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April 08, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Nope, that headline does not refer to Microsoft's acquisition bid of the search company. Not directly, anyway.

"I couldn't help but shake my head a bit over the announcement about Yahoo's plans to re-make online advertising. While I truly wish them luck, my readers keep telling me that Yahoo still has a problem with a much more basic part of the Internet -- e-mail," Ed Foster begins.

The search giant's vast experience at dealing with the spammers who use its free e-mail doesn't seem to have given it a leg up in detecting junk messages, Foster asserts in Yahoo's not getting the message.

At least one reader thinks "Yahoo has the worst spam filter of all," while another is frustrated with e-mail delays.

If you know a company that's too busy re-designing the Internet to bother fixing their existing products, send them a message by posting your comments about it below or at the link above.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 8, 2008 11:07 AM

February 25, 2008 | Comments: (0)

False: Google is one of most open companies on the Net

Robert X. Cringley, noble journalist that he is, has some confessions to make: Google is one of the most open companies on the Net, Cringe is the father of Jamie Lynn Spears' love child and, oh yes, he taught George Clooney how to be handsome.

"The problem with that last paragraph is that none of those statements are true," Cringe comes clean in It may be Google's data, but it's you they're gonna arrest.

Just try asking the company about what it does and why.

To Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Cringe writes, "if you really believe in an innovative and open Internet, it's time to open up a little yourself. Tell me why you need my IP address information for 18 months. Better yet, give me the choice of whether you can really have it. Because right now, Google feels like a much bigger threat to my privacy than Microsoft and Yahoo combined."

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 25, 2008 10:09 AM

February 01, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Newsflash: Microsoft bids to acquire Yahoo

Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion to offer an alternative to Google, it said.

In the words of Microsoft's chief software architect Ray Ozzie, "the combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would have achieved on our own."

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 1, 2008 05:04 AM

December 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google's Virgin marriage

Notes from the field: The expert and watchful eyes of Robert X. Cringely were on Google founders Larry Page's wedding on a private island owned by Richard Branson. "The more interesting marriage, to my mind, is the one between Page and Branson -- and I don't mean that in a pass-the-baby-oil kind of way," Cringe writes in Google's Virgin marriage. "Neither man has met an industry he didn't want to disrupt -- music, airlines, wireless communications, space travel, advertising, media ... Imagine a world where the two great forces merged. Branson builds it, Google slaps ads on it, we buy it. A new cartel for the new century. Or something like that."

App dev: While Paris on Rails conference organizers apparently missed the news, a new version, Ruby on Rails 2.0 was released Friday. In response to that, Martin Heller looks at Installing Rails 2.0 on Windows XP. "Nothing is ever easy," he concludes.

The news beat: Intel laces vPro with encryption to add a new layer of hard drive protection and ease the use of commercial encryption tools. Following in Google's footsteps, NetSuite kicks off an auction-style IPO, hoping to bring in between $13 to $16 per share. Iona upgrades SOA technologies, both proprietary and open source, including Artix and Fuse product lines. And LinkedIn opens its site to developers amid a home page redesign.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 10, 2007 10:43 AM

June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft, Google and friends in the DOJ

Best of the blogs: The snarky Robert X. Cringely is asking Whom do you anti-trust, part deux? First, Microsoft urges the Department of Justice to investigate Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. One good turn deserves another, Google insists, and returns the favor with claims that Windows Vista is a patent violator. "I don't see the feds blocking any of these deals or doing anything of substance in one direction or the other," Cringe goes out on a limb of sorts.

From the feature well: Simply put, "today's networked storage must be managed with a deeper awareness of business objectives," explains Mario Apicella in Suit up you storage network with business sense. Think data classification, continuous data protection, data deduplication and tiered storage -- all of which, Apicella adds, alleviate the pain of enterprise data management. No small task, that, but are the tools to help. And Mr. Apicella gets at the increasingly critical question: are backups a waste of time?

Search: Microsoft corporate vice president of intellectual property Marshall Phelps says that Google may not be the answer for poor nations. Personally, I never knew any of them were looking to the search engine for salvation. Okay, okay, it's the 'next big breakthrough mentality' and not Google itself that he's referring to. Google, meanwhile, launches a public policy blog to focus on U.S. government legislation and regulation.

