A virtual machine in Amazon's EC2 cloud has been used as a command and control host for a password stealing version of Zeus, says a senior researcher in the Internet Security Intelligence Initiative, part of CA's security unit. "This is a particularly juicy target," says another security expert.

Time Magazine has named its top ten gadgets of the year. To what I am sure is the bitter disappointment of Apple, Motorola's Droid took the top spot. Does the Droid deserve such honors? Who was left out?

IBM's new Linux-based mainframe says a lot about the way a company can make Linux a cornerstone of its business. It's an all-Linux machine, one which might well spell out a high-end strategy for other hardware vendors to follow.

IBM has announced a new chip that could help a supercomputer achieve 10 petaflops, which is calculating power tantamount to the speeds Nature uses to form bubbles in sea foam and keep planets in orbit.

Automated tiering, the transparent movement of data based on activity or type, is quickly proving itself to be a hot consideration for storage managers but why stop at automated tiering? Can’t we make the entire storage ecosystem respond automatically based on environmental conditions and its available resources?

In response to the lawsuit that Nokia filed against Apple in October, Apple has responded with one of its own. It goes so far as to say that Nokia "stole" from Apple. This could get ugly.

The Motorola Droid review unit I have recently updated itself to system 2.0.1. The changes are subtle, but executed perfectly. Not that the Droid was a dog before, but it now operates much better.

Some Palm Pre owners are less than pleased with the backup system that Palm and Sprint use to ensure that user's data is retained. One customer has sued Palm and Sprint in Federal court and is seeking class action status.

Want a better idea of how organizations get infiltrated, including detailed synopsis of how many successful data breaches occur? Sit down with a copy of the just released Verizon Data Breach Investigations Supplemental Report and you'll get a great idea.

T-Mobile is rolling out an update to its Android customers that enables one important new feature: carrier billing. With this feature now working, customers will be able to have Android Market purchases added to their monthly bill rather than their credit card.

For the last few days, I've been mulling over the top semiconductor stories of the year. Clearly, the settlement by Intel and AMD of their ongoing antitrust and patent/licensing disputes is the biggest business news. Picking the tech champ is tougher, because it's not about where we've been in 2009, but rather where we're headed in 2010.

President Barack Obama allocated almost $600 million to build community health centers and implement electronic medical records, part of the $787 billion stimulus bill. The White House framed the funding as means of adding jobs to the economy, and overhaul the nation's health system.

For the first time, Skype is offering a version of its software to Symbian S60 3rd Edition devices. It covers the basics, such as Skype-to-Skype calling and instant messaging. The initial set of devices it works with is limited, but Skype promises that will grow quickly.

The Oracle/European Union drama never stops. Now IBM's stuck their collective necks into the fray and said that Oracle's acquisition of Sun should go through if they make some positive open source gestures to all parties. Meaning what exactly, though?

Google has taken the opportunity to offer a new version of its mobile search application for the iPhone. The new software makes several improvements to the usability of the application, including the ability to recognize Australian accents.

I'll make a prediction that 2010 will be the most exciting year yet for cloud computing, and that's partly related to Microsoft's ramp-up of Azure. Anyone attending Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference last month understands the potential of cloud platforms for rapid application development. And this is all coming together at a time when IT shops need to quickly and cheaply turn out innovative new applications for the business.

Verizon Wireless has announced a software update for the HTC Droid Eris. This is not the promised update to either Android 2.0 or 2.1. Instead, this new boot ROM and radio software fixes some minor performance issues on the device.

Skyfire has just taken their browser and upgraded it for Windows Mobile phones. The browser now supports Flash and Silverlight right in the browser just like your desktop. It also supports Ajax, which is what Gmail and other sites use to easily change what is on the screen without forcing a refresh.

When federal CTO Aneesh Chopra and federal CIO Vivek Kundra unveiled the Obama Administration's Open Government Directive on Dec. 8, it marked the end of one long, drawn out process and the beginning of what's sure to be another. Good luck making it work.

