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 occurred to me that the cloud isn’t a bad option anymore. The cost savings are pretty compelling, 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.

The holiday shopping season has fully arrived, and stores across the country will be opening early and offering bargains. If you're brave enough to hit the big box retail stores this weekend, Best Buy is offering five different Android handsets for $99 each.

"Transparency" is a vital term in open source: how easy is it to find out about some aspect of an open source project or product? Matthew Aslett of the 451 CAOS Theory blog went to find out how a number of vendors of open core products stacked up in this regard.

I've said before the iPhone is nice but what really makes the platform stand out is the App Store that now has over 100,000 apps available. There are grumblings however from an increasing number of developers not happy with the way Apple is treating those that keep the App Store's shelves stocked.

There's exploit code circulating that can be used to target certain versions of Internet Explorer, Microsoft says it's working on a fix.

Organizations are realizing technological expertise is just as essential as sharp legal analysis when it comes to e-discovery.

One of the coolest features that comes with the Motorola Droid is the new Google Maps Navigation application. It provides free, voice-guided navigation for the Android 2.0 platform. Google decided to spread the Maps Navigation love around a bit and recently made the app available to devices running Android 1.6.

Hewlett Packard has occasionally tossed a new iPAQ-branded smartphone into the market more as proof that it can still make them than to scare up any real sales. Its latest smartphone is perhaps one of the best-looking it has ever crafted, but HP crippled it with a terrible, horrible, no-good name.

Among the people Google's partnering with to build Chrome OS, there's now a very familiar name: Canonical, the folks behind Ubuntu. In their words: "Canonical is contributing engineering to Google under contract" (for Chrome OS).

Did your iPhone catch the new "Duh" iPhone virus? If so, Apple says it's your own fault for jailbreaking the iPhone. iPhones that have not been jailbroken are not susceptible to the virus, and jailbreakers can take steps to protect themselves.

In our last few entries we looked at what can be done today with storage software running as virtual machines. In this entry we will consider what the future holds for storage as a virtual machine. Storage as a virtual machine may be the only way you apply data services in the future.

The iPhone and devices based on Android make up 75% of mobile web traffic according to a recent report by AdMob. These two devices together don't make up anywhere near 75% of the device sales, but they have a disproportionate share of web browsing.

Internet Explorer 8 may have just shipped, but last week Dean Hachamovitch who is General Manager for Internet Explorer provided some hints about what is coming with IE9. A release date wasn't one of the hints that was dropped; I think it's far away.

Microsoft is reportedly discussing a deal that would see News Corporation remove its Web sites, such as the Wall Street Journal, from Google's index.

AT&T just got a partner it its fight with Verizon Wireless. Apple is stepping into the advertising fray with two new commercials that point out features that the iPhone has that Verizon's phones iDon't.

New recommendations from a federal task force last week about breast cancer screenings have infuriated many cancer survivors as well as medical professional organizations, including the American Cancer Society. The guidelines were based on data analysis of the risks and benefits of mammograms for women under age 50.

Neither AT&T nor Apple has ever admitted how long the exclusive sales arrangement is for the iPhone. Despite their silence, at least one person strongly believes the deal will end in June 2010, which means the iPhone will then become available via more carriers in the U.S.

Shortly before Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference started last Wednesday, the San Francisco Fire Department had locked the doors to Moscone Center to let the crush of bodies entering it disperse before letting in more attendees. I thought, are you kidding me? All this for a mid-size software company? But as I talked to attendees over the next few days, I began to understand what was stoking such enthusiasm I haven't seen in years in the enterprise software industry.

These days, I can scarcely click a mouse without running headlong into some variety of punditry regarding the imminent death of proprietary software thanks to open source. Sorry, I don't believe proprietary software is digging its inevitable collective grave any more than the sun is about to go nova.

Samsung adds to Verizon Wireless' inventory of Windows Mobile 6.5 devices with the new Omnia II. This media monster packs social networking powers, a five-megapixel camera, support for Divx and Xvid, and comes with a budget-friendly price of $200.

With the Apple iPhone setting the market on fire, it seems difficult to imagine another platform replicating its success. That isn't going to stop people from trying though. If even only half as successful, there is a lot of money to be made. The latest platform to catch fire is Android. Will it succeed, or be an also ran?

