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The InformationWeek February 2008 Archive « January 2008 | Main | March 2008 » |
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VMworld Wrap
VMworld Europe offered a bunch o' news. I/O is big. IOV is getting bigger. VMware and others came out strong on systems management and security tools. I guess they have been listening to their customers.
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World Of Warcraft, The Virtual Playmaker
Forget the old business models of enterprise software and services, Vivendi's video games branch just posted one of its best margins ever, all thanks to a bunch of druids, goblins, orcs, elves, and fairies.
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Accenture CIO: No Cuts In IT
Economic uncertainty is something of a mixed blessing when it comes to IT, says Frank Modruson, the CIO of consulting firm Accenture. It can be a challenge, and it can be an opportunity.
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Solar-Powered Gadgets Gone Goofy
I'm as eager as anyone to see more products that can be fired up with solar power. But some gadgets should never have made it off the drawing board -- they're just too goofy. Like these.
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Mozilla Making Strides With Mobile Browser
Late last year, Mozilla promised to "rock" the mobile Web with a new mobile browser of its own. Mozilla admits that success won't happen overnight, but a spokesperson did say, "Mozilla's mission is to break open a closed market." Can Mozilla be a player in an already crowded field of alternatives?
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Laying Waste To Your Enemies With Google Bombs
Wired has a How-To Wiki on its site that often has great little blurbs on how to get things done. Today's How-To idea? How to embarrass, frustrate, or annoy your enemies by sending them Google bombs. Is this valuable knowledge to share? Is bombing people on the Internet something mature professionals do? Or is it for jerks?
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Stimulating Choices
OK, so you can't take yourself public like Visa. But how much thought have you given to that big, fat check coming your way in May? You know, the "Spend our way out of this nonrecession" check?
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Aquantia Seeks To Make 10GBase-T Scale
Darwin would have liked our industry. Evolution is constant and predictable, and it's particularly so for Ethernet, from its original 10 Mbps incarnation to the current 10 Gbps version -- pricing, power consumption, and port density follow a similar trend line. But just because the evolution happens, doesn't mean that it's easy.
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Hacking My PowerShot
Hardware hacking: it isn't just for those of us with soldering-iron skills anymore, as the hacks for the iPhone clearly show. I don't have an iPhone, but I do have a Canon PowerShot A560, and as it turns out, that's another device that can be hacked thanks to some firmware wizardry.
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Microsoft Combined With Intel For A Vista Logo Disaster
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer got its hands on the Microsoft e-mails that are part of the lawsuit regarding Microsoft's ill-fated Vista Capable logo program. Earlier, I said Microsoft, OEMs, and retailers all deserved blame in the logo disaster, but these insider e-mails have changed my opinion on apportioning blame. Many OEMs and retailers tried to do the right thing, but were both ignored and double-crossed by Microsoft's final Vista logo program so that Intel would be happy and make more money.
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Report: 3G iPhone Coming By Midyear
Those disappointed by the lack of a 3G announcement at Macworld can take heart. According to UBS analysts, iPhone chip supplier Infineon Technologies is ramping up production for the next generation iPhone. This time around, it will include a high-speed 3G data radio.
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Vaporware Vendor Targets New Markets
You have to admire a technology company that can build a business around airborne water particles. FogScreen has done that, with an impressive customer list that includes Disney, Nokia, 20th Century Fox, Sony, and Microsoft. Now it's taking its act to Vegas.
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Sourcefire's Earnings Not So Hot. CEO Jackson Ousted.
Network security provider Sourcefire announced its earnings yesterday. The less-than-spectacular results show a company fighting numerous headwinds. So can it set its sail straight?
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Stomping On Your Carbon Footprint
The "greening" of IT is very à la mode right now, especially in storage. But this umbrella term suffers from overuse, and near as I can tell, is a euphemism for using less electricity. It's also a "feature" that enables some vendors to bump up their prices. So what exactly is the fuss again?
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Top 6 Words And Phrases To Use In Internet Discussions To Prove You Are A Jerk
Are you a jerk and do you want people to know it? In real life, it's easy to prove you are a jerk: You can talk loudly during movies, cut in line at Starbucks, or tell new mothers their babies are ugly. But on the Internet, it's harder to prove you're a jerk.
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Are Online Ads Losing Value?
For an industry that saw its revenue rise 25% last year to a record high, the online advertising business is in a bit of a funk. Mostly that's because of Google, which has seen its dominance in Internet ads erode, slightly, and watched its share price slide by 38% in the last four months.
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Taking Google Sites For A Spin
After seeing the news this morning about the launch of Google Sites, I decided to take the new tools for a spin. I signed up, bought myself a domain name, and went to work at customizing it and setting up users. Just how easy is it?
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Suddenly SaaS Is A CIO's Best Friend
As recession looms, fingers are pointing to software as a service as a viable, fiscally responsible option for upgrading application portfolios. Is recession-driven SaaS another notable turning point for technology?
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Stonesoft Guards Against External and IntraHost Threats
I spoke with Stonesoft on Wednesday regarding the company's new security solutions for VMware. Intrahost protection, anyone?
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Don't Discount The Threat Of Web 2.0 Terror
We've recently seen silly articles hyping the threat of terrorists using virtual worlds and other Web 2.0 sites for recruitment, planning, and training. And we've seen equally silly articles ridiculing the idea. The truth is that Web 2.0 tools are great for terrorism, for the same reasons they're great for legitimate projects. That doesn't mean we should shut down Facebook and Second Life to protect ourselves from instant, horrible death. But we do need to rationally evaluate possible threats.
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Congress Tries To Drink Big Oil's Milkshake
If Daniel Plainview weren't fictional, he'd be howling bloody hell. Congress on Wednesday passed a bill that would yank $17.65 billion in tax breaks to oil companies and reallocate the savings to fund tax incentives for wind, solar, and other renewable energy technologies.
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Firefox, Or Pigfoot?
One index of success for an open source project is how many other projects are derived from it -- or how many people have created alternate builds of the same project. Firefox's success has spawned a whole slew of community-compiled editions of the program, and this week I've been living with one of them, code-named "Pigfoot."
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Sprint Bests Other Unlimited Plans With 'Simply Everything'
The wireless industry has been waiting for a response from Sprint to all the unlimited plans launched by its competitors last week. Well, now we have it. Today, Sprint announced what is essentially an "unlimited everything" plan for $99. And when they say everything, they mean everything. How will Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile respond to this?
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Apple COO: iPhone 'Not Married' To AT&T, Will Always Be Hacked
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs investor's conference in Las Vegas yesterday, Apple COO Tim Cook said that, "Apple is not married to the single, exclusive-carrier model." Whoa. So is Apple's exclusive contract with AT&T shorter than initial projections? And if so, when might other carriers be able to sell the iPhone?
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Join Us For GridTalk Friday On The Future Of Motorati Island
Join us Friday to look at one of the most active communities in Second Life: Motorati Island. The sponsors, headed by Pontiac, recently turned the island over to the United Spinal Association. Renamed Motorability, it's headed up by Patty Streeter, who will be our guest for GridTalk noon SLT.
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Fireproof Storage? I Don't Get It
Over the past couple of years ioSafe, Sentry, and Schwab have introduced a new generation of backup targets, fireproof storage. A Frankenstein like crossbreeding of USB hard drive or NAS and fireproof safe, they can protect your backups against fire, flood (as they're waterproof, too) and gloom of night. Last Interop our own Steve Hill drove out to the desert with the friendly folks from ioSafe, poured a flammable liquid on one of there NAS boxes and had himself a nice little computer barbecue so they could demonstrate that the data inside laughs at fire. Cool I thought but why?
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EMC Boosts Mozy Pro Prices Up To 300%
In an e-mail sent to MozyPro resellers this week, EMC announced new pricing for online backup of servers via its MozyPro division effective March 1. Users that purchase plans under the current pricing will be grandfathered in, so if you were thinking that MozyPro was the right answer for your servers, sign up now. Of course, you also may want to consider another provider, like Intronis Technologies' eSureIT or IBackup Professional, now that MozyPro is in their price range.
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Where To Start With ILM
Last week I hosted an ILM (Information Life-cycle Management) video Web cast. One of the questions that came up was "Where do I start with ILM without much risk?" It's a good question.
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In Silicon Valley, A Way Forward For Muni Wireless
This week's news that Covad Communications has stepped in as the primary network provider on the stalled Silicon Valley Wireless project may allow us, in Wall Street parlance, to "call the bottom" on the ailing business of providing widespread, low-cost municipal wireless access.
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VMware Moves To Protect Applications Living On The Hypervisor
On the heels of a file sharing flaw uncovered earlier this week by a security firm, and the announcement of a number of security patches, virtualization leader VMware says it plans to release an API for third-party security applications.
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From 'Energized' To Not So Interested
The little do-si-do between Congress and the White House over missing e-mails is apparently over. Cynics might predict the next steps will be a digging in of heels, followed quickly by threats to launch (and bungle) an investigation, or worse, appoint a special prosecutor.
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Talk To Me, Openly
It's a cliche to say that open source breaks down barriers, but every day I learn about a new way that's happening. Here's one barrier that open source can help to bring down, incrementally: the language barrier.
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Apple To Host iPhone SDK Launch March 6
This morning Apple started sending out invitations to an event to be held Thursday, March 6. The topic? The long-awaited iPhone SDK. The invitation read: "Please join us to learn about the iPhone software road map, including the iPhone SDK and some exciting new enterprise features." Finally!
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Microsoft-Yahoo Merger Perfectly Timed For A Recession
Although I still have a lot of doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo will ever consummate a marriage, Microsoft continues to pursue the deal with a lot of enthusiasm. I don't know how loudly I can say this, but Microsoft: It's a trap! There's a reason why some major Yahoo shareholders are suing to make this deal go through, pronto. They think you're crazy and they want to get the money before you sober up.
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Google Offers Provisioning Toolkit For Enterprises
So you're taking the leap and deploying Google Apps across your enterprise. Rather than add users one by one, Google is giving IT admins a new way to create user accounts: the Apache 2.0 licensed Open Source Google Apps Provisioning Toolkit.
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Vignette Gears Up For A Better Web Experience
I caught up with Vignette as details were emerging about its updated Web content management tools. This week, we learned a little more about the Web Experience Platform, the company's new and improved approach at managing your content.
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Google Lends Its Voice To Opera, Yahoo Sings The Blues
The mobile search wars continue, and Google just won an important tactical victory over rival Yahoo. Opera, maker of mobile Web browsers, has switched its default search from Yahoo to Google.
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Chronicle Of A Startup: The Kernel Of An Idea
I have an idea for a new venture that seems promising to me. Is it? I'm on my way to Silicon Valley to find out.
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Starbucks Takes Coffee Break, Makes Customer Satisfaction Gaffe
Starbucks can send me an e-mail when they reload my card -- yeah, I know I'm a sap for giving them an interest-free loan, but it's convenient -- and they can pepper me with communications when they've got a sale to promote. So how come they can't bother to clue me in when they're planning to shut their doors for three hours? Not very Web 1.0 of them, huh?
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An Ounce Of Virtual Prevention
Security researchers found/punched a new hole in one of VMware's products this week, and from some quarters, it's being written about as if virtual machinery had never been a target for malicious code before. Those in the data center know differently.