No one ought to be surprised by the notion that Chrome is Google's big cross-platform play -- a way to get their app-delivery system running everywhere. It's not just a way to soften people up for the arrival of Chrome OS, either.

It's unwise to expect much intellectual integrity from the European Union bureaucrats as they put the screws to Oracle, but leader Neelie Kroes has set a new low by dismissing and mocking an official letter of support for Oracle from the U.S. Senate. This is the most disgraceful proof yet that the EU is purely playing politics while thousands of Sun employees lose their jobs.

What are the chances of a controller failing in a storage system? I don’t know the exact statistic but its safe to assume that its pretty low. When they do fail, the ramifications can be extreme, especially in the increasingly virtualized data center that counts on shared storage. Active-Active controllers provide the protection from controller failure but they are a bit of a misnomer. Both controllers are being used but they are assigned to specific workloads.

2009 has definitely been the year of acquisitions and mergers and strong alliances, as far as the technology industry is concerned.

Lots of people run multiple operating systems on their PC. Some PC users have been dual or multibooting between various versions of Windows and Linux for a number of reasons. It isn't unusual for an Apple OS X user to have a copy of Windows they can boot into on their Mac. Through the use of virtual machines, you can run these operating systems simultaneously and switch just as easily as you switch apps on a single OS. Now it seems you may be able to do the same thing with Windows Mobile and Android.

Vevo, a presumed successor to MTV, debuts today to much less fanfare than its progenitor, what with video having killed the radio star over 25 years ago. Do you think the world needs a for-profit web site that plays music videos?

The JooJoo Web tablet has sure caused a stir with all of its issues with TechCrunch, but is the device good enough to overcome all this drama? I spent a little time talking with Fusion Garage CEO Chandra Rathakrishnan today going over the JooJoo and feel like it's an impressive product that may be hindered by its price. Hit the jump for deeper impressions and a demo video.

In the final part of this three-part video interview series with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, we talked about the role of social networking, not just in winning a political race, but in ongoing government -- in building participation among citizens. He talks about his successes and failures, and what he's learned along the way.

As Microsoft and SAP prepare giddily to hammer Oracle in Brussels this week, those two big and dominant global companies damn well better remember that they could be next on the EU rack because the EU's objectives aren't about "fairness"--they're about politics and power. Appeasing the EU now won't grant them sanctuary later--it will only embolden the bureaucrats of Brussels.

Cisco released its Cisco 2009 Annual Security Report this morning, and it contains some interesting insight on many of the vulnerabilities and threat vectors we face today.

Google has updated Maps for Mobile again for Android phones. There are several new features with this latest update, but the new version isn't compatible with all the variants of Android that are out there.

That's the thesis behind a piece by Sascha Segan over at PC Magazine, where he blames a good deal of the lack of geek-friendly Linux handsets on the wireless carriers themselves. But how much of it is also end-user indifference?

Mac users rejoice! Today Google has made the beta version of its Chrome browser available for Apple computers. The download is free.

Samsung herded up the tech press in London today to share more information about Bada, its new homegrown mobile operating system. Yours truly hopped the Atlantic to attend. Unfortunately, all Samsung demonstrated was its ability to fling every buzzword in the book at attendees.

Verizon Wireless has started updating the system software of the Motorola Droid. The changelog is pretty long, and includes, among other things, better battery life, a fix for the camera, and more OS stability.

Today's experience of upgrading one's PC to a new operating system is qualitatively different from that of a decade ago. It's no longer so much about the OS. You've already got something decent; you're mostly adding new bells and whistles. What's different now is there's a lot more user data--pictures, e-mails and music/video files--to move over. And that experience, quite frankly, stinks.

HTC's roadmap for the first half has been leaked and there are tons of pictures and specifications. Looks like there will be plenty of Windows Mobile 6.5 devices as well as some based on Android.

