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Thunderbird developers quit Mozilla RIM targets consumer market with new Blackberry products In its second quarter, Research In Motion reported better growth in its non-enterprise business than in the enterprise market, as the company continues to push into the consumer space. October 5, 7:45 a.m. PDT Jajah cries foul over eBay's block Web-site buttons from Internet telephony startup Jajah that allowed eBay buyers and sellers to initiate phone calls have been banned by eBay, a move that Jajah charges is unjustified. October 4, 1:05 p.m. PDT Google adds Postini e-mail services to Apps Premier suite Google will add e-mail security, compliance, and recovery services to Google Apps Premier edition at no extra charge, boosting an area of this hosted communications and collaboration suite that is key for its adoption by large organizations. October 3, 3:58 a.m. PDT Skype CEO steps down Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom has handed over his CEO title to become non-executive chairman of the board of directors of this eBay unit, whose impact on its parent company remains an open question. October 1, 11:23 a.m. PDT Hackers want to hypnotize you When I was a kid, I was fascinated by hypnosis. What could be more appealing to a nerdy 13-year-old boy living in Queens than getting others to do whatever he wanted?  October 1, 3:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft: We have services, too Microsoft has taken another baby step into on-demand services, with a bundle of small announcements that amount to a little rebranding here, and a couple of new services there. The new offerings are Office Live Workspace -- a free, personal, Web-based document storage and collaboration space hosted by Microsoft -- and a fresh edition of the company's Dynamics Live CRM product. October 1, 12:01 a.m. PDT Indian Hotmail users invited to express themselves Microsoft unveiled over 250 custom domain names on Thursday that will allow Indian users of Windows Live Hotmail to choose personalized e-mail addresses that reflect the name of their favorite town in India, their favorite sport, movie and sports celebrities, and even their personality. September 27, 5:54 a.m. PDT Gmail zero-day flaw allows attackers to steal messages Accounts on Google's Gmail can be easily hacked, allowing any past -- and future -- e-mail messages to be forwarded to the attacker's own in-box, a vulnerability researcher said Tuesday. September 27, 4:14 a.m. PDT Tech giants chart research goals Power consumption, parallelism, and the rapidly-expanding world of mobile communications are among the leading areas of research and development currently being investigated within some of the IT world's largest companies. September 26, 2:53 p.m. PDT Pirate Bay strikes back at media content companies Swedish police are expected to decide later this week whether a criminal case is warranted against 10 major music and movie companies over their alleged efforts to disrupt the Pirate Bay, one of the largest file-sharing search engines. September 25, 5:19 a.m. PDT Verizon Business adds to SLAs Verizon Communications' Business unit has expanded its service-level agreement (SLA) options, allowing customers to invoke their SLAs on the last mile of their network connection, even in cases where Verizon doesn't own those pipes. September 24, 8:12 a.m. PDT Transplace beefs up hardware for a virtual world Managing transportation logistics is all about handling scale. As transportation management services firm Transplace added consumer goods companies such as Del Monte, Office Depot, Home Depot, Auto Zone, and DirecTV as customers, it needed to quickly bring server capacity online. Already planning a hardware refresh to support continued growth, CTO Vince Biddlecombe decided to bring in server virtualization at the same time so that he'd have a more scalable, flexible platform for that anticipated growth. September 24, 3:00 a.m. PDT Shutdown of eDonkey file-sharing servers may be short-lived The music industry claimed another legal victory in its battle against illegal file sharing in Europe on Friday, but the win may not last long. September 21, 8:08 a.m. PDT IBM expands Microsoft collaboration war to office market IBM's move to develop its own suite of productivity applications to compete with Microsoft's Office software is part of a larger war the two companies are waging in the market for employee collaboration applications. September 19, 12:45 p.m. PDT IBM's free Symphony targets Microsoft Office IBM has spun out productivity software included in the latest version of Lotus Notes as a free stand-alone suite to compete with Microsoft's Office productivity suite. September 18, 11:47 a.m. PDT Fear of insider threats hits home The more money that companies spend on securing their IT operations from external attack, the more it seems they become aware that the potential threat posed by their own employees remains their most significant risk. September 18, 10:42 a.m. PDT Thunderbird flies: Mozilla spins off its e-mail client Mozilla spun off its Thunderbird e-mail client into a new for-profit subsidiary on Monday and