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Technology And The Big Foot Problem
Michael Specter's article "Big Foot," in the current issue of The New Yorker, examines some common assumptions about carbon emissions and how technology is going to have to step on the gas to tackle the climate change problem. It's worth a close read.
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Newsflash: Reflex Is Not Dead
A death notice was posted to one of my blogs last week. I'm guessing it was someone with a personal grudge. Turns out Reflex Security is alive and well.
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iPhone 1.1.4 Firmware Available
This afternoon, Apple made the 1.1.4 firmware update for the iPhone available for download. The update is a 162-MB file. So far, no known new features have been spotted with the upgrade, but it is believed to support the as-yet-to-be-released SDK. Stay tuned for more details.
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Surprise, Surprise. Federal Agencies Not Protecting The Information They Collect About You
There are many policies, mandates, and laws that govern personally identifiable and financial information for federal agencies. So just how many federal agencies are living up to their responsibilities?
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If We're Headed Into A Recession, What Will Happen To IT?
IT budgets and tech staffs were clobbered during the recession of the early 2000s. But how would they survive this time around? Hasn't most of the "fat" already been slashed, or has much of it returned?
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Hockey Fans Turn To Web To Follow NHL Trade Deadline
Hockey fans might be getting less work done today than usual, thanks to a combination of Tuesday's NHL trade deadline and the Web.
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Tech Turf Gives Windows Mobile Users Quick Access To Google Services
This new application from The Tech Turf provides Windows Mobile smartphones with an iPhone-like dashboard that can quickly access a wide range of Google services. The app is called Google2Go! (not to be confused with Yahoo's Go for Mobile) and speeds up Web searches, as well as provides visual shortcuts to other sites such as Amazon.
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Will Linux Breathe Adobe's AIR?
You've probably heard by now about Adobe's AIR, a way to create "rich Internet applications" on the desktop. It's only for Windows and Mac at this point, but Adobe's plan is to eventually release it for Linux as well.
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Gmail Chat Goes Invisible. :-D
Instant messengers, rejoice! Google has updated Gmail Chat and Talk with the ability to go invisible. This was a much-needed feature of the IM client built into Gmail. Google stepped up and delivered.
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Challenges From The Vendor View
Vendors see the world of technical challenges a bit differently -- and no surprise here: The items they cite often tend to play to the vendor's strengths or ongoing market initiatives. But here are how big thinkers at some storage vendors view the biggest engineering challenges ahead.
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The Politics Of IT
How heavy-handed can a new CIO be? Just because an IT organization is in need of change, that doesn't mean those changes can happen easily -- or at all.
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Virgin Atlantic's Biofueled Flight Plan Is Coco-Nuts
A Virgin Atlantic 747 topped off its fuel tank with the oil of 150,000 coconuts and flew from Heathrow to Amsterdam Sunday. The odor of pina coladas hanging over the economy cabin should have been a giveaway -- this idea is a stinker.
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EMC Updates RecoverPoint SAN CDP/Replication Engine
The new 3.0 version of its RecoverPoint CDP/Replication appliance extends the technology EMC acquired with Kashya in 2006. The version provides both local replication to a CDP volume and journal on the same Fibre Channel SAN as the primary storage and remote asynchronous replication via IP to another array at the same time. Unlike array-based replication options, the source and destination arrays need not be the same type, or even from the same vendor.
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Google Outlines The Secret To Its Success
Apparently, there's some level of mystery involved in Google's success. So much so that Google's chief economist Hal Varian put together a bunch of ideas on why Google continually succeeds. Varian has one answer. I have another.
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Windows Vista Childbirth Pack 1
I have become convinced that Windows service packs and childbirth have a lot in common. You approach the big day with nervous anticipation, and hope that everything will come out OK. That day sometimes involves a lot of pain, but a few years after each event people look back wistfully and think, "Gee, that wasn't so bad. I'm sure glad we did it." As the big day arrives for Vista Service Pack 1, be prepared for that short-term pain.
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Virtualization: Just Another Layer Of Software To Patch?
Researchers at Core Security have issued an advisory warning users of a significant security flaw in a number of VMware desktop apps that could allow attackers to gain complete access to the underlying operating system.
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Ubuntu: Linux's Obama (Sort Of)
What is it about Ubuntu that has generated such excitement about Linux? To steal a word from Obama's playbook, "Change."
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LinkedIn Launches Mobile Site
Today LinkedIn showed off a new beta WAP site that lets you perform some basic tasks related to your LinkedIn database of professional contacts. And when we say basic, we mean basic. You can't view your contacts' contact information, accept invitations, nor even update your own profile. LinkedIn Mobile has its work cut out for it if it intends to catch up to other social networking sites' mobile capabilities.
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Hacker's Poised To Beat Apple's Latest Version Of DRM (aka C.R.A.P.)
One of the hotter memes over the weekend had to do with a cease and desist letter that the ever-litigious Apple sent to the operators of the Hymn Project. For those looking to remove Apple's copy protection technology (officially "FairPlay," but I call it "C.R.A.P.") from iTunes Music Store (iTMS)-bought content, the Hymn Project has been the go-to site for utilities that have managed to stay one step ahead of Apple in what has been a cat and mouse game.
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Join Us For InformationWeek Live Tuesday With Clay Shirky
Our guest, New York University's Clay Shirky, will discuss his new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power Of Organizing Without Organizations, which describes how social networks like MySpace and Digg are allowing new kinds of collaborative action.
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Symantec Protection Network -- Online Backup, How Innovative?
This week Symantec released the first services from its previously announced Symantec Protection Network (SPN) and, as Gomer Pyle would say, "Surprise, Surprise, Surprise," online backup. Symantec Online Backup is a middle of the road service for small businesses that should have some appeal, especially after Symantec takes the time to add a few features the competition already has. Symantec Online Storage for Backup Exec, on the other hand, breaks new ground providing online off-site backup capabilities to the legions of Windows shops running Backup Exec after they update to the new version 12.
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Video: Is Microsoft Open Source's Friend?
Microsoft made its most significant move since the 1992 release of Windows 3.1 on Feb. 21, when it pledged to make "strategic changes in technology and business practices to expand interoperability." What does this mean in plain English? It's Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's corporate-speak way of telling the open-source community that he can't beat 'em, so he plans to try to outflank them.
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Report: No iPhone SDK In February
According to reports, the software developer kit for the iPhone is going to be delayed by one to three weeks. Apple is turning into a regular Microsoft with the recent spate of product delays.
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Does WebOS = Virtualization?
An Indy-based independent consultant I know turned me on to Stoneware, makers of a webOS, not the heavy stuff your mother-in-law collects. Will they break into the desktop virt market?
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Report From India: Key IBM Unit Grows From 60 People To 800
In 2006, my colleague Paul McDougall was the first to spotlight the significance of IBM centering one of its key strategic units in India. That group, which creates reusable, SOA-based systems that IBM's consultants re-sell around the world, began with just 60 people then, and has grown to 800 today, part of IBM's 73,000 employees in India.
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Report From India: U.S. Could Learn From Offshorer's Training Obsession
Many companies in the United States complain about an IT talent shortage. Indian IT companies face brutal competition for talent, and one big part of their answer is huge hire-and-train efforts. There's something for U.S. companies to learn here.
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Up To The Challenge?
Mask complexity, improve performance, and automate every last function possible -- those, in a giant nutshell, are the biggest engineering challenges for storage in the next several years, according to some big thinkers who've deployed a SAN or two in their time.
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Service Management In Acronym Land
I had a very informal chat with a buddy of mine about service management. And virtualization. Many TLAs were used.
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Last CIO Standing: Joke Contest Results
How many CIOs does it take to screw in a light bulb? That age-old philosophical question's not as easy to answer as you might think. Here are several responses to our CIO Joke contest.
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Telligent Wants A Piece Of The Content Management Market
Rob Howard, CEO of Telligent, pulls no punches when he talks about his company's aspirations in the content management space. And the way Telligent markets its new CMS offering is just as brazen.
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GM To Sire Hybrid Pony Car?
New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning received a trophy, a ring, and his pick of Cadillacs for being the game-winning MVP of Super Bowl XLII earlier this month. But he won't be driving his new Caddy anytime soon.
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Best Buy Spills The Beans On Nokia Internet Tablet With WiMax
Last year Nokia confirmed that it is working on a WiMax-equipped version of its N800-series Internet tablet. Until this week, there hadn't been further news of the device. Well, Best Buy pictured an unannounced Nokia N830 Internet tablet in its February Mobile Buyer's Guide, and possibly gave away the big WiMax secret.
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Turning Work Into Play Is No Game
It sounds like techno-utopian silliness to say that businesses need to learn from online games how to make tedious knowledge-work more enjoyable. But many knowledge-work jobs are so deadly dull that the typical worker lasts just nine months -- in call centers, for example. Extend that by a few months, and businesses stand to save piles of money, said Byron Reeves, a professor in the department of communication at Stanford University.
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A Kindler, Gentler Microsoft Won't Happen From Within
Microsoft's recent announcements about its new openness initiatives have been greeted with great skepticism. They deserve to be, because Microsoft deserves to be changed for the better -- but it's only going to come from the outside, not the inside.
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Unlocked iPhone Innovations Continue
Every day, it seems, developers come up with nifty new ways to use the iPhone to do this or that. The latest creations allow you to use your iPhone as a full touchpad remote for your PC, zoom through applications on the iPhone using CoverFlow, and LoJack your iPhone.
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Sergey Brin: MicroHoo 'Unnerving'
At a recent event, Google co-founder Sergey Brin called Microsoft's bid for Yahoo "unnerving" and said the move imperils innovation on the Internet. Google also posits that the merger would be illegal. Maybe the merger could violate antitrust laws. Or maybe Brin likes being King of the Mountain, and doesn't want anything to threaten that. Oh, and Brin? Innovation will continue with or without MicroHoo.
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Ask Not What Google Can Do For You …
"Don't be evil" is the search giant's mantra, but its operative phrase is "Get r' done." CIOs should take a lesson from the tech chief at the Cleveland Clinic and look for ways to work with innovative companies like Google to drive their organizations' agendas.
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Where Storage Gets Innovative
There are lots of good barometers out there -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average comes to mind, as does the Consumer Confidence Index. A little closer to home, this gauge of where VCs and angel investors are placing their bets tells you a lot about where storage is headed in the next 12 months.
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No Free Lunch
The party invites keep rolling in for product announcements in Cannes. Where, sadly I won't be for VMworld Europe 2008. But I have received a number of goodies, offers, and handouts here in the States.
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Encrypted Disks At (Some) Risk To Eavesdroppers
Whether you are using Windows Vista BitLocker, Mac OS X FileVault, Linux-based dm-crypt, or open source disk encryption software TrueCrypt – your data could be at risk to snoops, researchers have found. While it is troubling news, all is not lost.
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Full Nelson: Appcelerator For Rich Internet Applications
We just wrote about Appcelerator a month ago -- in fact, it was our Startup of the Week. But we got a chance to talk to CEO Jeff Haynie, who gives a great overview of what this company is doing: letting you build rich Internet applications quickly using standard technology like HTML/CSS on the front end and Ruby On Rails, Java, PHP, .Net and more on the back end.
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Documentary Examines Mac Fanatics
An upcoming documentary interviews more than 50 "Macheads" in an unsuccessful attempt to figure out what makes the Mac inspire such loyal and fanatical devotion.