The news beat: ClearCube unwraps what it calls a long-distance version of its thin client PC system, meaning users can access the blades from thousands of miles away, rather than the standard 200 meters. The HP Technology Forum kicking off today brings a strong focus on virtualization, more so, in fact, than any other category. And Talend applies SaaS to data integration.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on June 18, 2007 11:16 AM

May 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Google gears up to jump the shark

Notes from the field: Not even Robert X. Cringely can deny being a sucker for damsels -- in distress or not -- and in this instance he's making googly eyes at, well, iGoogle. But just what does that little i stand for? "How about intolerant?" Cringe snaps, no longer as smitten as he once was. Other possibilities he poses: incompetent, in your face. Bitter, Cringe is, at least while All i's are on Google. "Listen, I like Google. But I think 2007 will be remembered as the year the G-men jumped the shark and lost their G-magic.'

Best of the blogs: "Citizen journalism is one thing. But now we see this idea taken to its illogical conclusion," Ephraim Schwartz writes in Beware the mob -- What happened to Digg could happen to you. "Instead of praising this as a victory of the people ... we should consider the bigger issue of what keeps a democracy intact."

Columnist's corner: Last week's Enterprise Insight sparked a fire about Kaiser Permanente's HealthConnect patient records megaproject hot enough for the company to come calling senior contributing editor David Margulius. "Would I like to come tour a Kaiser facility and see how the system is working?" the Kaiser folks wanted to know of Margulius. His counteroffer is "let's put it all on the table. How about a follow-up appointment, doctor?" And for all to watch on InfoWorld TV. This is one to keep an eye on. Kaiser wants a second opinion.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 4, 2007 04:06 AM

April 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The strangest of queries

Notes from the field: The venerable Robert X. Cringely entices: And now for something completely silly. Only this one is not about Apache the Airedale in a motorcycle sidecar, his on-again-off-again shenanigans with Pammy, or slinging fiery potshots at tech execs. No, Cringe is riddled with insomnia and bored, to boot. Enough so, indeed, to dial up the Trends Engine on the Google subsite and start running searches on bedwetting, bestiality and incontinence, among others. Surprising, what he finds.

Columnist's corner: Sometimes a programmer's best tactical career move is to run from scary code, particularly when it's lacking documentation. That's the lesson our Off the Record author learned after being hired to step in and take the blame for a failed project. "The HR rep tried to lecture me about how 'unprofessional' I was for leaving the company high and dry," he writes. "I said nothing, asked for two days' pay, and left."

Hardware: Acer surpasses Lenovo in PC sales, and turns its scope toward Dell. The PC maker also says it expects to acquire a small company in the coming months, but that bid won't be for Gateway. Busy this week, Acer also fights back against Hewlett-Packard's two patent lawsuits by hiring the same lawyer who represented EMC when HP smacked the storage titan with a suit.

The news beat: ICANN issues a toolkit for handling new TLDs including .info and .mobi. A few weeks after introducing Google Desktop 5 in English, the search company localizes it in 29 languages. And, continuing with Google here, security and legal experts alike agree that Google AdWords need policing, especially in light of researchers uncovering that malware distributors harness the ads to infect unsuspecting PC users.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 27, 2007 10:56 AM

April 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Collision of AI, natural language search

Video: Eric Knorr speaks with Powerset CEO Barney Pell about the future of natural language search. "The fundamental challenge in search is our ability to communicate our intents to systems right now is limited to a couple words," Pell explains. "Artificial Intelligence and natural language type of algorithms can open up whole new possibilities for users." Watch it here.

Columnist's corner: Call it an immodest proposal, and hold the satire, please. Sometime in the next few years, IT will start handing new employees vouchers for computing equipment, Ephraim Schwartz suggests in Freeing IT from the end point. "What the CTO may not bother to explain to the new hire is that IT has gotten out of the client hardware support business. Now it is all about application delivery. IT owns your workspace. You own your hardware." Want examples? Look no further than Windows Vista and Office 7, and streaming the entire desktop over the network, which in Schwartz's words, is "cutting-edge now, [but] this practice will be mainstream within a couple of years."

