Big ol' NetworkWorld.com feed

Searching for search: a high-level guide to finding the right information-access solution

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

According to surveys, most companies are dissatisfied with their ability to easily find information inside their own walls, meaning they have yet to find the right search tool for their business.

Microsoft, EMC partner on data-loss prevention

Ellen Messmer — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Microsoft Thursday said it plans to integrate RSA data-loss prevention technology into its products to enable security managers to monitor and block sensitive and unauthorized data use. RSA is the security division of EMC.

Printing firm dumps MPLS service

Tim Greene — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Shortcomings of an MPLS service led printing firm Wise Business Forms to dump the network service in favor of an Internet-based VPN that delivers better speed at less cost and will pay for itself in 16 months.

Intel, Google asked to help revise EU data protection laws

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

The European Commission has set up an advisory panel including executives from Google and Intel to help it revise European Union laws on data protection.

SketchUp for Kids books

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

SketchUp for Kids (Basic Series - 4 book set) ($49.95)

Songbird 1.0 is available for download

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Mozilla super fans will be pleased to know that the open source music playing application Songbird has debuted its 1.0 version. It's here to free us from our evil iTunes overlords or something. The biggest selling points seem to be that it's open-source and that it's not the established players.

AMD lowers forecast for Q4 revenue

Grant Gross — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Advanced Micro Devices expects revenue for its fourth quarter to be 25 percent lower than its third-quarter revenue, the company announced Thursday.

Make beautiful music notation with Lilypond

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Musicians love reading from great-looking scores, but programs that produce them (such as Finale and Sibelius) can be quite pricey. LilyPond is a free, albeit much more difficult-to-use, alternative that produces excellent-looking results. The difficulty stems from the lack of a WYSIWYG interface -- LilyPond simply interprets text files, which you or others must provide.

Second Google Phone 'Agora' Out In January

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

The world's second Google phone, based on the Android mobile operating system, is set to launch at the end of January. Manufactured under the Australian Kogan brand, the phone will come in two flavors, for $225 or $295.

Gartner's Top 10 disruptive data-center technologies

Jon Brodkin — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

A new computing fabric replacing today's blade servers and a "pod" approach to building data centers are two of the most disruptive technologies that will affect the enterprise data center in the next few years.

About those 'Net capacity issues: There's more

Johna Till Johnson — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

A little over a year ago, my colleagues and I modeled current and projected Internet capacity and anticipated demand to see if the curves ever crossed. The short answer: Yes, sometime before 2012, access (though not core) capacity would no longer be enough to serve demand.

Adobe says it will cut 600 jobs, lowers revenue guidance

Agam Shah — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Hit by the global economic slowdown, Adobe Systems said Wednesday that it would cut 600 jobs and lowered its revenue expectations for the fourth quarter.

New virtual Linux desktop bundle comes 'Microsoft-free'

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

IBM and Canonical Thursday announced a virtualized software bundle combining Lotus desktop applications running on top of Ubuntu Linux that they say is far cheaper than running Microsoft's Office suite on conventional Windows PCs.

AT&T to cut 12,000 employees through 2009

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

AT&T will lay off 12,000 workers through 2009 as the company reorganizes and faces a tough economic environment, the company said Thursday.

Microsoft targets auctions in counterfeit crackdown

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Microsoft continues to crack down on people it believes are counterfeiting and selling its software. On Thursday the company will add another 63 legal filings in 12 countries against individuals who it says are selling counterfeit Microsoft products.

Apple winner as smartphone sales slow

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Third-quarter growth in the global smartphone market was its weakest year-on-year since Gartner started tracking the market, but Apple's iPhone stood apart with strong gains.

Yahoo could open access to Flickr, other technologies

John Ribeiro — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Yahoo might open access to a broader range of technologies beyond just search, a company executive said.

Court puts CSIRO Wi-Fi injunction on hold

Stephen Lawson — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

A federal court in the U.S. has temporarily lifted an injunction that banned Buffalo Technology (USA) from selling its IEEE 802.11a and 802.11g Wi-Fi products due to a patent claim by an Australian scientific agency.

Firefox users targeted by rare piece of malware

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Researchers at BitDefender have discovered a new type of malicious software that collects passwords for banking sites but targets only Firefox users.

LinkedIn Etiquette: 5 Dos and Don'ts

2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Building a strong profile on LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has taken on greater importance as the economy slips deeper into a recession. What information you decide to include, or exclude, could affect future job opportunities as well as your overall identity on the public internet.

FBI says copper thefts threaten U.S. infrastructure

Robert McMillan — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

The theft of copper wire has become so pervasive that it poses a threat to the national infrastructure, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Wednesday.

Criminals take control of CheckFree Web site

Robert McMillan — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Online criminals took control of the Domain Name System (DNS) record for payment processor CheckFree and briefly redirected the site's visitors to a their own server.

Yahoo technology will offer abstracts of search results

John Ribeiro — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

Yahoo's lab in India is developing technology that will summarize information about web search results rather than simply offer links as search engines currently do.

Tighten up your customer focus

James E. Gaskin — 2008-12-04T00:00:00Z

In sports, successful athletes narrow their focus during crunch time. They may concentrate on footwork, technique or increase their margin for error. Technology providers must do the same thing during tough economic times. You must focus on your customer and nothing but your customer, whether the customer is a consumer, another business, or internal departments needing technology and support.