seeded the unnamed company with $3 million in startup money, the open source developer announced. September 18, 6:17 a.m. PDT Google adds presentations app to Google Docs hosted suite Google plans to add a presentations application to its Web applications suite on Tuesday, delivering on a promise made in April. The suite, until now known as Docs & Spreadsheets, will also be renamed Google Docs on Monday. September 18, 4:32 a.m. PDT Microsoft forces Messenger upgrade for 'security' reasons Microsoft is forcing Windows Live and MSN Messenger users to upgrade to the newest version due to a security update included in that release, according to a posting on a Microsoft blog. September 13, 4:50 p.m. PDT Eight great Microsoft reviews and analyses Oliver Rist is gone, but his memory will live on, both in our hearts and in the databases of InfoWorld.com. While you may very well have read each and every Enterprise Windows column he wrote over the years, it's possible that you missed some of the great Windows-oriented product reviews and analyses the InfoWorld Test Center has done, many penned by Oliver. September 12, 3:00 a.m. PDT CommuniGate launches Flash-based Pronto Unified communications (UC) vendors continue to pile on new products as UC begins to include more high-tech categories in its feature set. September 11, 1:30 p.m. PDT Web-hosted office suites are here to stay Adison & Partners is a small yet emblematic part of a major shift in how office software is sold and used. September 10, 10:15 a.m. PDT Security researcher intercepts embassy passwords from Tor A security researcher who collected thousands of sensitive e-mails and passwords from the embassies of countries such as Russia and India blamed systems administrators on Monday for not using encryption to shield their traffic from snooping. September 10, 6:20 a.m. PDT Capgemini to provide IT services for Google Apps Google has formed a partnership with Capgemini, which will provide IT services to large businesses that adopt the Google Apps Premier Edition hosted suite of collaboration and communication software. September 10, 5:29 a.m. PDT Best of open source in networking If we had to pick the most significant trend in networking today, the VoIP phenomenon might well top the list. And open source is playing no small part. While enterprises remain reluctant to rip out their tried-and-true PBXes, open source VoIP -- usually in the form of Asterisk -- is capturing business communications one small business or branch office at a time. Sooner or later, enterprises too will catch the open source VoIP bug. The cost savings and flexibility are too compelling to resist. September 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Best of open source applications A hunger for lighter-weight and lower-cost sales and CRM applications has brought great success to SaaS vendors such as Salesforce.com, and also lifted the fortunes of open source offerings in the space. Open source ERP has had a harder time breaking out, but here too there are several impressive offerings to choose from. And if you're looking to open source for an enterprise portal, CMS, or Microsoft Exchange substitute, you will not be disappointed. September 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Introducing the 2007 InfoWorld Bossies Not too long ago, open source meant starving developers; scant documentation; an ugly, outdated Web site; and software that lived in perpetual beta. Now open source software is becoming big business. “Now hiring” is a common sight on project home pages, and .org and SourceForge sites that used to point straight to source code archives are redirected to .com URLs that celebrate the commercial success of what started out as collaborations among unpaid coders of like mind. September 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Tandberg deal reflects videoconferencing growth A rising tide lifts all boats, and in the world of videoconferencing, Cisco Systems' high-profile TelePresence products are boosting the market as a whole. Longtime player Tandberg is trying to make the most of the good times. September 7, 3:00 p.m. PDT Cisco consumer move afoot? Cisco Systems executives hinted at major changes in the company's consumer strategy on Wednesday even as they voiced optimism about networking and the world economy. September 7, 4:05 a.m. PDT Cisco bringing TelePresence conferencing to homes Cisco Systems expects to take its TelePresence high-definition conferencing system from the boardroom to the living room within two or three years for about $1,000. September 6, 7:45 a.m. PDT Cisco targets collaboration, developing markets Cisco Systems is on target to meet its growth forecast for this quarter and sees big opportunities over the next several years in collaboration technologies and developing economies, executives told financial analysts on Wednesday. September 6, 5:25 a.m. PDT SaaSy eXpresso gives a jolt to Excel workgroups You'd be hard-pressed to find any organization that doesn't depend on Microsoft Excel. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean spreadsheets are treated as an enterprise resource, and here's where the SaaS (software as a service) movement fills the gap. A new hosted application, called eXpresso, not only brings document management to spreadsheet-based workgroups, but jumps past basic file versioning solutions by adding considerable community features including chat and simultaneous editing – all without an IT admin lifting a finger. September 6, 3:00 a.m. PDT Last call: Oliver's parting shot Back in the saddle again… September 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Tata to aid India's telecoms expansion India's largest outsourcer Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. has landed a US$140 million contract from India's large state-owned telecommunications services provider, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., for the deployment of next-generation networks in the country. August 30, 7:15 a.m. PDT Microsoft buys enterprise chat firm Parlano Microsoft said Wednesday it will acquire a Chicago-based provider of enterprise group chat software to bolster the messaging capabilities of its Office Communications Server and Office Communicator products. August 30, 4:26 a.m. PDT The great Office Server smorgasbord Part 3: forms and flexibility with Forms Server 2007 The great Office Server smorgasbord is back and ready to tackle forms processing, possibly the most powerful use case for SharePoint and Office we’ve seen until now. To get through this one, we’ll need to start with a discussion of InfoPath 2007, then look at the basic Forms Services included with Office SharePoint Server and finally check out what else you get once you spring for the full-on form power of Forms Server 2007. August 27, 3:00 a.m. PDT New Yahoo Mail exits beta Yahoo will close an almost two-year public test for its new version of Yahoo Mail on Monday with several new enhancements, as the Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet giant boosts this Webmail service that is key to both its usage and advertising growth. August 26, 8:16 p.m. PDT IBM may open source Jazz collaboration software IBM's Rational Software unit is considering putting parts of its Jazz collaboration framework into open source, according to an executive of the company. August 24, 4:20 a.m. PDT Enterprise e-mail gets pumped With IBMs launch earlier this month of Lotus Notes 8 and this week's unveiling of Lotus SameTime Version 8, industry analysts say we are beginning to see the evolution of the e-mail client from a communications tool into a coordination channel. And when that happens, IBM may be in the unprecedented position of getting a second chance at knocking off longtime market leader Microsoft Outlook. August 23, 3:00 a.m. PDT Lotus Notes and Domino 8 show new life OK, I’ll admit that in my IBM Lotus Notes 7 review about two years ago, I got Version 8’s release date a wee bit off. Hey, the fortune teller I consulted skipped town right after the reading. But my wrap-up hit the mark, saying Notes 8 “should further support composite applications, such as bringing together e-mail, documents, and meetings into a single interface -- a key part of an SOA.” Here’s my initial impression of how well IBM Lotus engineers met this goal and the way they did it. August 23, 3:00 a.m. PDT IBM to turn Sametime IM into a family of products IBM is hoping to broaden the appeal of its Sametime enterprise IM software by expanding the current stand-alone offering into a family of products in a bid to better compete with other unified communications players like Microsoft and Cisco. August 21, 9:04 a.m. PDT Google struggles with phone number 'for life' Google's GrandCentral Communications is finding it tricky to keep its promise to provide its clients with a single phone number "for life." August 20, 4:08 p.m. PDT Skype users don't buy outage explanation eBay's explanation for last week's failure of its Skype communication service has left many users still wondering what caused the worst outage in Skype's five-year history. August 20, 3:11 p.m. PDT The great Office Server smorgasbord Part 2: MOSSing up Groove Server Tom works for Fergenschmeir Inc. Fergenschmeir just decided to merge with Widgeteria Corp., where Susan works. The two employees are leading the merger effort, and during an initial call quickly realize they need to be able to share loads of data quickly. So Susan initiates a Groove workspace and invites Tom via e-mail. In just a few minutes, they've got their own library of work documents, messaging, and other collaborative goodies without ever having to call the IT department. That's a powerful capability and it's why our second installment of the great Office Server smorgasbord covers Office Groove 2007. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT SMB technology: Replacing in-house software with applications in the cloud In the near future, there's only one way to go for SMBs when it comes to purchasing business software -- and that's out of house. Whether it's full-on SaaS (software as a service), where users access all facets of the application through a browser, or a hosted product (including hosted Exchange, where only the server component is off-site and users employ a standard desktop client such as Outlook), either model is simply too cost-effective for SMBs to ignore. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Processors: Dividing chips into many virtual cores The current approach taken by x86 CPUs -- to stuff as many processor cores and as much cache memory as will fit on one chip -- will prove impossible to scale beyond a certain point. And adding more, big, hot processor cores may not be the best fit for server roles that call for managing large workloads over long periods of time. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Pundits on parade: What’s next in tech You’ve heard of Christmas in July, that classic advertising gimmick designed to lure shoppers into stores despite the oppressive heat and humidity. We’ll, we’ve got New Year’s in August, which invites you to stay indoors and read “The next big things in IT” -- 15 predictions about the future of technology. August 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT Sourcefire acquires ClamAV open-source anti-malware project Network security specialist Sourcefire announced Friday that it has acquired ClamAV, an open-source gateway anti-malware project whose technologies are used in the products of a number of other vendors. August 17, 8:58 a.m. PDT Skype VOIP problems may continue throughout the day Skype is still trying to restore service to millions of its customers almost 24 hours after they began to experience problems logging in to the VOIP service. August 17, 5:15 a.m. PDT IBM unveils Version 8 of Lotus Notes, Domino Two years in the making, IBM Lotus division finally unveiled Version 8 of Lotus Notes and Domino this week. August 17, 3:00 a.m. PDT Vulnerability uncovered within Yahoo Messenger A new vulnerability in Yahoo's instant messenger program can potentially cause unwanted code to run on a PC, according to security researchers. August 15, 7:59 a.m. PDT Exchange 2007 SP1 packed with goodies This is what happens when your friends have kids. The kids get sick; your friend gets sick. He comes over to help with rebuilding your deck. You get sick. Or, rather, I get sick. As a dog — which is an expression I've never fully understood. But does that dissuade editors from asking for a column? Heck no. I could have been tagged in a drive-by and they'd still be looking for copy. So despite a head that feels like a beach ball stuffed with sand, I've managed to put together some details on Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1, which officially popped out from behind the secret beta earlier this week. August 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft trumps Google on free e-mail storage limit Microsoft is increasing the storage limit for its Web-based e-mail service, surpassing competitor Google's limit but far short of Yahoo's unlimited storage. August 14, 5:45 a.m. PDT Microsoft previews SP1 for Exchange Server 2007 Microsoft is offering a preview of the first service pack for Exchange Server 2007, an update that binds the company's latest e-mail server closer to other so-called unified communications products. August 14, 5:37 a.m. PDT Novell buys endpoint security firm Senforce Novell announced on Monday that it has acquired Senforce Technologies, a provider of endpoint and network security tools, for an undisclosed sum. August 13, 9:40 a.m. PDT The great Office Server smorgasbord: SharePoint 2007 2005. A good year made more pleasant because we were still living under certain illusions. For one, we thought Paris Hilton headlines were in a decline. I was still 39 and therefore didn't have to worry about not being married. And Microsoft leaked that Office 2007 was going to have "a server component." Foolish technology journalists that we are, we assumed this meant 'a' server. As in one. As in single. As in my Friday night. August 13, 3:00 a.m. PDT Cisco sees Web 2.0 boom after posting strong Q4 Cisco Systems expects Web 2.0 to drive a growth curve similar to the Internet expansion of the 1990s, accelerating the company's revenue growth, chairman and CEO John Chambers said Tuesday as Cisco announced strong fourth-quarter numbers. August 8, 5:04 a.m. PDT Genius Team shines light on e-mail marketing performance On-demand sales and marketing services startup Genius.com is releasing a new product, Genius Team, to enable sales managers to assess how effectively their staff are using e-mail to target prospective customers. July 30, 5:19 a.m. PDT Japan's KDDI to offer Google-based PC, phone e-mail Japan's number two cellphone carrier will launch an e-mail service based on Google's Gmail in September, it said Monday. July 30, 4:32 a.m. PDT Weird tech: Tribal confederation 2.0 While investors and pundits bow to the dogma that Web 2.0 is a "disruptive" force sure to shake the future of the technological landscape, one organization -- Oregon's confederation of Indian tribes known as the Grand Ronde -- is going against that grain, applying emergent Web technology to bring back together an already disrupted system, tribal culture and tradition, and thereby lend greater voice to its past. July 30, 3:00 a.m. PDT Mozilla may separate from Thunderbird to focus on Firefox The Mozilla Foundation is thinking about creating a separate organization