Operating systems: At the official unveiling of Windows Vista, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says that most critical work on it happened in the last two years -- and he foreshadowed some of what IT can expect in the next desktop OS, whenever it may arrive.

Podcasts: The Federal Rules of Civil Procedures (FRCP) kick in tomorrow (Dec. 1) and that means companies, and their attorneys, had better be on top of their data -- but there are solutions available to help. Tune into Storage Sprawl.

Best of the blogs: Sean McCown came across "something that changes the way you do everything." That's the latest release of Camtasia Studio, with which he made a video of the restore procedure for an ETL process. "Think about it ... would you rather sift through tons of documents or watch a video and see exactly what you need to do, and do it at the same time? This way you can also have the important things explained to you," he asks and answers in Not just a DR plan anymore. "So use Camtasia for your DR plans. Use it for your other documentation purposes too."

The news beat: AMD touts its QUAD FX Platform, which carries two dual-core Athlon chips. Intuit reveals its intention to buy Digital Insight for $1.4 billion and plans to tie its Quicken and QuickBooks to the acquired Internet banking services. And Software AG remakes itself into an SOA company, providing products and services for building service-oriented architecture infrastructures.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on November 30, 2006 11:23 AM