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Full Nelson: Krugle Code Search Not So Evil
I know. It sounds just like Google. It’s search. How does Google allow it? It helps that the last name of one of Krugle’s founders is Krugler. But the other founder is Steve Larsen -- couldn’t they have named it after him? And was his name really always Ken Krugler, or did he change it just so they could do this? I will answer none of those questions. But I will tell you that I wish I were a developer, because Krugle, a code search engine, is an awesome idea. (Note, we have covered Krugle in this space before.)
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Satellite Strike Marks New Space Race
On the list of all-time non-reassuring assurances, today's Pentagon statement about the downing of crippled U.S. spy satellite ranked high.
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Obama Would Put A CTO In The Cabinet
Barack Obama plans to unveil his IT strategy, which will include making the job of federal chief technology officer a Cabinet-level position. He also wants to mandate open government meetings streamed over broadband and favors net neutrality.
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Full Nelson: Redfly Neither Smartphone Nor Ultralight PC
By show of hands, how many people have attempted a business trip with only a (fill in your favorite term: PDA, Smartphone, whatever)? Keep those hands up . . . how many of this group has been satisfied with that experience? Anyone? We are at an infection point. No, NOT inflection -– please don't use that term (and don't call a stomach a tummy and don't ever let me catch you saying "mani-pedi"). We're becoming infected with the notion that we will not need a laptop. The choices include a.) the smartphone b.) the ultralight PC c.) the tablet and d.) the MacBook Air. There's no perfect choice, but there are inventive approaches. The answer just isn't here yet. Celio's Redfly is yet another interesting approach: e.) both "a" and "b."
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Voice Is Officially A Commodity
Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, and U.S. Cellular (yes, it just announced this afternoon) proved it this week when they all unleashed unlimited voice plans for $99 per month. It's a service that we all just expect to have at our disposal. The real epiphany will occur, however, when the carriers come to the same realization about wireless data.
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Using Virtual Worlds For Social Therapy
Stanford University researchers discovered that users of virtual worlds like Second Life with attractive avatars were more confident in real life.
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Is Internet Censorship Doomed To Fail?
American companies like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo help authoritarian governments, such as China, censor the Internet. The companies' defense: Internet censorship is doomed and bringing the Internet into countries -- even censored -- will hasten the day when those countries are open. But critics say those arguments are self-serving and just plain wrong.
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Commercial Open Source: A Half-Baked Business Model
PacketTrap CEO Steve Goodman struck a nerve with his prediction that commercial open source software companies are doomed to fail. The fact that his controversial position wasn't universally rejected is evidence that questions remain over the commercial open source model.
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Satellite Smithereens Preferable To Graveyard Orbit
The U.S. Navy says it is "very confident" it blasted a defective spy satellite to bits with an interceptor missile Wednesday night. Its next order of business, after definitively confirming the strike today or Friday, should be to play up the positive environmental benefits of the mission.
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India Outsourcing Industry Chief Faces Criminal Prosecution
Nasscom, which just wrapped up an annual conference that drew thousands of people worldwide to Mumbai, has been hit with a nasty blow. Its president faces prosecution for allegedly failing to ensure the safety of a Hewlett-Packard nighttime call-center employee prior to her murder.
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Report From India: Wipro's U.S. Hiring Plans
Here's an update to Wipro's U.S. hiring plans, which we first reported last August when the Indian IT services company was acquiring U.S.-based data center operator Infocrossing. It has at least two new U.S. operations open and two on the drawing boards that, while far from a hiring flood, suggest a subtle strategic difference from other Indian IT services companies.
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Google Spins Out Native Search Client For S60 Phones
It's sort of like a widget, but sort of not. This new mobile search client from Google sits on the home screen of your S60 mobile phone. You type search queries into it directly, hit search, and Google opens your Internet connection, performs the search, and displays the results. It's the fastest way to search the Internet from your phone.
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Catching Up With Zoho
Those of you curious to see how ambitious a Web-based application suite can be while still being built entirely on open standards need look no further than Zoho. The other day I spoke with company evangelist Raju Vegesna about what they've been doing in their ongoing attempt to beat both Microsoft Office and Google Docs at their own games. The short answer: quite a bit.
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Google Wants Your Medical Records
Last fall, Google announced that it will begin pushing into the health care arena by creating an electronic medical records system. The day for that push has finally come. Today, it announced a trial with the Cleveland Clinic that is supposed to give patients and doctors alike better access to a central records system that stores your health information. About time, or too risky?
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Vignette, OpenText Retool For Enterprise 2.0
For those of you who think Web 2.0 is a fad, you might want to take a look at what's on tap for some of content management's household names.
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Report From India: A Web-Based Startup, Employee Head Count: 2
India's IT scene has been defined by its outsourcing giants. Its future will be defined in large part by companies like dhanaX. I visited the microfinancing startup's Bangalore office this week, just days before its planned soft launch. They've spent about $20,000 to get this far. Can two people, in a shared office with the chairs still wrapped in plastic, really pull this off?
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Tough Times in CDPland - Has Mendocino Bit The Dust?
Just two years ago it looked like Continuous Data Protection might actually replace the weekly full backup, nightly incremental backup tedium that's ruled the data center since T.Rex walked the earth. Microsoft's Data Protection Manager endorsed the concept, but was so limited it did more to open the market for other players like TimeSpring and FilesX than box them out. At the high end, Revivio, Mendocino Software, and Kaysha had Fibre Channel appliances that would split off writes to even the busiest database and journal them without putting a load on the database server. I even wrote a comparative review.
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Big Challenges Ahead
Late last week, the National Academy of Engineering issued a list of the biggest technical challenges of the 21st century, some real thorny knots like reverse-engineer the human brain and prevent nuclear terrorism.
It got me wondering how the some of brightest minds in storage might answer the same question. So I asked them.
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Microsoft Moves To Squash 'Friendly' Worm
Last week, NewScientist ran a story about Microsoft's researching how worms -- really, really effective worms -- could be used to disseminate software patches. Today, Microsoft seems to be backing away from the idea.
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An iPhone Clone That Runs Windows Spotted
Another iPhone clone just surfaced and it ain't pretty, folks. Engadget this week got hold of video and photos of the DaXian X999, a device that looks and operates like the iPhone but supposedly uses the Windows Mobile operating system.
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Google Needs To Create A Search Engine For Mobile Phones
Ever wish you could search for content on your phone effectively, just like you can on your desktop or the Internet? A company called Nuance offered a free trial to attendees of the Mobile World Congress last week that allowed you simply start typing a query in using T9. It automatically searched your entire phone for that content, be it a contact, file, image, application, etc. Google, can you do this, too?
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Video: How To Build An Intel QX9770 Quad-Core PC
Intel's newest top-of-the-line quad-core processor, the QX9770, won't officially ship until 2Q, but we've got a review unit. It's the most interesting device to come out of Intel in a while, since it pushes desktop performance ahead on several serious fronts: It's fabricated at 45-nm (OK, the QX6850 is, too), supports ultra-fast DDR3 memory, and has a 1600-MHz front-side bus -- Intel's speediest yet. I've started building a PC so I can benchmark the chip, and I've got the video to prove it. Check it out.
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Full Nelson: ClearContext Has a Fuzzy Outlook
I’m not an Outlook user, but most e-mail clients I have tried -- and even Outlook back when I used it -- seem pretty self-explanatory, so I'm a little unclear about the need for ClearContext. This product aims to make Outlook e-mail more manageable, more efficient, more automated. Maybe this is just one of those things where you don't know you're missing. Since our company is moving to Outlook in the next few months, maybe I'll have to see for myself.
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Good Thing RIM Doesn't Have A Campy Slogan About Reliability. Otherwise I'd Be Skewering It Right Now
Is anyone else getting tired of BlackBerry e-mail slowdowns and outages? I am, and I don't even use a BlackBerry any more. IT admins fielding cranky phone calls from e-mail-deprived workers must really be getting tired of it. Reports were flooding user forums this morning of yet another failure in RIM's e-mail service. If your enterprise BlackBerrys are kaput, what's your back-up plan?
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Report From India: In The Villages, A Tantalizing Morsel Of Broadband
The farmers of Brahmanwada, a small farming village I visited this week in central India, use a shared Internet connection called e-choupal to check crop prices, so they can decide if it's worth hiring a truck to take their goods to market. It's an Internet success story. But things got really interesting when I asked them what information they'd like to get online that they can't yet, and the ideas started flying.
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Mozilla Messaging: Our Escape From Outlook?
If there's any one closed source application I know I depend on, it's Outlook. And if there's any one open source application that can unseat Outlook, it's Thunderbird -- er, Mozilla Messaging. Not because it's better than Outlook -- it's not. Not yet, anyway.
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An Invitation To Startups And Innovative Software Companies
Got a new and interesting product that the business technology world should know about? Here are three ways to get the word out.
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Can We Have Affordable Solar Energy By 2050?
Last week the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced a list of grand challenges for engineering in the 21st century. The goal was to identify what needs be done by the engineering community to help humanity thrive.
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MoonLite, Moon Bright: NASA To Build Wireless Phone Network On The Moon
Yes, you read that correctly. NASA and the British National Space Centre are working together to develop a mobile phone system for the colony that will eventually inhabit the moon. Say what?!?
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Do You Hate Your Content Management System?
Even though most of us agree that content management systems are critical to serving our markets, there's just as many of us that would rejoice if we never had to touch a piece of CMS code again.
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Report From India: Look For More Pay-For-Performance Offshoring
Indian outsourcers are inking some deals that tie their pay to performance -– usually to some operations yardstick such as uptime, but in the more innovative cases, to some business measurement. One CIO talks of tying outsourcer pay to the same measurement that his bonus is. Here are a few examples I've picked up the last two weeks here in India.
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Citrix Beta Of XenServer 4.1 Targets March Production
I was weighing topic posts tonight, and Xen won out over VMware. Will this be a trend in the market? Demo v4.1 and see for yourself.
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"The CIO Is Dead"
Hey, it's not my pronouncement. It comes from Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research, who is quick to call it what it is: hyperbole, which is defined as exaggeration to make a point. But that doesn't make it not true -- at least to a certain extent.
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That Didn't Take Long
And mercifully so -- the battle over the next-gen DVD came to a close as Toshiba threw in the high-def towel today. But as quickly as data and media formats are evolving, does it really matter?
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Microsoft Backs News-Crunching Startup
Silobreaker has joined Microsoft's Startup Accelerator Program. A news aggregation portal similar to Google News, Silobreaker goes a step further by displaying the relationships between subjects in the news, global news hotspots, and the amount of media attention devoted to a topic.
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Crapware Moves From Annoying To Threatening
As I read the news of a security exploit for Microsoft Works, it struck me that the companies delivering our computer hardware and software often work at cross purposes. One of the core principles of computer security is to reduce attack surfaces by removing or disabling software so that it won't run by default. Yet the pre-installed crapware on most OEM systems does just the opposite.
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When Good Intentioned Users Do Harm
Minneapolis-based data recovery and forensic software maker Kroll Ontrack published a list of what the company estimates to be some of most common mistakes end users make when trying to save data from a failing drive.
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Join Us For GridTalk On Friday With Wagner James Au, Author Of "The Making Of Second Life"
Join us in Second Life and on the Web for a conversation with Wagner James Au, author of the new book, The Making Of Second Life, a history of the virtual world, its creators, and residents. The book is a terrific chronicle of a four-year technological landmark and cultural phenomenon.