to take control of its Thunderbird e-mail application, allowing it to concentrate on development of the Firefox Web browser. July 26, 5:58 a.m. PDT McAfee sets Rootkit Detective free On July 26, McAfee will begin offering a new application called Rootkit Detective, designed to detect and remove dangerous rootkit attacks. The software will also help end-users ward off the threats, as well as funnel new intelligence into the company's ongoing research operations. July 25, 1:12 p.m. PDT Hit the books, Windows admins This was a depressing weekend. Not only am I getting older, I seem to be doing it faster than the rest of my friends. I spent the weekend tearing up the shoddily built original deck so that I can replace it with something remotely attractive. But after only two days of hammer and crowbar work, I'm wheezing like John Goodman climbing stairs and can barely lift my hammer. Dave — who is three months older — is still bright eyed and bushy tailed. Makes me mad. It also makes me want to crawl into my easy chair with a scotch, half a pound of Advil, and some good reading. July 25, 3:00 a.m. PDT IT immigration: Thoughtful debate amid the flames Wow. My column last week proposing to grant citizenship to immigrant developers, "Open the floodgates to IT immigration," generated a torrent of comments from readers (83 and counting). Many were emotional, some were flames, almost all were opinionated, and the vast majority was – drumroll – thoughtful and rational, and they made me sympathetic to their point of view. As one person wrote, "there's a lot of layers to this onion," and our readers peeled them all back. Thanks, everybody, for taking the time. July 19, 3:00 a.m. PDT TB case highlights e-mail archiving trend E-mail archiving and recovery software has proved itself useful in the case of the American who flew to Europe even though he had tuberculosis (TB). July 10, 7:40 a.m. PDT E-mail worms rarer in 2007 E-mail worms, not long ago the scourge of the Internet, have declined sharply in 2007, a security company has revealed. July 5, 7:54 a.m. PDT AOL's AIM update alert bothers upgrade holdouts Some AIM users are angry about a recent alert message AOL displays on their screens urging them to upgrade to the newest version of the instant messaging software. July 3, 7:06 a.m. PDT Microsoft pushes OBAs to take Office to next level Microsoft has been quietly adding to the cache of reference applications it hopes will help transform Microsoft Office 2007 from a mere productivity suite to a collaboration tool. June 28, 5:26 a.m. PDT Google threatens to drop Gmail in Germany Google is unhappy with proposed German legislation to ban anonymous e-mail accounts and may consider dropping the German version of its Gmail service. June 26, 5:27 a.m. PDT European Commission pushes Germany on telecom access The European Commission asked the German regulatory authority, the Federal Network Agency, Monday to do more to ensure a level playing field in the market for high-speed optical fiber connections to the home or office. June 25, 9:49 a.m. PDT PayPal CTO: Security, mobility to spur growth PayPal's Chief Technology Officer, Scott Thompson, is a prime example of what might be called the "payments geek." June 13, 9:07 a.m. PDT SharePoint library: No non-geeks allowed Microsoft is pushing a bunch of new technologies as part of the Vista-Office-2007-Server-2008 product bonanza: The new Exchange, Viridian virtualization (eventually), Forefront security. The list is long and maybe even a little distinguished, but nothing is being pushed harder than SharePoint. June 13, 3:00 a.m. PDT A developer's-eye view of Leopard, part I Steve Jobs had a lot of fun at Microsoft's expense over Redmond's difficulties shipping the operating systems that have become Vista and Windows Server 2008. So with Vista shipping by default on new PCs and Windows Server 2008 in a publicly downloadable beta, Apple should be catching hell from the press for making Leopard the last to arrive. June 12, 3:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft packs A/V Web conferencing features into RoundTable The only cool thing about this job is the volume of awesome toys that crosses my threshold. That and having a down-the-hall commute with a shower-optional working environment (kidding, Mom). Just today I picked up Microsoft's Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. Apparently, Redmond didn't get it right 7,999 times, but this one is darn good: mouse, remote control for PowerPoint slide shows, and a laser pointer, all in one little rodent. Look for a blog review in a couple of weeks or so. June 6, 3:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft to update Web conferencing service Microsoft plans to offer a few more details Tuesday on the upcoming version of its hosted Web conferencing offering, Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007. June 5, 4:20 a.m. PDT Microsoft gives Vista's Windows Mail the heave-ho Microsoft on Wednesday launched a beta of the new e-mail client designed to give the boot to Vista's four-month-old built-in Windows Mail. June 1, 8:58 a.m. PDT The Ten Commandments of blog and wiki etiquette Fueled in large