There are lots of good reasons for IT leaders to pay attention to even the finest details of encryption policies. One of the more practical is that encryption's a board-level concept. As in, the board of directors will feel no hesitation in second guessing decisions not to encrypt data that ends up exposed.Which makes the findings in this week's cover story on encryption all the more surprising.

Earlier this month talk-show host Ellen began following me (and other tech people) on Twitter. Did her move display something more than just a simple follow?

I recently wrote a column for InformationWeek Analytics that got some e-mail responses, and I thought the discussion was interesting enough to post the column and some of the comments that sparked the discussion. So here goes.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider ("LHC") restarted this morning without a hitch, after a year of kludgy delays and nutty rumors that time travelers had sabotaged it. It's time to ratchet up the quack science.

Hey there, Word. How're things? Seems like you're doing okay. I hear you have a new release coming shortly, in Office 2010. In fact, I've been meaning to talk to you about that.

It's been a few weeks since the Motorola Droid crash-landed on Verizon Wireless, and I wanted to give it a good amount of real-life usage before I reviewed the handset. So, does the Droid live up to the hype, or is it another failed iPhone killer?

Based on the spec sheet that's floating about the Interwebs today, it appears as though Motorola's next Android phone is probably headed to AT&T -- which remains to be the only major U.S. carrier not already offering an Android handset.

There is much developers can do to build a secure operating system when limits are set on what devices are supported, and there's no regard for compatibility with all types of software applications. I'm sure it's a luxury some software designers in Redmond and Cupertino certainly envy. But that's the clean shot Google has with its new Chrome OS.

The Motorola Droid has one of the weirdest bugs I've ever heard about. It concerns the camera. It seems some users are finding that the autofocus doesn't work quite right. Motorola says a software fix is on the way.

Completing our storage as a virtual machine re-interviews were conversations we had with EMC and Nexenta. While our last entry focused on systems that leveraged virtual machines to deliver block I/O storage services these two companies are delivering something a little different, NAS services and backup services.

The U.S. government's Apps.gov Web site provides new visibility into what federal agencies pay for cloud-based applications and commercial software, with offerings from vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Jive, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com. One of the priciest products on the site: Google's Maps API, which lists for nearly a million dollars.

Shortly before I wrote my post about responsible disclosure of open source licensing violations, Bradley Kuhn (of the Software Freedom Conservancy and Software Freedom Law Center) wrote a post of his own about the same subject. His take: GPL violations are common, everyday things -- and as such should be handled with cool, calm, and collected heads.

A generous -- and in-focus -- number of images of the unannounced BlackBerry Pearl 9100 have been posted to the Internet. If you're a fan of the Pearl line of smartphones from BlackBerry, it's time to get excited.

Amid a year when the iPhone 3GS was released, Android exploded on the scene after simmering in the form of the T-Mobile G1 for nearly a year and Verizon launching some great ads talking smack about AT&T's performance, there have been a few wireless blunders that are best forgotten. 2009 isn't over yet, but there would need to be something pretty spectacular to top the turkeys on this list.

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting opinion piece written by Nick Wingfield, a frustrated "consumer" of big-company IT services. His main question is deceptively simple: "Why can't I use whatever technology I want to get my Wall Street Journal work done?"

A Microsoft executive speaking at Interop Thursday unwittingly highlighted the challenge his company faces in building brand recognition around its Bing search engine. The exec told audience members seeking his contact info to "Google me."

The clock’s running. Google expects Web-optimized netbooks running its OS to be on sale before the end of 2010. That gives you about a year to figure out how you want to handle employee use of this next generation of devices. No sense waiting.

There were a couple "aha" moments for me at Interop's Enterprise Cloud Summit. The first was that some companies are already storing hundreds of terabytes of data in the cloud. The second was that it can be a slow and expensive process to move that data from one service provider to another.

Today Google aired a webcast where they whipped the curtains all the way off Google Chrome OS for the first time. It's about what most people expected: Chrome OS running on top of a thin layer of Linux, designed for netbooks -- and designed for people whose sole computing experience is the web. It's Google's netbook answer to Android.

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