You can't help getting the impression from Kerrie Holley, IBM's CTO of its SOA Center of Excellence, of how much the idea of services remain the underpinning of what we're trying to do. That's true whether you're talking about restructuring the enterprise data center, implementing a simple Web service, invoking software-as-a-service such as Salesforce.com, or go straight to cloud computing.

Michael Arrington's CrunchPad has become the Fusion Garage JooJoo, and it will launch on Friday. To listen to Arrington's talk of legal action last week, it seemed unlikely this tablet device would ever see the light of day. Yet here it is, real enough to sell, at least unless Arringon's lawyers get an injunction.

Don MacVittie in his blog over at F5 commented recently on an article that we have written “What is File Virtualization?” indicating that we missed a key issue in dealing with how to handle it when your virtualization box goes down. While my defense could be that the subject is beyond the scope of a primer, it is not beyond the scope of this blog. If you are considering a tiered storage model then what do you do when your data mover fails?

Non-profit organizations count on the giving, holiday spirit for end-of-year fundraising campaigns, but with the tight economy, generosity is being rationed by many people. Children's Hospital Boston is hoping a new text messaging campaign underway will drive smaller donations that will add up all year.

The idea of conducting visual searches is nothing new, but Google is attempting to bring just such a service to market. In recent tests, its version of visual search, called Google Goggles (totally different from Mail Goggles), didn't quite get the job done. Can Google make it work?

Something crossed my desk recently that embodied one of my major criticisms of how open source is promoted. It can't be something that lives in its own alternate universe and follow its own laws of physics -- or economics.

I can't believe AT&T is taking this step. It is officially asking its customers to tell them where coverage is less than optimal with a new application for the iPhone called "Mark the Spot." As in, mark the spot where AT&T failed you.

Apparently our friends across the pond aren't too taken with Google's Android operating system. Its presence in European markets has increased in recent months, but only slightly, and not nearly as much as in the U.S. Could it be that Europeans don't like the little green android?

It seems to me a femtocell is a no brainer for the carriers to push. These miniature cell phone base stations go in your house and connect to your broadband internet service. This is ideal for people that have a number of dead spots in their house or no coverage at all if in a rural area. Their use, however, remains very low.

Earlier this week Google announced the launch of Google DNS. I'd like to share my two predictions for DNS in 2010.

While there hasn't been any attacks on iPhones that haven't been jailbroken, one researcher has shown that once a rogue application makes its way onto the device - there's not much it can't do with your data.

In case you somehow haven't already heard, Microsoft's Bing search engine disappeared from the Internet for about a half-hour on Thursday. Just like any national tragedy, everyone will remember where they were when they heard the news. I sure will, man, because I was there.

Apple's new 21-inch iMac was October's best-selling desktop computer, according to retail analyst firm NPD. While sexy, the sales success was partially due to a slowdown in sales of competing PCs prior to the launch of Windows 7.

I am still dumbfounded by Comcast's decision to buy NBC, and I'm not sure it's because I know too much about the past...or have to little faith in the future. Or both.

Yahoo Pipes is a way to mash up RSS feeds and Web pages into combined information, apply rules and filters, and publish it. When it launched Feb. 7, 2007, the Pipes API worked fine in principle. But as "Daniel" said from the audience at a San Francisco panel this week, Pipes wasn't ready to scale.

With the court case safely behind them, Verizon Wireless continues to pull no punches in its anti-iPhone marketing campaign. The latest assault takes on the masculinity of the iPhone, and essentially says that it has none. Them's fightin' words, Verizon!

Lots going on in the world of Research In Motion today. Some of the items you'll find in this post include a nifty sale going on at AT&T stores today as well as an upgrade to BlackBerry Apps World. More inside!

This week StoredIQ launched a new data assessment service, which is intended to help organizations get visibility into the unstructured information floating around the corporate network.

Verizon Wireless has said that the HTC Droid Eris will receive a significant system update at some point in the fist quarter of 2010. The update will boost the Eris' version of Android to at least 2.0, and possibly even 2.1.