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Once Left For Dead, Magazines Enjoy Web Rebirth
In a time of widespread devastation in the magazine industry, here's a bit of cheering news: the Magazine Publishers of America's latest quarterly data shows that in the free-for-all digital-media world, the dead trees guys are actually starting to hold their own with endemic Web properties.
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The Cat And Mouse Game Between AT&T And Verizon Wireless Continues
First thing this morning, Verizon Wireless announced a handful of unlimited calling plans. Just hours later, AT&T responded with a similar set of plans, centering around the apparent sweet spot of $100 per month. Is all-you-can-eat the next battleground, and can anyone win it?
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Data Domain’s DD120 Brings De-Duping Down To Branch Offices
In the four short years since Data Domain introduced their original DD240 appliance, hardware data de-duplication in the data center has evolved from interesting technology to accepted, if not yet standard, practice. While big enterprise data centers with petabytes of data and hundreds of terabytes of nightly backups are still more interested in raw speed than storage efficiency, most of us could improve our backup infrastructure significantly with de-duplication. With the new DD120, Data Domain brings the cost of data de-duplication down to the point where it makes sense for branch offices.
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Google Apps Gets Integrated Telephony Features
Let's say you're a Google shop. You run Google everything, including Mail, Chat, Apps, Calendar, and so on. You recently caught wind of unified communications services and how they consolidate a lot of your, well, communications, into one place. Cool, right? A new offering from Voice Mobility lets you integrate those unified communications telephony services into your existing Google Apps set up.
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The Black Swan, Or You Can't Predict The Next Google
If you read one book this year, make sure it's Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable." Taleb's thesis is that everything the experts think they know about forecasting is wrong, and if you think you can predict the future performance of the stock market from a study of past trends, you're gonna be losing lots of money. And don't go looking for the next Google, either, because it's going to come out of left field.
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Full Nelson: SaaS Startup LongJump Reaches For The Clouds
Stop me if you’ve heard this story before: software as a service, but not just a product, a platform, with APIs for companies to build on; fully customizable, mostly for SMBs, hovering around CRM. No, this is not another story about Salesforce.com, but a small startup called LongJump based in Sunnyvale, Calif., where the CEO -- Pankaj Malviya -- also is the founder and the CTO and probably shuts out the lights when all the employees go home for the night.
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Join Us For InformationWeek Live -- Later Today
I'm pleased to report that Microsoft will be joining us at 3 pm Eastern time today for our InformationWeek Live session to discuss the company's big, upcoming server announcements. Microsoft plans to launch Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 on Feb. 27 -- the first server OS upgrade in five years, and the first database upgrade in three.
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Sprint Bows Another World-Roaming Smartphone
For those who just have to have Sprint cellular service but still want to be able to roam overseas, a new smartphone from Samsung lets you do both. The ACE is a BlackJack look-alike that can use Sprint's high-speed EV-DO wireless data in the U.S., but also has a SIM card slot and GSM radio for use in Europe and elsewhere.
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Report From India: Warning-- A Startup Job Could Be Hazardous To Your Marriage Prospects
When Siva Prasad Cotipalli quit a plum marketing job with Oracle in India to found a startup, his mother didn't worry about his business plan. "She's worried if I'll get married," says Cotipalli, whose company, Dhanax, is a two-person, Internet-based microlending startup that I visited today in Bangalore. Startups sound cool, but in India would-be in-laws prefer to see Infosys or IBM on the business card.
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Windows Server 2008 Is SP1... Huh?
Many companies wait until the first service pack of Microsoft operating systems are released before deploying them. With Windows Server 2008, the initial release is already Service Pack 1. You read that right.
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Exit One Format War, Enter Another
The news is in: Toshiba is throwing in the towel for HD DVD, leaving Blu-ray Disc as the carrier for next-generation home video. Now comes the next format war for video: physical media vs. digital downloads.
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Security And (Or) Regulatory Compliance
Anyone who knows me knows that I don't believe achieving regulatory compliance is a technology problem. Sure, good tech will help you get there. But at it's core, compliance is a processes problem. And a pet peeve of mine has been how the mad dash toward regulatory compliance has, in many organizations, forced CISOs to take their eye off of security.
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Vista's Anytime Upgrade Is An Every-Time Hassle
Typically, users and small businesses buy a computer with either Vista Home or Vista Business installed by the manufacturer. Microsoft offers these users an opportunity to upgrade to Vista Ultimate via the Anytime Upgrade process. These past few weeks I have been working to help a user who's had a nightmare of a time with her HP computer running Vista. At this point I don't know the complete list of problems and haven't yet seen a full resolution, but one thing has already been made very clear: Windows Anytime Upgrade is a first-class pain in the butt.
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Report From India: Infrastructure's The Latest Offshore Outsourcing Prime Target
The offshore outsourcing industry's looking at running data centers remotely as one of its hottest growth segments. One reason, a recent report concludes, is that as hardware prices fall, labor takes an ever-larger share of the costs. So to cut costs, CIOs will cut staff, the consulting firm McKinsey predicts. "Moore's Law's latest victim has become labor," Vivek Pandit, a McKinsey consultant, told attendees at the recent Nasscom conference here in India.
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Reports: iPhone Firmware 1.1.4 And SDK Nearly Ready, Apple Using Hackers
User forums are pointing that the long-awaited software developer kit for the iPhone is ready to hit the street. In Apple CEO Steve Jobs' MacWorld address, he specifically said it would be ready at the "end of February." That's still 10 days away. More reports say that Apple is reaching out to iPhone hackers to help with the SDK release and 1.1.4 update.
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Google Search Results Now Showing Video Ads
Late last week Google began testing a new way to advertise within search results: video ads. Rather than the barely visible text ads you see off to the right of your results pages, the new ads will feature everything from images and maps to full-on video. The evolution of advertising marches onward.
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Wireless Security In A Sorry State, Mobile Viruses Feared By Many
Last week at Mobile World Congress, a new survey indicated that the public is afraid that their mobile devices will catch a rare virus. At the same time, a whitepaper from Codenomicon takes a look at the vulnerabilities of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Is the public -- and, more important, IT -- right to be afraid?
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The Wealthy Use Google, The Poor Use Yahoo
Talk about a digital divide. Hitwise recently performed some analysis of the traffic patterns on the Google and Yahoo search engines. Google users tended to be older and spend more money online. Yahoo users, conversely, were often younger and spent less money online. Which is the better audience to have?
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Report From India: Patent Battles Raging Here, Too
One serious concern about offshoring product development work to India, or anywhere, is whether there's sufficient intellectual property protection. Today's Sunday Economic Times here in Mumbia shows patents are a hot issue here, too. The lead story involves a motorcycle company whose managing director describes its strategy as B-to-B: bikes to get the babes.
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Join Us For InformationWeek Live To Discuss Microsoft's Enterprise Server Announcements
Microsoft plans to launch Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, and Visual Studio 2008 on Feb. 27 -- the first server OS upgrade in five years, and the first database upgrade in three. The products are the foundation of Microsoft's lucrative servers and tools business. But with Microsoft fallen behind on key technologies for the server products, and challenges from competitors including Linux, can Microsoft maintain momentum?
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Green Benefit Calc For VM'ing Your Data Center
Just how much CO2 is offset by virtualizing your servers? Oriel, an Aussie VMware partner, offers a calculator that explicitly shows the benefit to the planet for P-to-V conversions.
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Sprint, Clearwire To Reforge WiMax Pact
According to sources, Sprint and Clearwire are set to re-announce a more concrete deal regarding WiMax. Those who are party to the discussions say that a huge cash infusion from Intel, to the tune of $2 billion, is helping to seal the deal. WiMax may have a future after all.
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Windows Server Goes Green
When Microsoft celebrates the latest launches of Windows Server, SQL Server, and Visual Studio later this month, one of the talking points will be energy savings. With that in mind, InformationWeek recently sat down with Microsoft's new chief environmental strategist, Rob Bernard.
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Safety In Numbers
There's a great movie I hope they still show in math and science classes called something like "Powers of 10." It begins with a shot of an earthbound human, then zooms out 100 feet, then 10,000 feet, racking up the exponents til we're out in Carl Sagan country. It then reverses itself into the subatomic realm. It blew my 10-year old mind, such that when the discussion turns to how much an exabyte is, I go right back there.
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VMware Working The Channel
I spoke with VMware last week about its recent channel initiatives. The company is listening to its partners, broadening incentives worldwide to crank up sales.
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World's Cleanest Car Vs. World's Cheapest Car
The MDI OneCAT may be the cleanest car ever invented. It may also be a smokescreen for the dirt-cheap -- and dirty -- Nano from Tata Motors.
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SCO Lives! Aarrgh! Rawrr!
The more I watch SCO's progress -- from Unix vendor to patent-wielding lawsuit machine to bankrupt has-been, and now a privately funded corporate reboot -- the more I feel like I'm watching one of those cheesy 1960s Japanese monster movies with a nigh-unkillable creature from outer space. The super heat ray didn't work on the monster, the mysterious Element X that spews out Radiation Y didn't have any effect either, and now the scientists are falling back on the absolute last resort plan of them all: Awaken Godzilla! Would that we had Godzilla here, though.
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My Open Letter To Dan Savage
Dear Dan: I never thought I'd be writing to you, a known sex columnist. Because I've never had one of those, you know, problems. But now I hear you've taken issue with my recent blog post, where I asked "Is Podcasting Dead?" I hear you even trashed me on your Savage Love Podcast, saying, "You're clearly dead from the waist down, that's why my podcast doesn't appeal to you."
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Report From India: 5 Reasons To Outsource
Cost is No. 5 on the list for Robert Willett, CIO of Best Buy and CEO of its international operation. A partnership with an IT services company needs to save money, but "if you move cost to No. 1, you might as well not outsource." Here is his full list.
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Report From India: Specialized Wave Of Global IT
At a presentation at the Nasscom conference for the Indian IT industry, Arjun Malhotra, CEO and chairman of the consulting firm Headstrong, offered this advice to small or midsized IT services company in India: "Focus on something, and be the best at it." Here are two examples of companies already trying to pursue that model, GlobalLogic and Photon Infotech.
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A (Potentially) Bad Idea Is Resurrected At Microsoft
The software maker is researching ways to use worms as a software patch distribution mechanism. Not on any of my machines.
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'Pleased To Put This Matter Behind Us'
As a journalist, it makes me wince to witness reporters getting all sanctimonious when in reality they're doing little more than burnishing their reputations. But the roles got reversed as Hewlett-Packard settled one of two sets of pretexting and spying claims yesterday, acting and speaking with a smugness and neutrality that don't really put the matter behind anyone.
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Review: Leopard Grows Up With Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update
What's the main improvement in the three-day-old Mac OS X 10.5.2? Increased stability. With previous versions of Leopard, I had to force-quit a frozen application once or twice a day, but with 10.5.2, I haven't had to do it even once. "It just works" is once again a description of the Mac, not just wishful thinking, as it has been since Leopard shipped in October.
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Wanted: CIO
OK, CIOs are getting laid off. So, are there CIO jobs available? Here's one at a major university. Two cautionary notes: You'll have to move to Ohio. And it's obviously a very demanding position.
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When Harry 'Online Dating' Met Sally 'Social Networking'
I'm usually a sucker for romance, especially during this time of year, which is why when I got off the train this morning and was greeted by a red rose from Engage.com, I had to stop and find out more.