Notes from the field: Cringe just learned that Google Maps directed a reader that the fastest route between Toronto, Canada and London, England, takes almost a month to travel. Or 29 days, 15 hours to be precise. All this has Cringe wondering why. Somewhat related: Google April 1 gotcha: Gmail Paper.

The news beat: The British UFO hacker Gary McKinnon loses his extradition appeal meaning he could face 60 prison years here in the U.S. A blogger posts Vista fixes expected to be in the first service pack, whenever that may arrive. And the European Commission sues Apple and music labels charging them with restrictive pricing.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 3, 2007 10:57 AM

February 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

The Google you don't see, can't reach

Gripe Line: As is often the case with large companies, Google has an "impervious, insular side," reports Ed Foster. This particular instance involves a large Texas school district that is "getting a glimpse of just how hard it can be to get any human being at Google to actually listen to a human being who is not at Google." Students and faculty, it appears, were transported directly to Google Canada after the district switched its outside IP block space. And contacting Google is never as easy it ought to be.

Best of the blogs: Earlier in the week I linked to a piece about maintaining balance to keep those sparks of creativity alive. In today's Leading from the trenches post John West continues that subject, turning the discussion toward family and failure -- not such an odd couple -- as they pertain to professional careers, of course. "If you are doing anything challenging, learning anything new, and in general making a difference you are going to have failures. You need a cushion to land on when you fall." In short: seek balance is all aspects of your life.

Notes from the field: What with Apple and Microsoft recommending that users don't mix Vista with iTunes just yet, the ever-inquisitive Robert X. wonders aloud, err on paper, if perhaps Steve Jobs is not the long-lost fifth Beatle. Cringe reports that the fellow whose truck was burned courtesy of Dell's exploding batteries still has yet to receive any retribution from the hardware giant. But the guy has a plan. Elsewhere in iTunes fans out of luck, Dell user shows off burned truck, keep an eye out for an Italian drag queen.

Security: Attack traffic on the Web is growing even more aggressively than legitimate traffic to the tune of a 150-fold increase since 2000, Roger Grimes reports in DNA attack puts Web security in perspective. The recent barrage against DNS servers was "worse than I had been led to believe," but still not as threatening as it could have been. And with more and more business apps residing on the 'Net, the reality is that "if it goes down today, it's going to affect far more than just your ability to check into MySpace or YouTube."

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 16, 2007 10:32 AM

December 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The future of enterprise search

Columnist's corner: SAP's plans for 2007 are akin to a sea change taking place across the software industry, explains Ephraim Schwartz in this week's installment of Reality Check. Take Enterprise Search, for instance. "Most search products focus on text. If you're looking for news, reviews, or an esoteric piece of information about an obscure author, Google is the way to go. But what if you want to know the status of a customer shipment, how much inventory is left, who is so-and-so's supervisor, or whether I am authorized to give him or her a raise? These are the kinds of questions Enterprise Search is built to answer."

M&A: Level 3 Communications plunks down $135 million for the content delivery network arm of Savvis, with which it will be able to host rich media including videos and Web 2.0 applications.

Best of the blogs: Microsoft just might be using the public, as in early adopters of Windows Vista, for the final beta testing, according to this Tech Watch post by Mr. Schwartz. "It reminds me of the robot arm GE uses to test how many times you can open and close a refrigerator door before it falls off its hinges. The robot just keeps slamming away, simulating the general public, especially in football season, opening and closing the fridge door," he writes.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 26, 2006 10:57 AM

September 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

SAP's foray into enterprise search

Applications: With the goal of diving deep into structured and unstructured data, SAP unveils Enterprise Search, a tool for querying its own and other vendors' applications. One company official described it as a means to tie search to business context for a "Google-like" experience.

Special Report: Customers win with virtualization. Okay, so by now that is pretty well-known. Bearing that in mind, this package looks at ways to tap server virtualization to accomplish more with less. It's not just servers, either. Virtual databases are providing an excellent alternative and, in some cases, are more efficient than virtual servers. And, of course, desktop virtualization is making PCs more manageable.

