Windows Mobile 6.1 had been getting a bit long in the tooth. Not much had changed from the user's view since 2005 when WinMo 5 launched. WinMo 7 is what people are waiting for, but in the mean time, Microsoft released an update to the platform that had the most radical changes since WinMo 5 was released without the desktop style menu system. Microsoft appeared to give up on 6.5 even before it launched.

This evening I received an email from Verizon Wireless. It contained some welcome news for owners of the Motorola Droid. You see, Google has pushed out new SDKs for Android 2.0.1 and Android 1.6. This means the folks over at Motorola and Verizon can dig their hands into the code to fix the Droid's camera issue. Oh, and I have some info on the Droid BOGO event happening this weekend.

What does it mean when the nation's largest Internet Service Provider, like Comcast, buys one of the biggest content creators in the world, like NBC? For one thing, it means the already contentious issue of Net Neutrality is about to get even more heated. Hopefully, it will galvanize the FCC to create and implement Net Neutrality rules that protect the interests of other companies doing business on the Internet.

Business advisory service IDC issued a series of predictions for 2010 on Thursday and managed to say nothing at all that's surprising.

The average selling price of smartphones may be dropping these days, but that doesn't mean that contract plan prices have dropped, too. BillShrink put together a list of devices and what their total cost of ownership is. Check it out.

Not all Web connections are created equal. It's with that in mind that Google offered up YouTube Lite today, called "Feather." Its promise is to get those videos playing faster, even if you have a flaky Web connection.

As we described in the last few entries, adding storage software to standard servers or even to virtual servers is making more sense for a variety of data centers because of the increased performance capabilities of the Intel processor family. Despite this there may still be times in certain environments where there is a need for specialized storage hardware.

Your business is kinda gritty so it's not really possible for you to offer a fancy-schmancy iPhone app, right? Wrong!! A new iPhone app from the AAMCO car-care chain "lets our customers take that peace of mind with them wherever they go by putting our expert technicians right on their phones."

For the US, it is generally assumed that the ultimate marriage between device and carrier would be the iPhone on Verizon. The iPhone is unquestionably the most popular single phone out there for consumers and Verizon is the largest network in the US with impressive coverage and a great 3G network. The iPhone though may be headed to T-Mobile first.

Using a Windows Mobile device? Like performing lots of searches when on the go? Need better performance all around? Get ready for a better Bing. It's free, and it's here today.

My post discussing a VDI pilot project in conjunction with netbooks produced a variety of responses. These readers chose not to post their comments to the public site, so I thought it would be a good idea to highlight two of the most interesting ones.

I sat down recently to chat with Juan Santana, chief executive of the largest security vendor you might not be familiar with. Yet Panda Security, founded in Spain in 1990, is huge in Europe and no slouch either in the United States, where it competes against the likes of Symantec, Trend Micro, Kaspersky, and McAfee. I talked with Santana amid the launch of Panda Cloud Protection Service, which moves threat analysis to the cloud and installs with a very small footprint on the client.

A Credit Suisse analyst has boosted his target price for Accenture shares from $42 to $55 on the expectation that enterprise IT spending is beginning to loosen up and that Accenture will be a prime beneficiary of CIOs' more-expansive spending habits and their increasing acceptance of outsourcing.

Images have appeared of what purport to be a new Android device from Motorola. One quick glance is all it takes to discern that this device is a non-keyboard version of the Droid. Closer inspection, however, reveals a truly unique feature: an HDMI out port.

In the second part of our three-part video interview series with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, we talked about the role technology can play in the transformation of a city, including addressing the growing digital divide, the progress on STEM in San Francisco, and the role the Bay area will play, as a hub of technology innovation, in helping lead the way to economic recovery.

The Harris County Hospital District of Houston, Texas, fired 16 employees, accusing them of violating patient privacy laws by inappropriately accessing the records of a medical resident who'd been admitted to the hospital after she was shot in a grocery store parking lot.

Based in Bangalore, India, a Tata subsidiary that specializes in video effects and animation will open a high-tech delivery center in Los Angeles next week to cater to Hollywood's appetite for video wizardry. Since this is clearly a case of outsourcing, I must ask the question: will the professional positions created at the new lab be "our jobs"?