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The Demise Of Commercial Open Source
Steve Goodman, co-founder and CEO of network management startup PacketTrap Networks, is predicting that commercial open source companies are doomed to fail. Goodman's not railing against open source or commercial software, per se. It's converting the former into the latter that he sees as inherently flawed.
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Valentine's Day For The Geek In Your Life
Valentine's Day is here once more. Scores of greeting card manufacturers, chocolatiers, and teddy-bear makers are frolicking giddily among the hills of green (money, that is), having convinced us again that telling that special someone "I love you" every other day of the year just isn't enough.
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Motorola's Phantom Announcement Is A Bad Sign
Motorola is hurting. Bad. It debuted just three new phones this week at one of the largest mobile gatherings around the sphere. All three are re-worked versions of previous models ... for emerging markets. Motorola's tail is officially, and firmly, tucked between its legs.
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Microsoft And OEMs Both To Blame For Vista Logo Program
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported on an interesting lawsuit regarding Microsoft's Vista logo program. The suit alleges that Microsoft deceived customers by allowing OEMs to label low-end computers as "Windows Vista Capable" when they were only capable of running the feature-challenged Vista Home Basic. As much as Microsoft screwed up here, though, OEMs shouldn't get a pass on their complicity.
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Best Buy + Data Loss = Lawsuit
Do a search for "I hate Best Buy" and you'll find a growing list of disgruntled customer blog posts and discussion threads. Needless to say, the electronics retailer is no stranger to business practice controversies. The latest tale of woe, however, opens up a whole new can of worms for the company, thrusting it into the arena of data loss.
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Sun Snags Innotek -- Should I Wince?
Sun just made another open source acquisition: Innotek, the makers of the open source VirtualBox virtual machine application. Unlike MySQL, though, this is one open source acquisition that hits home for me in a major way.
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CA Upgrades Mid-Market Backup Products
The company has launched a new version of CA Recovery Management, which includes modules for ARCserve Backup and two disaster recovery/CDP products.
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Report From India: Outsourcing For Innovation
A lot of companies do outsourcing for IT services. But can outsourcing deliver true tech-enabled innovation? British Petroleum CTO P.P. Darukhanavala thinks it can, but warns "sourcing for innovation" requires a much different approach, far more partners, and a hand-picked staff of people focused on the effort.
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Google's Mindshare At Mobile World Congress Is Practically Zero
Aside from the low-level buzz surrounding the Android platform, no one at Mobile World Congress is talking about Google. What happened to Google changing the mobile world?
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Google Releases New SDK For Android
Google has made a new version of the Android SDK available to developers. It offers new tools and a brand new user interface. Here are the details.
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MessageOne EMS -- Mail Management From The Cloud?
MessageOne's whole premise is that it's easier and possibly cheaper to provide e-mail filtering, continuity, and archiving from the Net than for organizations to use software and appliances and roll their own solutions. For many organizations, especially those with many distributed servers, it may be. Let's take a look at how each of their services looks against the popular alternatives.
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Now, That's Service
Six weeks into the year and you're finally remembering that sinuous "8" when you write a new check. And it's been barely a week since the Year of the Rat celebrations ended. No matter -- in Storageville, it's pretty safe if we just go ahead and label this the Year of Storage Services.
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Salesforce.com's Content Moves Are More Than A Web 2.0 Facelift
I've been waiting to see what Salesforce.com will do with Koral after last year's acquisition. When I first tested Koral in late 2006, I remember thinking it was onto something, I just didn't see the Salesforce.com train rolling into the station.
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Dell Buys Brother's Company MessageOne For $155 Million
Dell coughed up $155,000,000 for e-mail continuity specialist MessageOne, a company that just happened to be founded by Michael Dell's little brother, Adam. The official press release describes all the hoops Dell jumped through, including throwing a small pile of money at Morgan Stanley to bless the price, to make this look like an arm's length transaction. After all, various Dell family investment vehicles owned almost 10% of MessageOne. While I suspect no one at Dell would have gone looking for MessageOne just because they had money to spend, after all there must be an online backup provider still available. With Michael giving his share of the money to charity, the real question is was it a good deal?
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Zero-Day Attacks Trend Down? I Don't Give A Flying Hoot
Security researchers and the press like to parse vulnerability trends. They like to argue (among themselves) as to whether zero-day attacks are on the rise, and if the underground is selling or sandbagging the security flaws these black hats uncover. I say: So what? None of this should matter to you.
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Full Nelson: Mobile + Search + Taptu
In the weeks leading up to Mobile World Congress, at least 50% of the approximately 1,000 media meeting requests were from mobile content companies. Indeed, there's an entire hall here dedicated to content (and scantily clad women whose only English skills are Body English). The hall is at the top of a hill, so it takes some hiking in the chill winter air. But once you've gotten beyond WiMax (yes, why?) and LTE (long term evolution -- and by long, we mean looooong), it's nice to see what's supposed to be the end result.
Except this year there wasn't much to see, save for a brief appearance from Robert Redford and Isabella Rossellini. (Camera crews jostled for position, lining up for an hour and blocking the thoroughfare just to watch them watch a giant touch screen demo. Who knew we were paparazzi?)
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What Hath Roger Clemens Wrought?
Nothing hammers home how the Web has become the de facto national fireplace than today's congressional hearing on steroids. Both of New York's morning tabloids -- the News and the Post -- featured big ads from CNN, teasing readers to "Watch Roger Clemens' Testimony LIVE. At your desk." That collective giant mouse click you heard was employers everywhere getting ripped off.
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Hands-On With TrueCrypt 5: Open Source System-Wide Encryption
Scarcely a week goes by these days without word of the theft of a computer with sensitive personal information on it. It's gotten that much easier to protect such data with whole-drive encryption, but those kinds of solutions have typically been proprietary, like Windows Vista's BitLocker (which isn't available in all versions of Vista, either). Now comes version 5 of the free and open source encryption system TrueCrypt, which features -- you guessed it -- whole-drive encryption. My associate George Hulme touched on TrueCrypt before, but I decided to try encrypting my Windows notebook with it and see how it held up.
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My (Latest) Ugly American Moment
In traveling to 20-some countries, I suspect I've inadvertently offended someone in nearly every one. Anyone who does business internationally dreads the moment they'll make some cultural gaffe. It took me one day in India to put my foot into it, all too literally.
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CIO Turnover: An Uptick Or A Trend?
Know of any openings for experienced, hard-working, forward-thinking CIOs? Because I know of a few who are looking for work.
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Liquid Computing's New CEO Outlines A Plan
Greg McElheran, the new CEO of Liquid Computing, explains the recent decision to replace the company's former CEO as being a shift in focus from product development to sales. Having spent four years building its fabric-computing system, Liquid Computing needs to find customers willing to pay for its fancy box.
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Video: First Look At Access Mobile Linux Platform
Google is not the only one working on a mobile Linux platform. Access has been hard at work on its own next-generation mobile Linux operating system. The demo we saw at Mobile World Congress shows how capable and user-friendly the system is.
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Video: Using NFC To Get Info, Make Payments
Mobile World Congress has been a great place to get lots of demonstrations on up-and-coming technology. One that has a lot of promise is near-field communications. Here's a video that shows how it can be used.
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When A Key Vendor Goes Away; Or, Choose Your Encryption Well
Reacting to the seemingly endless conga line of companies announcing one of their employees lost a laptop or tape that held un-encrypted customer data, some organizations rushed into encryption solutions that may have caused more problems than they solve. While pundits recommended SAN encryption appliances for performance, the market turned out to be smaller than expected, forcing vendors Kasten Chase and NeoScale out of business in the past 18 months. Customers of these defunct vendors have a whole lot of ugly work ahead.
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CA Surveys 300 IT Execs
Last fall CA hit up IT management at shops earning $250M+ revenue to check the pulse of virtualization. Some 300 professionals from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Korea replied. They're sharing the goods.
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The Changing Role Of The CISO?
Just a few years ago, the chief information security officer's focus was to defend business-technology systems from the continuous barrage of viruses, worms, denials-of-service, and many other types of attacks that placed system availability and information at risk. For many, I suspect, this role has changed dramatically.
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Partners That Compete
I know cooperative competition is supposed to be a cornerstone of business today. Still, I have to wonder how much further down the path to recovery will Dell get before its primary storage partner EMC complains?
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What Exactly Does A CIO Do?
The reason I ask is because I'm seeing a lot of different job responsibilities connected to the CIO title lately. Is this because the position is changing, or because certain individuals are embracing -- even demanding -- a more critical role?
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Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer At Greatest Risk
Microsoft unleashed 11 security bulletins today, as part of its monthly patch cycle. Six of the bulletins are rated by the software vendor as "Critical," and five are ranked as "Important." You'll want to patch yourself right away, but if you had to prioritize . . .
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Alfresco Survey Provides Data On Enterprise Open Source Usage
Open source ECM provider Alfresco is publicizing the release of its second global survey of open source use in the enterprise.
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Lawyer For Murdered Stripper's Son Subpoenas SkyTel For Text Messages
Just when it seemed panic in Detroit had reached a fervent pitch, there is another bizarre twist in the text-message scandal. A lawyer is trying to force SkyTel to hand over any text messages sent from city employee pagers, and their GPS coordinates, the morning that a stripper named Strawberry was murdered in Detroit.
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India's Enterprise Software Startups
I'll be at the India IT industry's Nasscom conference in Mumbai this week, and one thing I'll be looking to learn is how fertile people feel the ground is for Indian startups making business software products. One key ingredient is certainly for more Indian professionals to do what Manav Garg has: Leave a BigCo salary job for the uncertainty of startups. Garg and others say the startup culture that fuels that is just starting to take root in India.
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FOSS Wars: Trend Micro Vs. ClamAV And Barracuda Networks
Welcome to the next round of open-source software patent litigation. This time, it's antivirus software maker Trend Micro versus Barracuda Networks and ClamAV, and Barracuda isn't going down without a fight.
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HYDRAstor De-Duplicating Grid Storage For Backup And Archive From NEC? Yes, NEC
Much as I always respected the engineering of NEC's products in the past, the one thing you wouldn't call them is exciting. The short form of the review of the S2500 disk array I wrote a couple of years ago in Network Computing would have read "Solid modular disk array has all the features you'd expect, but mothering unique. They sell a lot of them in the home market, so don't worry about being a guinea pig." Well, with HYDRAstor, it has something unique.
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Video: The HTC Advantage
Here's some more video from on-site in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress. This time around, we get an in-depth demo of the re-designed HTC Advantage.
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I Touched The Google Phone
I got to spend some time with the Android platform at Mobile World Congress. Here's some video action so you can check it out for yourselves.
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Full Nelson: Bienvenidos a Barcelona
That's about the extend of my Spanish. I'm trying to learn: "Where can I buy toothpaste," but people just keep pointing me to La Rambla -- the famous strip of shopping, food, and professional pickpockets. I've always been fascinated by this city, its architecture (the breathtaking Sagrada Familia; the omnipresence of Gaudi), its food (you've never had tapas if you haven't eaten here; if they want to be truly modern they have to find a way to put paella on a stick and sell it on the street corner) and its edgy night life (I'll spare you the details).
Of course, this week it also is home to Mobile World Congress, formerly known as 3GSM, put on by the GSM Association. Here are a few Day 1 highlights.