Best of the blogs: Continuing his look at piracy, Ed Foster can't help but ask "what duty of privacy does eBay and its PayPal subsidiary owe customers purchasing goods via their services?" Unfortunately, that and related troubling questions do not bring their own easy answers. "Yahoo thought it at least owed its users some notification that information about them was being subpoenaed. Instead of just rolling over time and time again, doesn't eBay at the very least owe its customers the same?"

Careers: Bob Lewis espouses more on bypassing the chain-of-command in Advice Line. "Any time anyone working on any case disagrees with the conclusion reached by the lead investigator, that individual bypasses not just the chain-of-command but the entire organization and its decision processes. I'm not sure that's a great answer." Just don't forget to consider the consequences.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 13, 2006 04:17 AM

September 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft takes test tag off Live Search

Search: Microsoft, trying to catch Google and Yahoo, declares that its Live Search is no longer in the beta testing phase and is now the main search tool at MSN.com. Whenever users run a search on MSN, they'll be taken to a page on the Live.com domain.

Test Center review: Scaling e-mail encryption across an enterprise and among partners is unquestionably difficult. But Voltage Security's SecureMail 2.0 Appliance makes the whole process "dramatically easier to implement," writes Logan G. Harbaugh. "Although setup of the appliance is not the simplest thing I've ever done, it is not the worst by a long shot, and the potential gain in reducing user support calls and ensuring that security policies are enforced without impacting users is huge." Read the full review.

Best of the blogs: Ed Foster is embroidering on a copyright shakedown theme. "It's time we take notice before the copyright lawyers fleece us all," he explains. In this particular case, Foster is referring to the grandmothers who received a threatening letter accusing them of copyright infringement, and demanding that they hand over $300 or face a fine of up to $100,000. That's right: grandmothers.

The news beat: Lucent unwraps two new VPN firewalls for enterprises and carriers that bring enhanced performance and are designed to secure large numbers of simultaneous sessions. AmberPoint extends the reach of its SOA management wares into SAP's NetWeaver and Advanced Business Application Program. And Proofpoint puts into beta testing security software for customers using VMware's virtualization technology.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on September 12, 2006 04:31 AM

August 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

A look inside search tools from exalead and Siderean

Test Center review: Different paths can lead to the same destination, and that holds true when it comes to finding information. To help users sharpen their searches, though, a handful of vendors have embraced clustering and faceted categorization. "Clustering helps users discover unforeseen patterns in documents. Importantly, clustering doesn't require organizations to preprocess documents or add special metatags," explains Mike Heck in this review of exalead and Siderean search tools. Both scored in the 'Very Good' realm but, of course, there are noteworthy distinctions between the two.

M&A: By scooping up Webify, IBM marked its third SOA-related purchase and acquired industry-specific software and services for healthcare and insurance industries. Webify's portfolio includes hundreds of prebuilt, standards-based accelerators, tools and frameworks that can be used to resolve particular industry issues.

Best of the blogs: Looking for an employer with good principles? At least one reader is and he consults Bob Lewis to help him find one. "Certainly, a company's 'Values Statement' isn't going to help, since I'm pretty sure there is an inverse correlation (albeit not a perfect one - I'd estimate the correlation coefficient to be approximately .5326) between printing a Values Statement and adhering to actual values," Lewis offers.

Columnists' corner: Dismayed by his son's attack on the Mac, Jon Udell looks far and wide in a comparison of brand loyalty to religion that encompasses advertising, evolution, geopolitical perspectives, and even invokes The Selfish Gene and its ideas. Tech believers, meet evolution.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on August 3, 2006 05:24 AM

July 11, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Quote of the day: Google suing the dictionary

Will inclusion of capital-G 'Google' in the dictionary bring the company's brand one step closer to becoming lowercase-G 'google'? It's entirely possible. In fact, Google actually raised the possibility of losing protection for its trademark in last year's annual report. To prevent unauthorized use, Google will ultimately have to take legal action -- but can you really sue the dictionary and still not be evil? -- Neil McAllister. To google or not to google?

Posted by Tom Sullivan on July 11, 2006 04:08 AM

May 12, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Bono, Cringe, and the man called Q

Notes from the field: Like a certain one of my neighbors, Robert X. Cringely is full of questions this week, such as 'Will the Feds ever learn how to use Google?' And when he's not contemplating answers, Cringe attends a zoo party with Bono and a singing tech banker guy he calls Q. Microsoft swoons, tech banker croons.

