The news beat: In response to government requests, Microsoft creates the Open XML Translator Project, which it claims will enable Office to support the open-source OpenDocument Format. McAfee predicts that the number of identified virus threats will double, to 400,000, by 2008. And San Francisco's municipal Wi-Fi plan is getting mixed reviews, including those who fear a "Googlistic Big Brother."

Columnists' corner: Harking all the way back to Cairo -- the file system, not the city -- Jon Udell looks at what it will take for Microsoft's WinFS, the most recent incarnation of Cairo, to succeed. "Designed in the waning days of personal computing, WinFS failed to acknowledge the emergence and transformative power of social computing," Udell points out in Evolving WinFS still needs to embrace the Web. Just don't call WinFS dead. "If there must be an epitaph, let's write it for personal computing rather than WinFS."

Apps: Instant messaging has cut to the very core of how most companies conduct business. At least if you think in terms of providing the ability to respond quickly to the right situation or the right person at the right time, explains Ephraim Schwartz. "I wanted to know what's next. How will IM's collaborative capabilities be extended once the enterprise adopts it?" One possible, albeit somewhat grim, outcome: "Thanks to these technologies, we might become more like machines than many of us would prefer." IM as a unified collaboration platform.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on July 6, 2006 04:51 AM