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Join Us Tuesday Afternoon For InformationWeek Live
InformationWeek Live this week is all about location, location, location. GPS-enabled mobile devices can give users the information they need when and where they need it. We'll talk with three experts on location-based services about where this technology is today and where it's going.
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No Detente In Sight
VMware and Citrix have been stepping on each other's toes. A bunch. Will they meet somewhere in the middle, or are they shooting for winner takes all?
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Apple Fixes Security Holes, Updates Leopard
Where last week finished up with having to patch my Firefox browser with two handfuls of security patches, Apple has released its first batch of security updates for this year. And it's a biggie.
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Hitachi Data Systems Releases De-Duping VTLs
Expanding on its existing resale arrangement with Diligent Technologies, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) is now shipping preconfigured virtual tape libraries combining Diligent's ProtecTEIR software and HDS' AMS modular Fibre Channel disk array. Based on customer feedback that indicated customers would rather buy, and VARS would rather sell, preconfigured systems than server, software, disk storage, and the inevitable professional services separately.
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Pleading The E-Fifth
It's probably not the career most storage professionals might have envisioned -- data forensic specialist, law enforcement agent, and archivist/go-fer. But with recent incidents that span from Detroit to Paris, here's why storage pros can expect to be more central to civil and criminal prosecutions.
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Business Mobility To Grow While The Rest Of IT Stays Flat?
Based on the sheer volume of press releases I have received so far from the Mobile World Congress, it seems as if they should have re-named the show Mobile World Advertising Congress. Despite the deluge of new mobile advertising networks and mobile search ad solutions, there is some business mobility news coming out of Barcelona.
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Baby Boomer 'Brain Drain' Will Be A Slow Leak
Even before the first wave of baby boomers began reaching retirement age, predictions of an impending brain drain looked pretty dire. About 50% of the federal government's workforce was expected to retire over the next few years. Now, it looks like many of those people will be staying put longer.
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Following Bevy Of Patches, The Firefox Browser Is Still Vulnerable
On Friday, Feb. 8, Mozilla released an updated version of its Firefox Web browser that aimed to fix 10 vulnerabilities. Now, at least one security researcher says flaws still remain.
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Speculation About Oracle Acquisition Drives Up Salesforce.com Stock
There's a good deal of chatter in the blogosphere today about Salesforce.com supposedly shopping itself to Oracle. Time will tell if anything comes of it, but back in November I posted five reasons I think Oracle will eventually buy Salesforce.com.
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ComScore's Researchware: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
ComScore's Fulgoni says its software is researchware, not spyware. To focus on nomenclature is to miss the real problem with software like ComScore's. Few people would assert that ComScore has malicious intent in monitoring a user's computer activity, yet there are similarities to many types of malware. In particular, the user gets no benefit, while the software profits by the information it gets through monitoring that computer.
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PacketExchange Grabs $12 Million Investment... And CEO
Rick Mace has taken three different startups through various stages of funding. By taking the reins at PacketExchange and a new infusion of cash, he's hoping to catch the eye of content providers and companies that want to bypass the public Internet.
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Hacking The Eee PC
No piece of hardware can stay on the market for long without someone taking it apart and trying to do things the manufacturer probably never intended. "ivc", a Norwegian hardware hacker, has been documenting the fun he's been having with Asus's Eee PC. It's eye-opening, to say the least.
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What Will Microsoft Do With Danger?
Microsoft today said it has acquired mobile phone software developer Danger for an undisclosed sum. What does Microsoft plan to do with Danger and its popular line of Sidekick smartphones?
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TI Taps OMAP Processor To Power Google Phone
I hate to crow, but you read it here first. In my speculative article "Inside The GPhone: What To Expect From Google's Android Alliance" published last November, I predicted that Texas Instruments' wonderfully capable OMAP would emerge as a leading processor for Google phones of all stripes. Turns out TI is poised to demonstrate just such a prototype on Monday.
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Sony Ericsson Unleashes Windows Mobile Smartphone iPhone Competitor
Last night in Barcelona, Sony Ericsson kicked off Mobile World Congress with a bang. In the mix of new hardware is a new touchscreen Windows Mobile-powered smartphone for the North American market. It clearly looks to replicate the success of the iPhone, but for the business user.
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Nokia Cranks Out Powerful Phones
At the Nokia press conference this morning, Nokia introduced four new phones that are bursting with features. It made the N96, which I discussed on Friday, official, and brought in another N series phone and two mainstream devices. All boast big cameras, GPS and big connectivity options.
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Did The iPhone Save This Oklahoma Man From Freezing To Death?
The iPhone is a versatile device, but can it save lives? A Tulsa, Okla., man says his abuse-resistant iPhone let him call for help after he was knocked into a pond by a falling tree and left lying on the ground, freezing and wet, with a broken foot.
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Planned Boycott Of eBay Proves Harm Of Monocultures
For the longest time, the term "monoculture" was synonymous with Microsoft. But eBay is probably another monoculture, and given the degree to which it so easily empowers businesses and individuals to engage in e-commerce, it also could be just as harmful, if not more so. Need evidence? You know it's a monoculture when, instead of switching to a competitor, an angry customer's only choice is to join other angry customers in a planned boycott.
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Storm Worm Makers Reaping Millions A Day In Profit
That's the scoop from a U.K. PC publication quoting an IBM Internet Security Systems' security expert during a debate at NetEvents Forum in Barcelona.
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What's That Song In The Macbook Air Commercial?
You can't teach cool. Fortunately for Apple, Steve Jobs needs no instruction, as he's proved once again with his company's new TV ad for the DVD-less notebook I've taken to calling the MacBook (Hot) Air.
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Yahoo To Reject Microsoft Offer, But Deal's Hardly Dead
The Wall Street Journal on Saturday reported that Yahoo's board will formally reject Microsoft's $44.6 billion bid to buy the company. The report says the board feels the offer "massively undervalues" Yahoo. So where does that leave the prospect of a Microhoo?
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On Glam Ad Network, Beauty Reigns (Bloggers Don't)
Glam Media's new online ad-placement system identifies target audiences for brand advertisers such as American Express, Bergdorf Goodman, and Neiman Marcus. Its algorithms put more value on certain types of content than others, starting with a Web site assessment that, among other things, rates content created by journalists over that generated by users and bloggers.
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Will Wright Demonstrates Spore At NASA
Below is a video of game designer Will Wright discussing his upcoming game Spore with an audience at the NASA Ames Research Center. Admittedly, this has very little to do with IT, beyond that fact that it involves computers. But it's fascinating technology and I can guarantee you that once it's released late this year, it will be sapping CPU cycles at my house. Happy Friday.
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Backup That's Off The Hook
"Unfortunately, it's a huge file and it's taking a long time," says a Verizon spokesman in this report about a database gone astray. Unfortunately, the file problem left 750,000 landline customers here in Southern California without any voice mail service for two days.
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Is FMC Dead?
BT has silently killed its much-hyped fixed-mobile convergence service, Fusion. Three years ago FMC was the hottest thing since sliced bread. Now its biggest champion, BT, is walking away. Is this a sign of things to come?
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Life After CIO, Part 2
Not that the CIO role isn't the be-all-and-end-all, the sine qua non of executive positions. But sometimes CIOs must wonder: What's next? Where do I go from here? Studies show that the average tenure of a CIO. always alarmingly short, has increased ever so slightly. Cold comfort.
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Nokia To Launch A Windows Mobile Smartphone?
The buzz mill is in full swing today. The latest claim to run through the blogosphere this afternoon is that Nokia is in talks with Mircosoft to use Windows Mobile on some of its smartphones. Say what?
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Playing The Devil's Advocate About Microhoo
Daring Fireball's John Gruber says his gut feeling is that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal would be a disaster, but he notes that it could work out to be a triumph for Microsoft -- but only if Microsoft acts in a very, very un-Microsoftian way.
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Mac Tip: Use The Keyboard To Access Menu Selections
Here's a nifty workaround for accessing menu items in Mac applications without taking your fingers off the keyboard. The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
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Reports: Apple Sets Date For Launching iPhone SDK, Third-Party Apps
A couple of the more reliable Apple blogs are reporting that they're getting solid tips that Apple has scheduled an event for Feb. 26, where it will launch the software developer kit for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and applications including Exchange and Lotus Notes support.
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Yahoo To Answer Microsoft Today? Google Waits With Bated Breath
TechCrunch is citing sources that say Yahoo is prepared to answer Microsoft's takeover bid as early as today. It seems the board of directors at Yahoo were setting up a meeting for today. That meeting could decide the future and the shape of the Internet for years to come. What will Yahoo do, and what will Google's response be?
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The Power Plant In Your Pants
Scientists have developed a knee brace that captures energy from a moving knee, much like regenerative braking charges a battery in a Toyota Prius.
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PCI Web Application Security Deadline Looms
If you're a Web merchant, you're (or had better be) familiar with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS. What you may not know is that this June some new rules apply.
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PortableApps.com, February Edition
It's been a while since I checked in to see what's new in the free and open source world of PortableApps.com. To my delight, I found quite a bit that's both new and updated -- and if you haven't checked in with the folks at PA before, you're likely to be delighted, too.
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An Obscure Concern
I'm attending a symposium on Fair Use at Columbia Law today. Here's a 'rights' angle to consider for VMs while I listen to eight hours of lawyer-talk.
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Nokia N96 Multimedia Computer Spotted On German Nokia Site
Someone messed up. Numerous blogs found pictures and specifications of Nokia's next darling superphone, the N96, spiritual successor of the N95, on Nokia's own German site. This phone has not been officially announced. Much of the information has since been pulled, but not before we were able to get a really good idea of what the N96 will feature.
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Report: Consumers Starting To Adopt More Advanced Phones
Last summer Over The Air reported that the vast majority of Americans get the free or el-cheap-o phone when they upgrade. Turns out the tide is changing. The word has gotten out that cell phones do more than call home to get the grocery list or gossip about you-know-who. You'll never guess which two advanced-phone makers are the winners here.
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Whitepaper Says Disk Backup Risky If Dropped
Every once in a while a vendor comes up with a catchy title for a white paper. Today, Cybernetics' "The Risk of a Disk-Only Backup Strategy: The Case for Disk and Tape" crossed my desk. Being an open-minded kind of guy, I figured I'd give it a read. After a couple of sensible pages about how hard drives fail in use and tapes on the shelf are pretty stable, it tries to prove its point with laboratory tests of how well hard drives and tapes work after being dropped. This begs the question: "Who takes their backup disks out of the RAID array and drops them?"
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Enough With The Patches Already!
I'm growing increasingly grateful for those quiet days when I can actually use my computer systems, for work or fun, rather than have to patch them. Is it really too much to ask?
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Full Nelson: Coral8ing Paris Hilton
During a recent flight from Boston to L.A., Paris Hilton was standing next to me as we all made our way to our seats. I saw her -- big glasses, platinum blonde hair, wispy frame -- but didn't make the connection until someone pointed it out later. So it may come as no surprise that I asked Coral8 whether numbers one through seven had been taken. They responded that it was just as it sounds, Coral8, as in "correlate, you idiot." Apt for a company that does complex event processing, the rarified air of correlating transaction data in motion.
Paris Hilton; complex event processing. Hey, sometimes correlation is in the eye of the beholder.