Consolidation may hit worldwide PC market, IDC says

Agam Shah — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Tumbling demand could affect PC makers next year, leading to industry consolidation, IDC said on Wednesday.

Networking glitch knocks Yahoo offline for some

Robert McMillan — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

A networking problem made Yahoo's Web site unreachable for many users on Wednesday.

HTC buys design firm

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Smartphone maker HTC said on Wednesday that it bought San Francisco design firm One & Co. for an undisclosed sum.

5 Must-Do Cyber Security Steps for Obama

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

As President-Elect Barack Obama looks for ways to deal with a shattered economy and an ongoing war on terrorism, security experts are urging him to pay attention to something that has a big impact on both: The nation's growing -- and fragile -- cyber infrastructure.

Apple seeks backers of Psystar in amended complaint

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

The legal wrangling between Apple and Mac clone-maker Psystar is heating up this week. Documents filed with the court on Tuesday show that Apple believes Psystar may have backers involved with the company and Apple wants to know who they are.

Groups push for net neutrality in Obama administration

Grant Gross — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Advocates of net neutrality rules in the U.S. have called on President-elect Barack Obama to act quickly to prevent broadband providers from blocking or impairing access to Internet content of customers' choice.

Microsoft-led group launches new Open XML-interop tools

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

A group of vendors led by Microsoft and aimed at fostering interoperability between different document formats has unveiled several tools to help people translate among documents created in Open XML and documents that use other file formats.

Sun patches at least 14 bugs in Java

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Sun patched at least 14 vulnerabilities in Java Tuesday as it updated the popular software to version 6.0, build 11.

Pentagon hacker tries one more time to avoid extradition

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

A British systems administrator who hacked into U.S. military computers in 2001 and 2002 will have another chance to make his case of why he shouldn't be extradited to the U.S.

Elfiq makes big logical links out of multiple Internet connections

Tim Greene — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Elfiq has upgraded its link-balancing gear so it can make communications faster and more reliable between sites that have multiple Internet connections.

Taiwan hopes to avoid U.S.-style bail-out for DRAM industry

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

The Taiwanese government stands ready to help its ailing DRAM industry but hopes to avoid U.S.-style capital injections, the island's president said Wednesday.

Wipro redeploys some engineering staff to BPO

John Ribeiro — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Indian outsourcer Wipro has decided to assign to its business process outsourcing (BPO) operations some of the software engineers it had promised to hire from college campuses.

Vlingo launches free voice-recognition iPhone app

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

The voice recognition features of the latest version of Google Mobile App got a lot of attention, but the program was fairly limited in what it let you do with your voice. What if you don't just want to search, what if you want to call people, or look up maps, or even send a Twitter message without the burden of extra taps?

Web 2.0 could play key role in schools of the future

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

If you remember high school as a haze of boring lectures by uninspired teachers broken up only by grinding homework, then you might wish you were a kid today.

Virtually every Windows PC at risk, says Secunia

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

More than 98% of Windows computers harbor at least one unpatched application, and nearly half contain 11 or more programs at risk from attack, a Danish security company said Wednesday.

Intego finds new variant of RSPlug Trojan Horse

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Mac security company, Intego, warned on Wednesday of a new variant of the RSPlug Trojan Horse. The original RSPlug trojan was found last October.

Internet needs multilingual support for next billion people

John Ribeiro — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

The Internet must support the large number of languages in the world at all levels, including content, hardware, software, and internationalized domain names if it is to reach the next billion people, according to speakers at an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Hyderabad, India.

Macworld Expo & Gear Guide

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

In the U.S., the food-gorging holiday has passed and the gift-giving holidays loom. And because they do, we devote a major portion of this episode to Macworld's Gear Guide, the annual, product-packed feature that also serves as a handy reference of desirable holiday gifts for the Mac, iPod, or iPhone-loving loved one in your life.

RIM lowers outlook with preliminary Q3 results

Stephen Lawson — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Research In Motion's preliminary results for its just-concluded fiscal third quarter fell below its earlier forecast, with economic woes and product delays the prime culprits, the company said Wednesday.

Number crunching: Stats about energy consumption, virtualization and cloud computing

Jon Brodkin — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Gartner reveals how much data centers really cost, virtualization's impact on the enterprise, and other interesting data center metrics

Forrester: How to squeeze your vendors

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

IT vendors may be growing increasingly desperate amid the global economic downturn, but customers must employ a range of tactics -- not just bullying -- to extract cost savings from them, a group of Forrester Research analysts said during a client teleconference Wednesday.

The 24th Annual Editors' Choice Awards

2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Normally when we bestow our annual Editors' Choice Awards--our way of honoring our favorite products from the past year--Apple dominates the proceedings. And for good reason: when it comes to the Mac market, all eyes are usually turned to Cupertino.

Microsoft wants a Ford Model T data center

James Niccolai — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Microsoft has come up with a faster, cheaper way to build its data centers over the next five years, and it says other companies could use its methods too.

Can a keyboard be full-size and portable? Yep

Keith Shaw — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

The scoop on the OnBoard Travel Keyboard and the Juice Pack for iPhone 3G.

Reader feedback on cellular repeaters

Mark Gibbs — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

Mark Gibbs relates some of the reader feedback on his recent review of a cellular signal repeater and starts to look at extracting pushpin data from MapPoint.

Mitac loses Mio trademark suit in Singapore

Sumner Lemon — 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z

A Singapore court has ruled against Taiwan's Mitac International in its bid to prevent operator Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) from using the Mio brand.