Podcasts: Jon Udell speaks with Anders Hejlsberg about LINQ. They discuss the project in general, and what's in the preview that went live just yesterday. The 'cast is here.

Apps: SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow will begin supporting Siebel products next week, and claims it will cut the cost of customer service agreements in half. "We expect to grow aggressively based on Oracle's strategy of making so many product lines redundant." Those words in that order were spoken by TomorrowNow CEO Andrew Nelson.

The news beat: NEC and Mitsubishi link quantum encryption networks -- perhaps the first time that such interoperability has been accomplished. A Chinese researcher fakes chip development. And Infineon tests cell phone chips that bring higher-performance while using less power.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 12, 2006 11:07 AM

May 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

On Microsoft, Google and maintaining honesty

Best of the blogs: Neither Bill Gates nor Google exactly conjure images of truthfulness, but there must be some virtue in the fact that open source advocate Matt Asay, for once, is siding with Mr. Gates in asserting that Google needs competition. "And I'd go one further: Google's innovation has stalled. Outside search and a killer business model, Google has given the market little," he writes in Now Microsoft is the honest one...

Notes from the field: The typically dour Mr. Cringely this week tells a story with a happy ending. It harks all the way back to his last adventure, involving D-Link and one fellow's NTP server. Turns out, future routers will no longer tap Poul-Henning Kamp's NTP server for a free time-check. Word from CA, however, is not so bright -- particularly since a U.S. attorney came knockin' to investigate "a culture of corruption and fraud." CA execs cop a plea, Sun's McNealy set free.

Test Center review: Apparently slingshots are not strictly used to fell giants anymore. Akimbi, in fact, has a virtual lab automation tool dubbed Slingshot. If you've not heard of virtual lab automation, the wares in this nascent group "enable IT test sites to make good use of virtualization technologies by simplifying the process of configuring, deploying, capturing, and simultaneously running multiple VMs," explains Andrew Binstock. "Akimbi Slingshot will pay for itself by the ease with which you can set up, deploy, and manage configurations." Not to say it's perfect.

Columnists' corner: Now, dare I say, this one might resemble an annoying Whitney Houston song, but David Margulius believes that technology workers are the future. (Forgive me, please, if you spend the afternoon plagued by that tune.) "So where's the love in enterprise IT?" Margulius asks. Well, it's certainly not at the C-level, but it is "the developers, contact center reps, designers and architects, QA folks, the people making it happen."

Posted by Tom Sullivan on May 5, 2006 11:13 AM

April 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Live Drive vs. Gdrive

Search: Microsoft confirms that it is working on a project, Live Drive, that will compete with Google's Gdrive by enabling users to search and share files across PCs and devices.

Quoteworthy: I've always been a firm believer in the concept of hacking yourself. After all, if you don't hack yourself, the hackers will. So if you're a good security administrator, you must learn about the various hacking tools that might be used against your environment, become familiar with them, and use them. -- Roger Grimes. Go Hack Yourself.

Podcasts: David Linthicum reports from Chicago, where he took part in a panel titled The Great debate: SOA vs. enterprise architecture. The podcast of the panel can be found here.

Security: The e-mail authentication landscape remains too crowded, with too little to show for a year's work. Bad karma surrounds email authentication plans looks at how enterprise IT is overwhelmed with options and the lack of guidance about assembling a working solution to spot and block fraudulent messages.

Open source: MySQL CEO Marten Mickos says his company has a desire to work with IBM, and laughs off any thought that Red Hat might swallow MySQL.

The news beat: AJAX will be in the spotlight next week at the Real-World AJAX Seminar and Jesse James Garrett, who invented the term, will be speaking about what he calls the AJAX phenomenon. Hewlett-Packard recalls 15,700 notebook batteries that are reportedly overheating. And after being denied access to Novell's information as part of its antitrust case with the EU, Microsoft loses its bid for IBM documents.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 21, 2006 05:12 AM

April 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google gathers apps into OneBox

Applications: Backed by several of IT's biggest companies, Google today will unwrap OneBox, a feature of its Search Appliance for finding and presenting data that lives in business applications, such as those from Oracle, SAS and Cognos, among others.