part by the usercentric Web 2.0 trend, the Internet has evolved considerably as a communications platform, offering people innovative means for keeping in touch and sharing knowledge instantly with others across the globe. Blogs and wikis, which enable folks to broadcast their thoughts to the Web at large and to collaborate on documents, respectively, are the heavyweights of this movement. And though they are wonderful tools for bringing disparate people together and for accumulating knowledge, they can also quickly devolve into the online equivalent of grunting apes. And you don't want to be an unruly ape, do you? Of course not. May 28, 3:00 a.m. PDT Attensa unlocks knowledge with RSS Attensa has a straightforward mission: To get the right information to the right people at the right time. Although Attensa's goal may not be entirely original, Eric Hayes -- who co-founded the company in 2005 -- believes his company can get it right on all three counts. May 28, 3:00 a.m. PDT Telephony vendors line up behind Microsoft If Microsoft is muscling in on enterprise telephony vendors' turf, most of those companies right now are just trying to get along. May 22, 4:53 a.m. PDT Octopz grabs on to Web collaboration Nobody's sure exactly how it is that social networks like MySpace and Facebook are really going to make money for their corporate masters. But one thing people have figured out is that online social networks are great mediums for people to share ideas and collaborate. Now one startup, Octopz, is hoping to apply that logic to the topsy-turvy community of creative professionals. In the process, the company is making a splash in the ocean of Internet collaboration hopefuls. May 19, 3:05 a.m. PDT Funambol upgrades open-source BlackBerry rival Funambol is offering a new version of its open-source software for delivering push e-mail, address book, and calendar functions similar to those available on BlackBerry devices. May 15, 7:52 a.m. PDT Microsoft shows off new unified communications phones Microsoft is launching a qualification program for phones that are compatible with its unified communications products. May 14, 5:35 a.m. PDT Bungee Labs: App dev as a service One of the oft told cautionary tales of capitalism is the one about the California Gold Rush. You know -- how just a handful of the hundreds of thousands of hopefuls who streamed into the state actually discovered gold, but many thousands of others got rich supplying them with housing, materials and the like. Think "Levi-Strauss & Co." and you get the picture. May 13, 3:00 a.m. PDT Nexo offers quick and easy collaboration Some look at MySpace and see social networking at its most sprawling and unwieldy. Others drill deeper and see a new model for collaboration. When MySpace became a cultural phenom in 2005, Craig Jorasch, co-founder and CEO of Nexo, along with his partner Tom McGannon, vice president of operations, realized that businesses could benefit from some of MySpace's simple sharing techniques. May 10, 3:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft-Yahoo deal still worth doing When Sun Chairman and then-CEO Scott McNealy first heard about the HP/Compaq merger in 2001, he likened it to ‘two garbage trucks colliding with each other.’ Some analysts see the rumored Microsoft-Yahoo discussions in the same light: an act of desperation by two lumbering incumbents that are falling further behind Google each day. May 7, 9:50 a.m. PDT Comcast works on dashboard with Zimbra Comcast has turned to open-source software vendor Zimbra to help supply some of the technology behind the U.S. cable provider's upcoming free SmartZone communications dashboard for its broadband users. May 7, 4:42 a.m. PDT Microsoft delivers Hotmail upgrade Microsoft has closed the public testing period for Windows Live Hotmail and has begun a months-long process of migrating users to this major upgrade of its Hotmail Web mail service, the company will announce Monday. May 7, 4:21 a.m. PDT The return of stupid user tricks If you've been to the multi-mondo-mega-cineplex lately, you know that we're entering sequel season. Spider-Man 3 just opened, while Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End are just around the corner. Not wanting to be upstaged by Spidey, Captain Jack, or an oversized cartoon ogre, InfoWorld is launching its own sequel -- "More Stupider User Tricks: IT Horror Stories Redux" -- a follow-up to last year's popular "Stupid User Tricks" article. Despite the title, and its dubious syntax, our sequel isn't actually a horror flick (well, it may be for some of the participants). Think of it more as a tragicomedy, with elements of an instructional documentary thrown in for good measure. Senior Contributing Editor Oliver Rist, who also wrote last year's installment, has dug up 10 accounts of staffers, managers, bean counters, and others who meddled unwisely in IT's business, often to disastrous effect. Read it and weep … or laugh. And feel free to pass along any tales of ineptitude you may have encountered. After all, Spider-Man, Pirates, and Shrek are already on their third go-round, whereas we are only up to our first sequel. I suspect that "Even More Stupider-er