Top 10: Money meltdown, Ozzie’s cloud, security worries

At least those of us who are fans of professional baseball have the playoffs to take our minds off the grim news this week (at least that’s the case for fans of the teams that are winning). The U.S. financial system meltdown smacked world markets and set off a whole lot of worry, which tended to overshadow all the other news.

1. The IT worker’s Wall Street meltdown worry list and bailout roundup: It seems we’ve all had more questions than answers in recent weeks about the U.S. financial crisis and slumping global economy. Which financial institutions will melt down next? What will be the effect on the IT industry? Is our money safe? What about our jobs? Answers to such questions as well as a roundup of related news, including numerous stories regarding the likely fallout for IT, can be found at this story link.

[ Special report: IT and the financial crisis ]

2. Microsoft will float cloud OS this month: Microsoft will debut its secretive “Cloud OS” project led by Ray Ozzie at its Professional Developers Conference later this month. Developers will see the APIs (application programming interfaces) and services that are part of the cloud-based application platform, which is code-named Red Dog.

3. AMD says Shanghai won’t be another Barcelona: AMD’s quad-core Barcelona has not exactly had a smooth ride. First, it was repeatedly delayed. Then, once it finally did hit the market, it suffered a recall when a bug was found in the chip’s cache memory — an error that cost AMD six months. While Barcelona floudered, AMD’s chief rival, Intel, seized the opportunity to pick up market share. Well, AMD says the Barcelona errors won’t be repeated with its successor, Shanghai, thanks to an overhauled testing process.

4. Apple drops iPhone NDA: Apple took some serious lumps last week when it was revealed that iPhone developers are subject to an unusually strict NDA that essentially banned them from discussing the development process. Naturally, developers didn’t take too kindly to this discovery and voiced their opinions to Apple, which responded this week by lifting the controversial sections of the NDA, though it is not yet clear what, if anything, will replace those clauses.

5. Vendors fixing bug that could crash Internet systems: Patches are being developed for a set of security flaws that could be exploited to easily knock servers offline. Technical details of the flaws have not been publicly released, but experts who uncovered them have said the vulnerabilities can knock offline Windows, Linux, firewalls and embedded systems using a denial-of-service attack. In other security news …

6. Researcher finds evidence of massive site compromise: Criminal gangs have obtained administrative log-in credentials for more than — sit down — 200,000 Web sites and have launched attacks from those domains using a hacker exploit kit, according to Ian Amit, director of security research at Aladdin Knowledge Systems. He infiltrated a server of a customer of Neosploit, a hacker tool kit used to carry out exploits on browsers and Web software, and discovered that several hacker groups have contributed to an enormous pool of usernames and passwords for sites.

7. For Microsoft shops, Silverlight 2.0 trumps Flash: Silverlight 2.0 will be released within the next few weeks and is expected to provide developers and Web designers with the first serious alternative to Adobe’s popular Flash technology for creating rich Internet applications. While Flash will continue to have plenty of support and has the advantage of being an established, much-used technology, more developers and designers will be drawn to Silverlight with the new release.

8. Security researcher reveals iPhone design flaws: Security researcher Aviv Raff detailed two security problems with Apple’s popular handheld. Both flaws are related to the iPhone’s e-mail application, prompting Raff to recommend against using the app. Raff said he notified Apple of these issues two months ago and decided to go public after seeing three iPhone updates come and go without addressing the problems.

9. Google proposes $4.4 trillion clean energy plan: Google doesn’t have enough on its corporate plate — the company now aims to decrease U.S. dependence on fossil fuels and push the move to alternative forms of energy as part of a — gasp! — $4.4 trillion plan it says will lead to enormous financial savings by 2030 and cut carbon dioxide emissions by 48 percent. Clean Energy 2030 is meant to spur debate about environmental issues, according to Google. “With a new Administration and Congress — and multiple energy-related imperatives — this is an opportune, perhaps unprecedented, moment to move from plan to action,” the company said.

10. Nokia takes aim at Apple with touch-screen phone: Nokia showed off its first touch-screen phone, the 5800 Xpress Music, which will be released by the end of the year. The phone looks a lot like an iPhone and is expected to offer competition for the popular Apple smartphones. Nokia’s touch-screen phone runs on Symbian’s Series 60 OS, which the Finnish company said it has modified so that it’s more user-friendly.