Quoteworthy: This is one of those stories that make you laugh out loud if you're a crypto geek. My wife is just shaking her head at me. -- Roger Grimes. Italian mob boss done in by Caesar Cipher.

Security: Oracle plugs several critical holes in its database and applications, and releases a password scanner created to locate commonly used default passwords that could be abused by hackers. Microsoft, meanwhile, plans to show customers the forthcoming version of Windows Server Update Services next week. Version 3.0 will include a more dynamic UI and bring several ease-of-use features.

Best of the blogs: In IT Troubleshooter, Harper Mann examines open source network monitoring tools you should care about, specifically MRTG and RRDtool. "Tools such as MRTG and RRD make it possible to more easily collect data from a greater number of devices on the network, and convert the data into XML for easy consumption on the front end."

Storage: EMC does more SMB, and Oliver Rist discusses what it means for the company's hardware products.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on April 19, 2006 05:09 AM

March 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Judge probably will force Google to turn over search records

Search: Google and and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) went before a judge to argue about whether the search company needs to comply with a government subpoena requiring it to turn over search usage records. The U.S. District Court Judge says he will probably order the company to comply.

Columnists' corner: Microsoft is aiming to build three bridges at once with the Live Clipboard prototype that CTO Ray Ozzie showed off last week, explains Jon Udell. "Ray Ozzie and his team have planted a tree that will bear fruit both inside Microsoft and across the Web."

Security: Victor Garza looks into Sana Security's interesting solution to malware, and notes that while it "may not stop phishing attacks, it may very well be a silver bullet for malware/spyware/adware until Windows Vista comes out." Garza throws in links to a test version, too.

Quoteworthy: I've never had much luck with McAfee, and when I asked our CTO about them he said, 'I won't install McAfee on anything because McAfee itself is a virus.' He thought he was kidding, but this last AV definitions file actually makes him correct. -- Oliver Rist in SMB IT.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 15, 2006 04:35 AM

March 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Oracle searches enterprises, talks open source

Search: In a move that it hopes will do for the enterprise what Google has done for public information, Oracle today introduces the standalone Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g. A teenager, meanwhile, claims to have uncovered a hole in Google's Gmail that could allow hackers to gather e-mail addresses or compromise an account.

Open source: Oracle chief Larry Ellison says that open source needs big vendors to thrive and "becomes successful when major industrial corporations invest heavily." Dave Rosenberg tackles Uptime, Weak Apple customer service and his fifth Treo. Customers can take vendors to task when they fail to deliver uptime as per the contract, but "when my cell phone barely works in downtown San Francisco, or my G5 has its third meltdown in one year, I have no recourse."

Hardware: One more Oracle story for this post. This time, the company joins the Itanium rally with a public show of support for Hewlett-Packard's Itanium-based servers. More chip companies are rushing to 65-nanometer production, Xilinx being the most recent.

Best of the blogs: Bob Lewis clarifies levels of manager ability with a metaphor of three craftsmen and their different approaches to designing, building and, ultimately, profiting from chairs.

The news beat: An inaccurate article suggests that China might split itself off from the Internet with a cadre of Chinese-language specific domain names, but more recent reports state that simply is not true, namely a statement from ICANN. March 1 saw the 1,000,000th English article posted on Wikipedia; it's about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland. And India becomes a target for spam as malware writers are gunning for specific regions.

N.B. We have a new forum for gripes, questions and tips that we call Open Mic.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on March 2, 2006 10:56 AM

February 10, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google and Dell sittin' in a tree

Notes from the field: Ace investigative reporter Robert X. Cringely is hot on the trail of the disappearing White House e-mails. Along the way, Cringe pauses to confess that he, too, loses things, like keys, lottery tickets, and girlfriends. But such reflections are good for the soul, as they give him time to rewrite the words to favorite childhood chants; this week he drummed up 'Google and Dell sittin' in a tree.' That's right, certain Dell PCs are now shipping with Google's Desktop and IE toolbar pre-installed as well as links to a Googlified Dell portal. Earthlink gets wormed, Google takes Desktop turn?