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Socially Challenged
You'd think I might have taken the hint the year someone gave me Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior for Christmas. But in the real world or online, I can't seem to get that whole social graces things right. Which is why I'm such a zero with social networks.
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Stones And Gold Belong On Jewelry, Not Phones
There is such a thing as too much bling when it comes to luxury high-end mobile phones and Givori, an "accessorizor" specializing in mobile art, has a new collection of hand-crafted phones to prove it.
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Flickr: The Biggest Reason Nokia Should Buy Yahoo
In my list of the top five reasons Nokia should buy Yahoo, I left out the most obvious reason of all: Flickr.
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Online Shoppers Increasingly Fed Up With Data Breaches
For anyone who needs even more evidence that security is critical to keeping online shoppers happy: read on.
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Software Model Predicts College Football Recruits' Choices
A team of researchers is using SAS Institute's statistical software to predict which college No. 1 football recruit Terrelle Pryor will choose. Earlier this week the prediction model called for him to pick Ohio State; now it's saying he'll likely choose Penn State. Michigan has dropped to his No. 3 choice. Hmm, we'll see.
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Solar Decathletes Prep For 2009 Contest
Crunches at dawn? Wind sprints on the beach? No. Try hauling photovoltaic roof panels and lifting solar inverter systems instead.
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Google Lets Enterprise Users Aim For The Cloud
Google updated the functionality of its Apps hosted productivity software to allow you to share documents with anyone who has the same e-mail domain. It hopes to spread adoption of its Apps products virally, under the radar of corporate IT. Sharing is great. But is the underground approach the best route to enterprise adoption?
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What's So Bad About Undisclosed Security Fixes?
A recent blog entry by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes raises some concern about Microsoft's documentation of security fixes for Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Microsoft has said that it will make changes to the code that could possibly close security holes, but specifics of those changes won't be documented. This seems like a very reasonable policy, and I can't see how Microsoft could do otherwise.
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When Will The Era Of Push-Button Publishing Arrive?
It seems like I've been on a quest to find easy ways to publish content to the Web since the middle part of the '90s. The toolsets I've used and the battles I've fought would make a hell of a scrapblog.
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Will MS + Yahoo = The Death of Zimbra?
One of Yahoo's acquisitions back in September '07 was Zimbra, an open source (MPL) groupware product that's garnered a reputation as a solid alternative to Microsoft Exchange. Now, with Microsoft prepping a potential buyout of Yahoo, there's real fear in the air that Zimbra may be one of the casualties.
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EBay's Feedback Changes Are Bad News For Buyers
Whatever happened to Web 2.0 openness at eBay? That's what many sellers are wondering, now that the online auction powerhouse is killing its longtime policy of letting sellers leave bad feedback about buyers. Sure, there are abusive sellers who vindictively post bad ratings, but warts-and-all feedback is eBay's one market-policing mechanism, Now, as Ars Technica correctly puts it, eBay will have "no real feedback." Here's the deal.
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Saks CIO Retires
The high-end retailer says it will do without the position for the time being. No CIO? Say it ain't so!
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IT And Legal: Best Friends Forever
If your IT department isn’t pals with legal, now's the time to strike up a friendship. Both departments must work together to produce e-mail and files related to litigation, otherwise known as e-discovery.
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Voce, MVNO To The Elite, Abruptly Goes Offline
The last 12 months have seen the death of many an MVNO. None of the flame-outs have had the same, dark, seedy, Hollywood noir endings that Voce's did. It started when Roy Kosuge, COO of Voce, got out of bed last Friday morning. Upon checking his cell phone, he found out it, along with his company, was dead. (Queue dramatic '50s movie score.) Voce treated its premium customers to a premium "buh-bye".
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700-MHz Showdown: Who Has The Highest Bid For The C Block? Google Or Verizon?
The rules governing the FCC 700-MHz auction prevent anyone -- even the bidders -- from knowing the identities of the other bidders. Late last week, the C block surpassed its reserve price with a bid of $4.71 billion. And there it sat for nearly a week. Then, someone sneaked in a bid for $4.75 billion. Was it Google, or Verizon?
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Time-Shares, Magic, And A Real World Tale
I just got back from a short-term consulting gig in the mid-Atlantic region. The local IT team had heard of virtualization. Maybe.
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Holographic Data Storage -- Too Kewl For School?
Two events in the past few weeks drew my attention back to holographic data storage. InPhase Technologies announced it raised $20 million in a D round of financing. Its Tapestry 300 GB disk and drive has been about a year away for about 18 months. Now, development delays are nothing new in technology development, ask Microsoft about just about any version of Windows, and Turner Broadcasting has been using the InPhase drives in a pilot for a while, so it probably will ship it eventually.
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Total Cost Of Lead Generation
I know at least four vendors who'd be more than willing to help you calculate it, but does anyone really know the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their storage? Too often, these calculations have about the same gravitas as when someone starts describing what they're worth "on paper."
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The Top 5 Reasons Nokia Should Bid On Yahoo
The entire tech universe is obsessed with Microsoft's attempt to take over Yahoo. The market has been waiting for this move for the last year, so most of the "analysis" coming from bloggers and industry pundits is well-rehearsed and polished, but hardly thought-provoking. Instead of rehashing this debate, I want to start another one: Why isn't Nokia bidding for Yahoo?
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Free Encryption For All
Sure, you can keep your files secure with BitLocker, available for certain versions of Vista. And Mac users have FileVault, which is free with Mac OS X. Personally, I like TrueCrypt. Here's why.
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Europe: For All Your Spam Needs
Europe has been taking the lead in several areas of technology lately. The European Space Agency (ESA) will be the first to send an unmanned cargo ship to the international space station. London will be Europe's first city to get A380 Airbus service. Now Europe claims another 'accolade' -- Symantec says it's responsible for most of the spam sent worldwide. I guess two outta three ain't bad.
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Racy Text Messages Turn Detroit Into LOLing Stock :(
My, oh my, what a mess in Detroit. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick faces a financial audit, an investigation into potential perjury, maybe an investigation into criminal fraud. The evidence? Smoking text messages.
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Study: Quality Of Mobile Phone Calls Stinks
Snap, crackle, pop. You remember those words from Rice Krispies commercials, right? Well, turns out they apply to calls made from cell phones as well. A new study said that nearly 40% of calls fall below industry minimum standards for voice quality. Is anyone surprised? I hear pins dropping...
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With HTC Shift, Intel's UMPC Is Finally Real
I was going to call this post "Intel Finally Pushes Past The PC Processor," in recognition of the fact that this is the first time I can remember when a blue sky concept for a new-fangled computing device has moved beyond the bloviating stage and into the real world. But that's sure the case with Intel's Ultramobile PC. Hot little items like the HTC Shift are making their way to market, and lots more are on the way. Hey, I want one!
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Vista SP1 Fixes Slow File Copies--Here's Why
One of the first things I noticed when setting up Vista for the first time was that file copies seemed to be slower. Plenty of other people noticed it, too. This week, Mark Russinovich put together a blog entry with details about how this Vista "improvement" went awry.
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National Intelligence Director: Cyber Risks Rising
The news provided by the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, to a Senate panel yesterday wasn’t all good. While Al-Qaida is weakening in Iraq, it’s spreading its tentacles elsewhere. That includes the critical IT infrastructure. Part of his testimony included warnings that the threat of cyberattacks are increasing from terror groups, homegrown militants, and nations.
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What Happens When You 'Google' Google?
Just for the heck of it, I performed a Google search for Google. The search generated 1.83 billion results. The top result was a current news item about the brewing war between Google and Microsoft. To me, the most surprising thing was the lack of sponsored ads next to the search results. The only one was from Google itself, suggesting you make Google your home page.
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Clickability Clicks On All Cylinders
Are these guys the Salesforce.com of Web content management? To help you decide, I caught up with Clickability's CEO John Girard and Robert Carroll, its newly appointed head of marketing, to hear how it plans to reshape the Web content management landscape.
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Why Vista Is Not 'The Best Argument For Linux'
I've seen a number of people argue that Windows Vista, in all of its bloat and cost and lateness to market, is the best argument for switching to Linux. It's tempting, and there's a lot of truth to it, but at the same time I don't think it's a good idea to define yourself by what you're not.
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Study: Cell Phones Don't Cause Brain Cancer
A new study coming from Japan says that holding a cell phone to your head and gabbing all day long will not increase your risk of brain cancer. It may, however, increase your risk of becoming a social outcast, getting into car accidents, and walking into a light post.
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Virtual Machines, Real Dollars
VMware’s stock price might have tumbled, but that isn’t stopping VC investment in the virtualization space. Two startups raked in millions this week.
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VKernel Gets a Little VC Love, Too
We've written about VKernel before; the young New Hampshire startup produces virtual appliances for VMware. It looks like the Nashua-based folks have something to be happy about after the Pats loss on Sunday -- they've picked up $4.6M in VC funding.
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Electronic Voting Systems Go Unattended
It’s been nearly eight years since the 2000 election fiasco, and it seems with every election, the complaints of failing voting systems only seem to mount.
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Just in Time For 'Hannah Montana'
I'm not a reflexive technophobe or a Chomsky-quoting art school washout (more of a Sam Kinison plagiarist here, minus the beret). But it still beats the pants off me why anybody would want to watch a movie on a device smaller than a laptop.
My inability to comprehend isn't stopping Apple from adding memory to its consumer goods.
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The CIO Skill Set: Is IT A Horizontal Expertise?
Do the skills of a CIO translate over various industries? Or should technology people look to specialize in certain vertical areas to increase their effectiveness?
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Liquid Computing Board Ousts CEO Hurley
Brian Hurley, co-founder of "fabric computing" vendor Liquid Computing and, until a few days ago, its CEO, has been shown the exit. In his place steps Greg McElheran from investor Axis Capital. The abrupt change hasn't been publicly announced.
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Fear And Voting -- Online
Let me knock down two tired reasons why just about none of us will be able to vote online today, Super Tuesday, or at any time during the 2008 presidential primaries or general election.
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Gartner Shakes Open Source's 8 Ball
In a press release dated Jan. 31, research firm Gartner made a number of predictions about the IT marketplace in two to four years. One of the eye-openers: By 2012, they claim, "80% of all commercial software will include elements of open source technology." Wacky? Exaggerated? Probably not.
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Learn About SOA And Virtualization Later Today At InformationWeek Live
Join us at 3 p.m. Eastern time today when we'll be talking with my colleague, senior editor Andy Dornan, about virtualization and service-oriented architecture at the official launch of InformationWeek Live.
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Apple Updates iPhone And iPod Touch; People Start Complaining
Apple just can't make anyone happy any more. Forget the idea that the Mac Faithful might be all excited that Apple just doubled the storage capacity of its iPhone and iPod Touch -- albeit for an extra $100. Instead of cheering, user forums are full of whiny moaners who think Apple is out to screw them.
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Here's What The Google Phone Could Look Like
Speculation about how the GPhone is shaping up has taken a temporary back seat to the chatter about Google's efforts to throw a monkey wrench into Microsoft's bid for Yahoo. But what developers are doing with the Android SDK, released last fall to inspire the flowering of a thousand independent Google Phones, is actually much more interesting. Now there's some stuff to look at, too.
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Internet Voting: Bad Or Good Idea?
It’s Super Tuesday, perhaps the most critical day for the presidential election until the general elections this fall. And some voters abroad will have the option to cast their ballot online. That's online, as in over the Internet. Are we really ready for this?
