to handle the traffic? :)

ObDisclaimer: I work for a major competitor to Cisco, in the 
enterprise-grade IP Telephony market. And I have an IP phone on my desk.