News

McAfee to buy data protection vendor Reconnex

McAfee continues to expand its data protection line through acquisitions, this time with Reconnex's data loss prevention software

PC owners urged to manage power use and save money

Power management tools can yield annual energy savings of $25 to $30 per desktop, says energy efficiency group

Intel plots a Web 2.0 play with Facebook

Intel will supply chips and programming tools to power Facebook servers

Apple finally patches dangerous DNS flaw

Other vendors, including Cisco and Microsoft, had patches ready when the existence of the DNS flaw was disclosed on July 8

Debating the merits of SSDs, part two

Toshiba is bullish on the future of flash memory but reject the notion of replacing spinning drives

Black Hat/DefCon: Welcome to the funhouse

The Black Hat conference will feature security vendors showing off hacks of the Web, wireless LANs, routers, and desktop software

Microsoft sees uptick in use of 64-bit Vista

Company claims installed base of 64-bit Windows Vista PCs has tripled in United States in the past three months, but analysts warn against reading too much into the numbers

VMware ships latest Mac virtual machine beta

Fusion 2.0 includes multiple backups, mirrored folders, support for Mac OS X Server 10.5, and improvements to the Unity Mac-Windows integration feature

Windows Mobile sales lower than expected

For fiscal year 2008, Microsoft falls short of it sales goal for its cell phone software by 2 million, or 10 percent

Alfresco wants to stand in for SharePoint server

The open-source Alfresco Labs v3 utilizes SharePoint and Office protocol documentation files to mimic SharePoint on the back end

Microsoft’s latest fantasy

Symantec: New attitude on security needed

Customers have to focus on protecting the information, not just the PC or the network, advises Symantec chairman/CEO

Daily news beat for July 31, 2008

Acer scales down Aspire one netbook shipment target

Component supply and software development problems delayed the launch of Acer's netbook but demand appears to be strong, the company says

Cloud computing on whose terms?

TSMC: Worsening economic conditions are taking a toll

World's largest contract chip maker reported a net profit for the second quarter but says business is slowing

Sun releases preview of JavaFX SDK

Sun launches its entry into the RIA framework wars minus support for features such as 3-D vector graphics and streaming video

Oracle buys Global Knowledge Software

Oracle plans to provide training content modules for all its application products using GKS tools

Cloud computing to get open source boost

Microsoft redesigns Live.com

Redesign might give Live.com's home page more aesthetic appeal, but it doesn't address the problem of Microsoft's confusing online branding

IOC caves to China Internet censorship

Olympic Committee admits it made a deal with Chinese officials to accept the blocking of some politically sensitive Internet sites during the Beijing Olympics

Netbook shipments to exceed 8 million this year

The number of netbooks shipped in 2009 could grow to as high as 18.3 million units, according to an MIC report

Sun releases preview of JavaFX SDK

JavaFX SDK Preview released

Mixed reviews from developers and analysts on day of release

Adobe: Flash gaining traction in the enterprise

Despite being best known as a Web multimedia technology, Flash is making headway in the enterprise against legacy desktop apps

NetApp de-dupes EMC, Hitachi, HP storage

NetApp will extend its primary storage de-duplication to its V-Series storage virtualization products, which work with third-party systems

Battle for ultimate search solution

Daily news beat for July 30, 2008

Clear strategy key for SaaS e-commerce success

Gartner study advises business and IT managers to establish clear goals for their online stores before seeking hosted e-commerce services

JavaFX SDK preview release imminent

JavaFX will eventually enable developers to build applications that span the desktop, browser, mobile devices, and even televisions

When servers waste CPUs

Childs case: Fact vs. fiction

Privacy group: Identity-theft monitoring service a waste

Privacy Rights Clearinghouse warns that identity-theft monitoring services offer less protection than users assume, and many of those services can often be obtained for free

Via’s Nano processor tops Intel’s Atom in first reviews

Hardware-enthusiast sites concur: the Via Nano L2100 processor outperforms Intel's offering for low-cost computers

Intel working on third generation of Classmate PCs

Next generation of Classmate PC laptops will sport new hardware and software that makes them more user-friendly, Intel says

New search engine Cuil off to shaky start

Search engine Cuil's first day sees some users unable to reach the index page or receiving error messages

DNS attack writer a victim of his own creation

The creator of the Metasploit hacking toolkit has become the victim of a cache poisoning attack that targets a DNS bug

Microsoft prepares for end of Windows with Midori

Midori is a componentized, non-Windows OS that will take advantage of technologies developed since the advent of Windows and likely will be Internet-based

DNS patches cause problems, developers admit

The patches have caused slowdown in servers running BIND and have have crippled some machines running Windows Server

Microsoft shows off datacenter monitoring system

In a move toward controlling datacenter energy consumption, Microsoft is deploying sensors that will trace work distribution to help plot for optimization

Is Microsoft irrelevant?

New IBM tool analyzes code for mistakes as its written

IBM Rational Software Analyzer automatically scans new code up to 700 times before an application is complete

Update: Yahoo, Intel, and HP form cloud computing labs

Trio of computer giants hopes to foster collaboration among vendors, universities, and government agencies around cloud computing

Daily news beat for July 29, 2008

On VANs and clouds

The tale of two busted spammers

Reporter tracks down a pair of spammers to learn how they are harvesting e-mail addresses

Vista by another name

Alcatel-Lucent revenue declines, CEO and chairman leave

With the merger now complete, Alcatel-Lucent looks to new management with a new strategy for growth

Airlines warn customers of infected ticket invoices

Attachment in bogus e-mails contains same Trojan horse that stole 1.6M records from Monster.com last year

Dell takes heat for faulty Nvidia chips

Users consider its software patch a temporary fix and are asking Dell to replace the faulty Nvidia graphics cards, which can overheat and ultimately fail