Best of the blogs: “It’s a story that plays out over and over again in corporate America: Pay it now or pay much more later. Somehow, later usually seems much more attractive,” Bob Lewis begins Deferring technology costs. At stake is the constant effort to see IT projects to completion. Waiting has its bona fide advantages, as well as misperceptions, such as the thought that holding off on technology investments means product prices will come down. “Pay it later can make a lot of business sense. For the decision-maker, that is. It’s a way to borrow against the future that doesn’t show up on the balance sheet.”Special report: Celebrating the best enterprise-class open source software, we’ve got the 2007 InfoWorld Bossie Awards. Editor-in-chief Steve Fox explains: “More than anything else, the Bossies are a reflection of just how influential this software development and distribution model has become. The fortunes of open source continue to rise as its products become competitive with, or in some cases superior to, commercial products. The Bossies offer a snapshot of the state of software today and an intriguing look at where it is heading tomorrow.” Open source: IBM backed OpenOffice.org by pledging the support of 35 of its programmers, Brad Shimmin reports in this Open Sources post. And Big Blue has its own set of productivity apps that support ODF, as in Open Document Format. “IBM’s timing in publicly backing ODF (while Microsoft’s OOXML vs. ODF spin cycle rages on) reminds me a little of the lesson Lefty gives Johnny Depp’s character in the film Donnie Brasco.” The news beat: AMD finally launches Barcelona, its quad-core server chip, on which the company is pinning hopes of taking on Intel. Vodafone details a new handset roster that will include, among others, an iPhone rival. Researchers at the University of Maryland build a desktop supercomputer prototype they claim runs 100 times faster than a plain old PC. And Skype warns users of a Windows worm spreading through its chat feature. Careers