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Dell Says No Thanks To Notion Of Buying Motorola's Mobile Unit
Dell CEO Michael Dell said that his company is "more focused on the computer business" and not so focused on mobile phones. In other words, Dell doesn't want to touch Motorola with a ten-foot pole. But who would be interested in Motorola?
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Full Nelson: Agito's FMC On TechWeb TV
Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) is anything but fixed these days, although several pieces are coming together. Nokia has several dual mode handsets, for example. Carriers like T-Mobile and BT are rolling out new services. Most of the activity has been aimed at the consumer, and while that isn't an unlikely target, FMC promised to be a key component for the truly mobile enterprise worker. Agito Networks hopes to provide some answers on the infrastructure side.
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Source: Yahoo Talking To Google To Fend Off Microsoft
According to a Reuters report, Yahoo said it would consider joining forces with Google in order to prevent Microsoft from acquiring it. What sort of partnership could it strike with Google that would hold Microsoft at bay while not triggering antitrust issues? Oh, and Yahoo says $31 per share isn't good enough.
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Dell Looks To iSCSI To Restore Former Luster
The merger of Dell's manufacturing know-how and EqualLogic's innovation were supposed to result in all sorts of storage goodies when Dell acquired the company late last year. Now, if the combined assets could just fix the rest of what's ailing Dell.
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New Botnet Army On The March
There's a new botnet (a network of malicious nodes, known as "bots") gaining strength, and it's successfully infiltrating U.S. companies by bypassing traditional antivirus products.
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Microsoft, Yahoo, And OpenID
Now that it seems highly likely that Microsoft will acquire Yahoo (unless News Corp., or even Apple, start a bidding war), what will the impact be on OpenID -- if any?
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Google's Answer To MicroHoo: Buy Adobe
Moments before being ravished at the hands of Microsoft, Yahoo will have the opportunity to throw its bouquet to the bridesmaids. By tradition, the recipient of this parting shot is next in line for a merger. If Yahoo wants to exact some measure of revenge on its unsolicited suitor, it will aim for the lovely Adobe.
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At DEMO, Glitches, Frayed Nerves, And A Sucking Sound
Seventy-seven companies took the stage at last week's Demo conference in hopes of impressing the world with their innovative products. They got six minutes to do it, at a cost of $3,000 per minute. Not everyone pulled it off flawlessly.
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A Greener Bowl Game? Super
What else ya got? Super Bowl XLII (double extra large!) will be remembered for the stunning outcome on the field (Giants 17 - Patriots 14), not for the NFL's environmental efforts off-field.
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Join Us Later Today For The Kick-Off Of The Brand-New InformationWeek Live
We're a little more than an hour away from launching our new series of events: InformationWeek Live, a real-time podcast featuring InformationWeek editors and top guests. Today's netcast is primarily a tech rehearsal, but a few of us editors will be there sharing perspective on the top headlines of the day.
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Motorola's Viral Mobile World Congress Teaser Ad Misses The Mark
A PR company based in England fired off an e-mail to all us press types attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. Embedded in the e-mail is a YouTube link. The video we're treated to is supposed to get us stoked about Motorola's up and coming phones. Instead, it leaves us with the impression that Motorola still thinks it's 2006.
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nLite And vLite Can Lighten Windows, But Sometimes Too Much
Einstein supposedly said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." With the release of vLite, Vista users have a chance to try their hand at achieving Einstein's ideal. My experience with the XP version, nLite, has been that it's often hard to determine what constitutes simplicity -- and when to stop simplifying.
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Samsung Releases Symbian-Based N95 Killer
Not to be outdone by competitor Nokia, Samsung has finally dropped a high-end media phone into the market to challenge the N95's worldwide supremacy. Samsung will be showing off the new hardware at Mobile World Congress next week in Barcelona, but we already have a nice rundown of the specs.
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What's Microsoft Really Buying With Yahoo?
It's a tough question, isn't it? Is Microsoft buying Yahoo because of its long-term and broadscale expertise with open source? If so, to what end? Well, I thought, maybe what they're really buying is the expertise of the Yahoo programming team, akin to what I felt was happening with Sun and MySQL, et al. Unfortunately, the theory doesn't seem to work here.
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SaaS Trendwatching With Clickability
It seems like everything has the "as-a-service" connotation these days. Software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service, even innovation-as-a-service. Actually, the newest one I saw come out of Demo 08 was insight-as-a-service, brought to you by the friendly folks at Silobreaker.
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Yahoo Users Will Be Losers If Microsoft Gets Its Way
Yahoo users should be none too happy about Microsoft's $44.6 billion hostile bid, because they're likely to come out in last place if the deal goes through. Yahoo's services are completely alien and antithetical to Microsoft culture and technology, and acquisitions are virtually always bad news for the customers and users of the company being acquired.
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Windows Vista: Top 20 Stories From Year One
Windows Vista celebrated its first birthday last week. In lieu of cake and candles, I've put together a list of some of the more memorable stories from the Microsoft OS's rather bumpy first year on the market.
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Google, Microsoft Trade Jabs Over Yahoo
Google issued a statement speaking out against the proposed Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo over the weekend, citing antitrust and competitive concerns. Later, Microsoft fired back, saying that a combined Microsoft/Yahoo could serve as a better, stronger Number Two in the market to Google's Number One. Nice of Microsoft to admit that Google has the superior position. But is Google quaking in its boots?
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Rating The Super Bowl Commercials
As always, the real contest at the Super Bowl was among the commercials. (Admittedly, the game, in which the Giant upset the Patriots 17 - 14, was exciting, too.) On Fox, there were some 50 ads, which went for upwards of $2.7 million for each 30-second spot. Based on the preponderance of beer ads, it must be an American truism that you can never be too rich or have too much Bud Light.
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Backup MX – It’s The Least You Can Do
When I ask organizations to list their mission critical applications, e-mail is always on the list. While organizations are investing in all sorts of high-availability solutions for their e-mail servers, I'm amazed at how often they skip the inexpensive steps that will insure that legit e-mail doesn't get bounced if the e-mail server is down. When your mail server, or Internet connection, is down, a backup MX, or mail exchange, server will accept mail for your domain and forward it automatically to your mail server when it comes back on line.
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New 'Evil Finder' Appliance Thwarts Bank Heist
Mandiant, a consulting and software company that specializes in uncovering data breaches and fraud, last week introduced Intelligent Response, an appliance for incident response and analysis. As they left the stage at last week's Demo conference, Mandiant officials said the device had just been used to "stop a bank robbery."
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Super Bowl. Robo Security.
While the Department of Homeland Security says there are no specific terror threats regarding Super Bowl XLII, security is being taken seriously at the game, where the New England Patriots will face off against the New York Giants.
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D'oh! -- I Should Have Made A Backup #2
In our last installment, a disgruntled employee deleted files from the computers at the small office where she worked. Her boss should have known better, but we don't expect Florida architects to be IT mavens. In episode 2, cable TV operator Charter Communications, whose chairman and largest stockholder is none other than Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, accidentially deleted 14,000 e-mail accounts and their contents.
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Follow The New Money
VMware may be cold at the moment, but VCs are saying virtualization is still hot.
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Economy To Test Storage Vendors' Durability
Is the U.S. economy in a recession? With the Fed cutting interest rates like a tailor on speed, a streaky stock market, and no good news on the employment front, it's safe to say we're at least hip-deep in a contracting economy. And decent financial results from EMC, HP, and others have led some to conclude storage is recession-proof. That may be true, but here's why we'll know a lot better in 60 days.
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Wireless Technologies Of The Future: RFID And Navigation?
Yesterday I got the chance to attend an event in New York City, hosted by ABI Research. The firm put together a few panels on important trends in mobile and wireless, and I found RFID and navigation to be particularly interesting.
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Forget Terrorists. Watch Out For Backhoes
Terrorists may represent some danger to power plants, but human carelessness is far more likely to damage critical infrastructure. Given the events of the past few days, it's hard to believe that al-Qaida would even bother plotting to take down the Internet or a power station when everyday bumbling does the job for them.
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The Burden Of Expectations
Gartner's latest survey of CIOs and their priorities has good news and bad news, and they're both the same news: Expectations for IT as a business innovator are up. It reminds me of that old adage: Be careful what you wish for.
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Microsoft, Motorola Weigh Desperate Measures
Two massive deals that have been talked about for some time got a bit closer to reality today, as Microsoft went public with its $44 billion bid for Yahoo and Motorola said it may spin off its handset division.
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If Microsoft And Yahoo Unite, What Will Become Of Windows Mobile?
On the surface, Microsoft and Yahoo have divergent mobile businesses. Microsoft develops and licenses Windows Mobile and associated software to OEMs, which use it to create smartphones. Yahoo has Web services and content optimized for consumption on mobile phones. Is pairing Microsoft with Yahoo (MicroHoo, anyone?) the best way for both companies to create the best mobile platform and services available?
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Web 2.0 Security, Microsoft, And Yahoo
People always seem to talk about how important application security is to them. But rarely do we --as consumers of technology -- have a chance to have a profound impact on the quality and security of software applications and services. But with Microsoft’s pending acquisition of Yahoo, a new opportunity arises.
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State Of The (Green) Union, Part 1
In his final State of the Union speech Monday, President Bush outlined his goals for building a future of energy security. It's predicated on a move toward cleaner coal and building up our capacity to generate nuclear power. Here's what we're aiming at.
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Google Execs Made 20-Year Commitment To Each Other
Ah, the heady pre-IPO heydays of summer 2004. In July of that year, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, together with CEO Eric Schmidt, must have been feeling pretty bullish on Google's long-term future. The three agreed to work together for the next 20 years, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, good times and bad, for better or worse. Will this business marriage last?
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Join Us Monday And Tuesday For The Brand-New InformationWeek Live
Join us Monday and Tuesday when we're launching a new series of events: InformationWeek Live, a real-time podcast featuring InformationWeek editors and top guests. You'll be able to listen in to a Q&A as it happens on the most important technology issues, discuss the conversation in text chat, and ask your own questions.
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Microsoft Can Buy Yahoo, But They Can't Afford Yahoo
Microsoft has decided that it's time to get serious about this Internet stuff, so their bold move is to -- buy Yahoo? I don't get it. If I were a Yahoo stockholder I might play hard to get for a while, but nearly all of them will want this deal to happen because it's probably the most profitable end for them. For Microsoft, not so much.
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Ericsson Said It Will Consider Purchasing Motorola Assets
Ericsson CEO Carl-Henric Svanberg said that the company would seriously think about scooping up Motorola's handset division if indeed Motorola puts it up for sale. He noted, though, that Ericsson would be "very cautious" about approaching any deal.
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Why Microsoft's Yahoo Bid Helps Google, IBM, And Apple
A combined Microsoft and Yahoo would be a company truly capable of challenging Google in search and online advertising. At least that's what Microsoft believes. Not so fast.
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To Sink Or Swim In Linux's Waters?
I've been running Ubuntu Linux on my notebook, a Sony VAIO TX model, for some time now. I'm impressed with how stable it's been and how a whole raft of features like action-key support (for things like dimming the display) are available directly out of the box, without having to install additional stuff that I needed to download from Sony's site. But because getting used to Linux itself can be jarring for Windows folks, I decided not to just dive in and hope I'm able to swim. Instead, I'm using a gradual approach: I take it to bed with me.
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