A couple of weeks ago at a conference in Birmingham I noticed this guy walking around with a laptop with two rolls of foam at the ends strapped to his shoulder with nylon rope."Hey, neat laptop carrier," I said.

"I'm the guy from Junkk.com," he said and gave me a card, which unfortunately did not have his name, but could be reused as a wallet picture frame.

Instead of throwing away the card I could stick a picture of my lovely lady or kid in the frame and put it in my wallet. Cheesy but real.

The ethos of Junkk.com is to take what we would normally consider garbage and reuse it.

So the people who work for or belong to the site sit around (or walk around refuse) and come up with ideas on how to reuse it.

For example a description on how to make the "Laptop Protector" I saw is rated on the site's difficulty scale as "D'Oh!".

The instructions are to combine four types of junk. The primary "impact protection" is from offcuts of grey rigid foam pipe lagging with a 25mm diameter core and a 65mm diameter exterior.

Caps from Tetley Instant Tea bottles were used to secure the four ends of the foam pipe. Pieces from a domestic water hose were placed inside the caps to act as a sleeve, through which a 1200mm offcut from a 1200mm nylon cable is pulled through to the base and to pull the unit together more.

A screw is put through into the lower cable to prevent slipping. The tea caps were then glued on with all-purpose clear adhesive.

As the site explains the get up is meant to protect the laptop within a shoulder bag, and is not waterproof. However the Junkk.com man was using it as is when I saw him.

"However, a wrap around bit of plastic sheet from a bit of packaging would provide a pretty good shower protection," the site says helpfully.

Wonder if it might be any use during a Bermuda hurricane?

Other ideas demonstrated on the site include reusing a vacuum cleaner by getting rid of the insides and turning it into a hardcase backpack! Neat.

So let's ask the Junkk.com question: "Before you begin to bin things, what do you think they might be worth?"

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If you are a gadget person of the non-junk type head on over to the new Tech Dispenser, a technology blog network by Computerworld. Not only is it a darn good site for seeking out the latest on software, gadgets and general technical stuff.

The site is actually a news aggregator overseen by one of the journal's editors. He seeks out the best from a growing network of technology blogs and categorises, tags and prioritises every piece on the site.

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New research from Penn State University shows that companies aiming to recruit and retain women in IT jobs need new hiring policies when pitching to them.

It seems men will fall for a typical pitch emphasising job promotion, technical skills and security. Women need a different slant on that pitch according to a survey of 92 female IT workers.

Eileen Trauth, a professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State said contrary to traditional theories, none of those anchors alone was a deciding factor in the women's career choices.

While about 30 percent indicated they valued careers that afforded them opportunities to perfect skills in technical areas, others said they wanted careers with managerial opportunities.

In addition, there was little overlap among the women who reported that managers give up technical skills to develop management skills. The researchers also discovered that women's career choices are motivated by a number of factors, and those shift and change throughout their careers.

This reinforces the researchers' conclusion that static hiring policies won't appeal to women, Trauth said.

"Women's career motivations change and human-resources personnel have to recognise that in order to keep women in IT fields," the researchers concluded.

With many experts anticipating a shortage of IT workers will hit industry soon, recruiters should look to widening their search, according to the researchers.

Women account for about 32 percent of the IT workforce, while they make up about 60 percent of the general workforce.

I don't quite get what the different pitch should be from the outline of the paper. However I still think it is a good idea to re-consider your recruitment plan when launching a bid specifically at women, if you have not done so in the past.

The research is described in a paper "What Do Women Want? An Investigation of Career Anchors among Women in the IT Workforce".

Contact Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com if you have any comments.