Best of the blogs: Skype skeptic Matt Asay just got his hands on the Ipevo free.1 phone and confesses that he is having a great time with it. Even though he's finally able to comfortably field an incoming call, that's not to say he's buying the idea that businesses will widely adopt the service. "I still think Skype and others that rely on someone else's network are going to get a wake-up call at some point. But for now, it's nice that it's free. By the time it's not, it may well be worth paying for," Asay maintains in My Skype repentance.

Hot review: In Guard your data against insider threats, Mike Heck reviews software from Oakley, Reconnex, Tablus and Vontu that can prevent those pesky -- and potentially disastrous -- data leaks. This crop of security products can sense data manipulation, track inappropriate use of media, send alerts and remediate problems. "Although no technology can guarantee 100 percent compliance, these four vendors show they know how to abate insider threats," Heck writes.

Columnists' Corner: Jon Udell calls for a technology that will bring order to our disparate electronic schedules. And it just might come in the form of Microsoft's proposed SSE (Simple Share Extensions) for RSS and OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language).

Search: Google and the J. Craig Venter Institute remain tight-lipped about a book claiming that the two have been in cahoots on genetics research since early last year. And Juan Carlos Perez of the IDG News Service asks What is vertical search?

The news beat: Microsoft releases Go-Live versions of Web services, workflow technologies that are currently set to be included in the forthcoming Windows Vista OS. IDC research director for systems software Al Gillen, meanwhile, wrote that Microsoft's delaying SP3 for Windows XP will not negatively impact sales of Vista once it becomes available.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 18, 2006 11:02 AM