What Twitter client do you use? TweetDeck is a favorite of many people who use Twitter for professional purposes. I've been an enthusiastic user of Tweetie for the Mac since it came out more than seven months ago, because I love its powerful, simple, and easy-to-use interface. However, TweetDeck now supports Twitter features that Tweetie doesn't, so I figured I'd give TweetDeck another try. And I'm liking it.

That's one of the many analogies and observations drawn by Vyatta CEO Kelly Herrell in a blog post about the economics of open source. The open source business model is tremendously effective, in his eyes -- it's just that its effects are not always measured in dollar values, and that can drive the money men crazy.

The FBI's newly appointed CTO, Jeffrey Johnson, brings an outside-the-beltway background to the job--he worked for Lehman Brothers, a hard-charging technology innovator, until last year. FBI CIO Chad Fulgham also worked at Lehman Bros., as well as at IBM and JPMorgan Chase. Look for their private sector experience to be reflected in the intelligence agency's IT strategy and execution.

We were in a meeting yesterday at General Motor's headquarters with Kirk Gutmann, chief technology and strategy officer, when a woman walked in and handed Gutmann a note. I could see type highlighted in bright yellow. She said, "You need to be in a 4 p.m. board meeting that just got called." I saw a flash of concern pass over Gutmann's face. We shook hands, and our meeting was quickly adjourned. Less than an hour later, I learned CEO Fritz Henderson had resigned.

With the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention this week reporting widespread H1N1 flu outbreaks in 32 states, many companies are dealing with or anticipating the need for staff to work remotely in the months ahead. This can present a challenge for IT organizations that haven't in the past dealt with large numbers of remote workers.

Google has admitted that it is no longer developing its Gears browser plug-in. Instead, it will focus efforts on HTML5, which it says will accomplish much of the same functionality that Gears made possible.

Or else. It’s no surprise that organizations are now looking at adding netbooks into their device mix. A recent InformationWeek Analytics survey found that 72% of enterprises surveyed planned to expand their use of the devices over the next 48 months.

The companies you use to access the internet, both household broadband as well as wireless, have an incredible amount of information on your online habits. They know where and when you to go to sites and in the case of wireless carriers, they usually know where you are in the real world. To supplement their revenue, they are apparently selling this information to the government.

In a wide-ranging interview with InformationWeek, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom talked about DataSF.Org, the role of social networking in politics and running his diverse city, and the role of San Francisco in the digital world. In the first of three in this video series, Newsom discusses how his city has embraced the "open and transparent government" concept.

IBM has already established cloud computing centers in the Chinese cities of Dongying and Wuxi. In the former, the cloud will serve as a "smarter city" platform for development of services. In Wuxi, it will serve as a collective platform for software development. Now it's on to Ho Chi Minh City.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of that little thing called Twitter, is showing off his latest project, and Square is trying to turn iPhones into a mobile payment hub for merchants. It's a very interesting idea, but, like Twitter, I'm wondering how it's going to make real money.

Some good news for users of the Motorola CLIQ. Motorola is offering a system update for the device that makes some major improvements in battery life, screen accuracy and accelerometer accuracy. Too bad the CLIQ is stuck on Android 1.5, though.

Healthcare IT adoption is one of four pillars on which the Obama administration is basing its healthcare strategy, and is key to containing costs, administration healthcare officials said. Healthcare IT should be combined with a budget-neutral healthcare reform bill, establishing a Medicare Commission to improve quality, and an excise tax on expensive private healthcare plans, all of which are included in the Senate healthcare reform bill.

Security researchers at CA have found a new so-called "ransomware" attack underway. There are many things you can say about malware writers. Most of it would be NSFW. But you can't say they don't work hard at what they do.

Video calling is one of those features that has the "neat-o" effect on people. It's fairly common in some European markets, but has yet to make much of an impact in the U.S. Perhaps the newest version of fring for the iPhone will change that, as it allows one-way video sharing from the iPhone to another device running either fring or Skype.

Readers of this blog know I'm a fan of the PortableApps.com suite of open source programs. Now, its curators have made it that much easier to take your app -- freeware or open source -- and make it a PortableApp.

Neither Verizon Wireless nor Motorola have reported official sales figures for the Droid smartphone, but estimates place current sales between 700,000 and 800,000. That makes reaching the one million units sold milestone (pun intended) within Motorola's grasp.