Search: No thanks to Cringe's tune, to be sure, Google leads U.S. Internet search growth. The Nielsen/NetRatings survey also determined that the gap between Google and Yahoo widened, with MSN dropping further behind. All that while the number of searches in December of 2005 shot up to 5.1 billion, whereas it was 3.1 billion one year earlier. MSN, meanwhile, says it won't rebrand itself, according to a spokeswoman downplaying the fact that the new head of MSN has been calling the portal 'MSN Media Network.'

From the analysts: IDC reports that handheld shipments dropped 17 percent in 2005 -- handhelds that don't offer telephony, that is. "Let's face it, voice is still the killer app for most enterprise and consumer pockets," Dave Margulius maintains in Handhelds give way to 'telephony' devices.

Hot review: In Innovative IPSes resist our attacks, Victor Garza and Charles D. Herring dive deep into McAfee IntruShield and NFR Sentivist. Both products "combine numerous forms of detection to thwart known and unknown threats, hidden exploits, and dangers such as worm outbreaks and DoS attacks," our reviewers concluded. That is not to say, however, that Garza and Herring didn't find functionality they would like to see included, or even that the products are equal.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 10, 2006 11:00 AM

February 06, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google under the gun

Search: Human Rights in China (HRIC) asks Google to rethink its censored search service there, telling the company that it's not too late for corporate leadership. Not helping Google's defense, in which executives claimed that access to its main search engine in China is painfully slow, Keynote Systems analyzed the performance of 4 search engines and found that all of them -- including Google -- were "outstanding" in terms of full-page response times. On the home front, however, Google's subpoena hearing was delayed until the middle of March.

From the feature well: Outsourcing the desktop can reduce expenses while eliminating PC management and infrastructure headaches for companies large and small. Take New York City for example. It consolidated 32 autonomous school districts under one department and brought together half a million pieces of computing equipment to serve 130,000 employees and 1.1 million students.

The news beat: Hewlett-Packard is aiming its OpenView Business Process Insight squarely at utilities, and promising that the software will be available for more verticals through a series of partnerships. Microsoft push e-mail from DataViz will become available on non-Microsoft devices before Windows-based handsets. And Riverbed Technology is set to unwrap today products that give remote workers and small branch offices better WAN performance.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 6, 2006 06:17 AM

February 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Where does Google get inspiration?

Notes from the field: Just a week after praising Google for standing up to the U.S. government's subpoena for Internet search records, Cringe lashes out at the search engine for rolling over and playing dead with the Chinese government. But, Cringe speculates, Google's execs found the inspiration to do so on a fortune cookie. Microsoft pushes cells, MPAA defies itself.

Security: Nyxem, a.ka. Blackworm, Kama Sutra and other aliases, may not be wreaking worldwide havoc, but the city of Milan has turned off its systems to handle some 10,000 infections, points out Bob Garza in Zero Day. "Overall it looks like we've come out relatively unscathed compared to how bad it could have been," Garza writes. "Don't forget, this little gem of a worm should reappear every third of the month, so it's yet another gift that keeps on giving."

Columnists' corner: Gartner predicts that fewer and fewer companies will allow their workers to telecommute -- from 12 percent to 3.7 percent by 2008. Perhaps it's the concern that too many workers will slack, notes David Margulius in From the Analysts.

Best of the blogs: Cathleen Moore points to the humorous side to a potential BlackBerry service shutdown in Tech Watch.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on February 3, 2006 12:46 PM

January 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft builds search labs to battle Google

Search: Microsoft establishes two research labs to take on Google. Live Labs will concentrate on getting prototypes and new products developed as quickly as possible, while Search Labs will focus on incubating new technologies. Startup Cosmodex, meanwhile, claims it will reward smaller Web sites -- such as bloggers -- with Web traffic for using its search engine.

Security: A new study finds one in five businesses that have deployed wireless devices have not yet instituted security policies, and what's more, of the companies that do have policies, more than 60 percent confess that they are not widely enforced. Juniper and Avaya team up for secure IP telephony, and two organizations said that State CIOs need more IT security support from the Department of Homeland Security.