User Tricks" is just waiting to be written. Leaving stupidity well behind us, I'd like to introduce a new video feature we've been developing behind the scenes. "The Week Ahead with Gina Smith" is a weekly planner that will give you a heads-up on tech events for the next seven days, from trade shows and product launches to court rulings and other goodies. I'm sure many of you will recognize Smith's name, whether from her days as founding editor in chief of E2 (which created the E3 gaming conference), her 10 years as a nationally syndicated radio tech-talk show host, or her gig at ABC, where she was an on-camera reporter covering technology for Good Morning America and World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. And that doesn't include her experience writing seven books or heading up The New Internet Company, a Larry Ellison network computer startup. We’re lucky to have Gina on board here at InfoWorld, and I encourage you to check out her work bright and early every Monday morning. Last week, we rolled out the Month of Enterprise Startups, day-by-day profiles of 31 freshly scrubbed companies vying to crack into the enterprise market. This week we continue the parade with seven more contenders. We also decided to circle back to last year's "15 Tech Startups to Watch" to see how they're doing. In "Startups Class of '06: Where are they now?", writer Galen Gruman learned that most of the lucky 15 are continuing to execute on plan: Some got purchased (Jotspot by Google, Akimbi by VMWare/EMC), and a few shook up their management and refocused their products. But the bottom line: All are still alive and kicking. I'm sure this year's crop of young 'uns are hoping for a similar result 12 months from now. May 7, 3:00 a.m. PDT Don't bail on e-mail Incident: A case for covering your rear end when it comes to server support, submitted once again by the highly popular “Name Withheld.” According to Mr. Withheld, “We normally have an admin rotation for server problems on the weekends. But this time the staff was smaller because we’d just lost two techs in a single week. Both left to go to other jobs. I could have called an outside outfit to cover us on the weekend, but I just didn’t make the time, and by Friday it was too late.” Seems Mr. Withheld had plans for the weekend, as did his last remaining tech staffer. So he figured, “What the hell, we haven’t had a problem in several months. It’ll be okay.” May 7, 3:00 a.m. PDT Windows Live Hotmail to debut Monday Microsoft will finally bring its completely revamped version of its popular online e-mail service out of beta and into full release on Monday. May 3, 12:00 p.m. PDT Spammers use new technique to evade filters Spammers have stepped up efforts to use encrypted attachments to evade filtering systems, service provider Email Systems has reported. May 3, 7:34 a.m. PDT Yahoo preps Web version of Messenger Yahoo introduced Wednesday evening a new browser-based version of its Messenger instant messaging service, so that users can access their accounts without needing the PC application on the machine they're using. May 3, 4:44 a.m. PDT Kill IM -- or at least control it Give them an expense account, and you know part of that money goes toward buying dinner for their significant others. Get them a company car, and there's no way that's not being driven for personal use at least some of the time. May 2, 3:00 a.m. PDT NewsGator revamps enterprise RSS tool As corporations increase adoption of content syndication tools, NewsGator Technologies has improved its enterprise RSS system with an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web interface, tagging capabilities, and support for BlackBerry devices and collaboration platforms from Microsoft and IBM. May 1, 12:46 p.m. PDT Innovation, startups hot again in the enterprise Five years ago enterprise startups hit the skids, stung by a perfect storm of commoditization, vendor consolidation, and the IT spending downturn. In the intervening years, however, the skies have cleared and, to paraphrase Ronald Regan, "It's morning again for enterprise startups." May 1, 7:00 a.m. PDT FaceTime offers Skype manager for business A new security product has been released that manages certain aspects of Skype's VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) application, which may assuage fears from IT managers that the Skype program may save on phone bills but pose a security risk. April 25, 8:43 a.m. PDT RIM readies software client for non-Blackberry devices New software from Research in Motion (RIM) will enable all BlackBerry wireless applications to run on smartphones from rival handset makers. April 23, 4:29 a.m. PDT Google buys video conferencing software Google Inc. has bought video conferencing software from Marratech AB, a Stockholm-based vendor, and hired the engineers involved with the software, a Google spokesman said Friday. April 20, 2:54 p.m. PDT Google buys Marratech videoconferencing company This story has been removed due to incorrect information. The corrected story can be found here. April 20, 5:06 a.m. PDT > Application development > Applications |
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