Looking to show that turnabout is very fair play, Sun has launched a campaign to snatch customers from HP with a "no-risk migration assessment" aimed at HP enterprise users who "are facing higher support costs, performance and availability issues, and loss of ISV support for critical business applications."

Black Friday in the US was boosted by mobile phones, but perhaps not in the way you think. Yes, there were definitely some good deals on mobile phones, but I'm talking about people using mobile phones to hone in on good deals and even complete some purchases.

In 2008, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington had a lovely vision for a $200 portable tablet device that would provide wireless web browsing. Sixteen months later, the collaborators on the CrunchPad are going through a messy divorce and it's not likely to see the light of day. Looking at the project's evolution, though, I can't say I'm surprised.

As the Senate begins debating its healthcare reform bill, there's several health IT related provisions that aren't likely to stir a lot of emotion on the Senate floor, but deserve some attention.

Today, citing people familiar with Nokia's 2010 product roadmap, Reuters is reporting that Nokia will release just one new device in 2010 running its Linux-based Maemo platform. That's a bad idea, Nokia.

I'm wondering if Google Wave is like a concept car for Google. We'll never see it in production--but all of its features and capabilities will emerge in other products released by Google and other companies. Google Wave solves some very real business problems. But I think even Google will have trouble getting companies to adopt it.

On the cusp of launching its Azure cloud computing service, Microsoft is also making a savvy bid to lock up a patent for one of the main worries--vendor lock-in--of cloud users. (The other big concern is security.) The folks from Redmond have filed a patent application for migrating data to a new cloud, which is what you'd have to do when leave your first vendor.

After a couple of years of rest, L0phtCrack, one of the most famous password auditing and recovery tools is back.

Today LG and AT&T introduced a new Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone, the eXpo. The device's defining feature is a removable Texas Instruments DLP pico projector, which can be used to share movies...er...PowerPoint Presentations when on the road.

Would Google's Chrome OS spell more competition for Android than anything else? That's one of the possibilities looming for Google's browser-centric Linux distro, as on each closer inspection it looks that much less like a Windows killer.

Cloud storage is constantly being discussed in the IT media today. When you get right down to it, what can businesses really use cloud storage for now? The small office, individual user has embraced cloud storage for backups and for collaboration, but what can larger businesses use these services for?

Just before the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless all announced sales for Black Friday and over the weekend. Conspicuously absent was any sort of sales event promoted by Sprint. Turns out Sprint was saving its deals for Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday.

I need to add an FTP server to my environment, and as I sit here and struggle with how I'm going to do that and stay under my annual budget, it occurs to me that the cloud isn't a bad option anymore. The savings are pretty compelling, in fact; read on for a quick and dirty cost analysis.

Ever since Google's Android phone has been known about, there has been speculation that Google would make a "Google Phone" to sell. Google has steadfastly maintained they don't want anything to do with hardware though. They are satisfied with making the platform and working with hardware makers to bring Android to the consumers. That may change.

A report in the Financial Times says that Microsoft has approached News Corp to obtain exclusive indexing rights for their sites such as Fox News. In return for some payment from Microsoft, News Corp would change its sites to block Google's indexing (and presumably others as well), leaving Bing as the primary way to find content on their sites.

For about a year now, Microsoft has been trying to gather data on real-world attacks, the types of attacks normal users might encounter in their day to day Internet use - and the software maker just released some interesting data on password attacks.

I am ashamed to admit it but I am a deal hunter. I'd like to share my top resources so you can save actual money on Cyber Monday.

As families and friends gathered across our great country yesterday, we were celebrating the merits of low tech. I think it should teach us something about how we conceive, build, and deliver any tech.

President Obama's making a new push to encourage and improve math and science education, in order to keep up in the global economy. In China, meanwhile, math and computer skills rank low as a requirement for driving innovation, a surprising Newsweek survey finds.

AOL is offering up a tantalizing taste of its post-Time Warner business strategy: a new brand identity, which it plans to formally introduce when it lists on the NYSE on December 10.

At least three of the four major network operators in the U.S. have announced sales on devices for the Black Friday shopping bonanza. Here's a round-up of what AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless are offering. My favorite deal is the buy-one-get-one BlackBerry offer that Verizon has scheduled for Friday, November 27.