Quoteworthy: I am starting to become a big believer in the idea that browser based applications could make the entire OS discussion completely irrelevant for the consumer desktop. The important aspect of this is that once applications are not tied to the OS, Linux becomes a more obvious choice as opposition to paying the Windows Tax. It will be interesting to see if Windows Live will continue to only work with Windows now that MS has killed Mac IE. -- Dave Rosenberg in Open Resource.

Earnings: Juniper posts gains but disappoints analysts with forecasts, Nokia boosts sales but profits dip, while Lenovo sees both revenue and profits grow in its third quarter.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 26, 2006 04:54 AM

January 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Google makeover in the works?

Search: Google might be bidding adieu to its famed minimalist search page, and some folks have already caught a glimpse of what its replacement could look like. Specifically, some site visitors have seen a new results page replete with links to specialized search pages in a column on the left, rather than placed horizontally across the top. There are changes to image, groups, Froogle, and local search pages as well.

The news beat: Microsoft agrees to license the source code for communications protocols in Windows Server. It was either that or pay a daily EU-enforced $2.43 million fine. Sun releases a free upgrade to Java Studio Creator tool that includes JavaServer Faces components and code clips that developers can tap to build AJAX-style applications. And SAP reports one of its best years ever.

Best of the blogs: LAMP could be exactly what the grid doctor ordered, points out Greg Nawrocki, in Grid Meter, and not just for proof-of-concept testing, either. Oliver Rist on Seagate's small business file appliance, the Mirra Personal Server in SMB IT.

Columnists' corner: "Despite my fondness for Apple's enterprise offerings, I've always felt the iMac might as well be made by a different company," writes Tom Yager in iMac perfects the desktop. But now, after a self-induced 30-year hiatus from desktop computers, Yager confesses that Apple's first Intel-based iMac is the centerpiece of his office.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on January 25, 2006 11:03 AM

December 23, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Microsoft looking to partner against Google

Search: Just when you thought all the buzz about Google taking a stake in AOL might be ready for a holiday break, a Microsoft executive posted on his blog that the Redmond giant is in talks with another 'tier-1' Internet company to architect a deal that would compete with Google. Hmmm, whoever could it be?

Security: Google, meanwhile, was busy plugging holes in its Web site that could expose users to phishing scams.

Legal: Microsoft and Google resolved their differences on one thing: The two companies reached a settlement about researcher Kai-Fu Lee. Terms of the agreement, however, are confidential.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 23, 2005 05:04 AM

December 20, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Google stake in AOL could be disastrous

Search: Investor Carl Icahn penned an open letter to Time Warner's board in which he commented that the pending deal between Google and AOL could be "disastrous" if AOL is prohibited from seeking mergers or business deals with other companies.

The news beat: IBM buys Bowstreet and its software for customizing and integrating portals, Oracle outlines a new multi-core pricing policy, and NEC foreshadows forthcoming notebooks based on Intel's Yonah dual-core mobile chips.

Open source: Hewlett-Packard says it will now offer the open source identity management and directory services software OpenLDAP across all of its servers. Though it was planned for January availability, Opera has quietly said that now anyone can download its Opera Mini browser for cell phones. And Novell says that its work with the U.K. NHS, which will see the government organization adopt open source software, is primarily focused on servers.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 20, 2005 06:13 AM

December 19, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Has Google sold its soul?

Best of the blogs: A lesson lurks in Google's $1 billion purchase of AOL, Matt Asay writes in Open Resource. "Never, ever trust a capitalist who pretends to be otherwise." The problem, it seems, is that Google promised favored placement of AOL content as part of the deal, something it has never done before.

Special report: The complete guide to hardware and software houses all 309 reviews that the InfoWorld Test Center conducted during the past 12 months.

Standards: IBM, Microsoft and SAP abandon the UDDI Business Registry project, claiming that it is no longer necessary.

The news beat: Venture capital investments this year could meet or surpass the total spent in 2002, and software-as-a-service and open source projects are atop the list. A new glitch is impacting beta versions of IE 7, causing links to come up blank, multiple windows to launch, or the browser to hang, a Microsoft official blogged. Bill Gates, his wife, and rock star Bono are on the cover of Time this week as the magazine's persons of the year for charitable work.

Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 19, 2005 05:42 AM

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