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IT trainer offers master's degree for hackers In an effort to produce the next generation of chief security officers and IT systems defense experts, an online training company is offering a new master's degree program in security science. Security vendors bring zombie fighters to life Data leakage prevention might currently be the hottest IT security submarket, but vendors are also tuning up their product offerings to help customers ward off the presence of botnet-infected zombie computers.  October 4, 3:41 p.m. PDT Bad things lurking on government sites The U.S. federal government took steps earlier this week to shut down Web sites in California in order to protect the public from hacked Web sites, but new incidents show that the problem is not going away any time soon. October 4, 3:08 p.m. PDT Infrastructure threats: Botnets show DoS who's boss Malware-infected botnet PCs have overtaken DoS attacks as the top security issue facing Internet service providers and other Web infrastructure hosting players, according to a new survey of the organizations. September 18, 3:54 a.m. PDT Best of open source in platforms and middleware Open source cut its teeth on operating systems, earned its street cred on Linux and Apache, and never looked back, continuing ever since to extend the kingdom to databases, middleware, and newfangled platforms such as hypervisors for server virtualization. Our Bossies in platforms and middleware recognize a few old faces, and some fairly new ones. 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the 2007 InfoWorld Bossies Not too long ago, open source meant starving developers; scant documentation; an ugly, outdated Web site; and software that lived in perpetual beta.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 Last call: Oliver's parting shot Back in the saddle again… September 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Malicious Web: Not just porn sites The New Zealand Honeynet Project, which produced Capture-HPC (mentioned here last week), also produced an excellent white paper about using Capture-HPC to identify malicious Web servers. On the group's Web site, you'll find that paper, the captured data, and the tools for anyone to inspect and replicate. August 31, 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 Survey: Microsoft's IIS may catch Apache in Web server market Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) continues to narrow the gap with the open source Apache Web server, with a survey firm suggesting that the longtime second banana could surpass Apache as early as next year. August 8, 8:35 a.m. PDT Apps security to dominate Black Hat Black Hat kicks off this week in Las Vegas with a big shift in focus from Internet viruses to application security. July 31, 3:00 a.m. PDT Mozilla: Security remains on front burner With the release of its latest Firefox 2.0.0.5 browser, open-source software maker Mozilla claims to have fixed a number of potentially serious vulnerabilities in its flagship product. July 18, 3:26 p.m. PDT IIS vs. Apache: Re-examining the statistics As a Microsoft employee, I try to avoid writing on areas that blatantly promote Microsoft. However, I think this question is generic enough to involve Microsoft in the discussion: Can IP addresses ever be used for statistical analysis of malicious Web sites? June 29, 3:00 a.m. PDT Cisco pushes IronPort smarts to firewalls Cisco Systems will begin offering IronPort's security filtering tools to its firewall customers after the networking giant's acquisition of the company closes on June 25. June 22, 10:05 a.m. PDT Microsoft drops Digital Image Suite Microsoft Corp. has discontinued a line of digital photo software, saying that the functions can now be found in Windows Vista and other Microsoft software. June 16, 11:59 a.m. PDT Microsoft unveils integrated security Microsoft shared details of its long-term security product strategy as part of its ongoing TechEd 2007 training conference on June 4, lifting the lid on plans to deliver an integrated suite of its software by mid-2009. June 4, 7:24 a.m. PDT socialDragon: Advertisers get a piece of Average Joe At first, socialDragon looks like any other online social network site that brings together ordinary consumers who get a thrill out of putting their personal lives on display for friends, family, and strangers. Users upload vacation pictures, videos, or their thoughts about hobbies, politics and daily life. It's what happens after that makes socialDragon unique. May 12, 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 oDesk: job search meets the online exchange Back in the day, dot-com marketplaces -- virtual bazaars where buyers and sellers could shop, haggle, and conduct business -- were all the rage. (Remember eCattle.com, the online exchange for livestock?) Most of those environments went down with the bursting of the Internet bubble, but that doesn't mean the idea of online exchanges wasn't a good one --just that it needed time to mature. May 4, 3:00 a.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 Large enterprises still serving up spam Well-known enterprise companies are still having their IT systems hijacked by spammers despite investing in many different types of technologies aimed at stopping the problem. April 17, 3:04 p.m. PDT P2P worms get their turn Massive networks of infected computers controlled by attackers worldwide will serve as a powerful engine for the new breed of so-called P2P worm that is currently echoing across cyberspace. April 16, 11:17 a.m. PDT Web 2.0 Expo draws startups, superstars If anyone knows about the potential of what has been dubbed "Web 2.0" it's the folks over at O'Reilly Media. Heck, company founder Tim O'Reilly himself coined the phrase back in 2003 to describe the emergence of a new generation of Web-based business models in the wake of the dot-com collapse. And if this week's first-ever Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco is any measure, the Web 2.0 phenomenon is on track to exceed expectations. April 16, 4:00 a.m. PDT ShmooCon hacker event gets under way The third annual ShmooCon convention kicked off in Washington, D.C., on March 23 and will run throughout the weekend with a series of lectures and presentations covering a wide range of enterprise security issues. March 23, 2:12 p.m. PST More IT war stories Off the Record, the real-world slice of life that graces the last page of InfoWorld, is one of our most popular columns. I know this from reader surveys and from all the e-mail I receive about it. As reader Roland Sickenberger put it recently, “It’s my favorite part of the magazine, kind of like a ‘Dilbert come to life’ thing.” March 5, 3:00 a.m. PST Women in technology: A call to action A quick scan of almost any IT department -- from the trenches to the corner office -- confirms it: Women who embrace technology as a lifelong career remain a rare breed. To be sure, opportunity for women in technology has advanced in the past few decades, as have education initiatives aimed at leveling the playing field, but for every woman rising to prominence or embarking on a profession in IT, there seems to be another opting out of her career in technology. January 29, 3:03 a.m. PST Back to school: Getting girls into IT Despite the success of various education initiatives in the past several years, there’s little doubt that the shortage of women in technology begins on the playground. As such, many industry leaders and experts believe the long-term solution to the gender imbalance in IT lies in women technologists going back to school -- way back, to high schools and even elementary schools to mentor young girls, who too often give up on math and science at an early age. January 29, 3:02 a.m. PST Activism provides competitive advantage for IT Encountering another woman working in technology was a rare event for me when I started out in IT many years ago. In the years since, women have made significant strides, sometimes against great odds, proving their mettle as both tech execs and engineers. January 29, 3:01 a.m. PST Gender crisis in IT You don’t need a degree in statistics to recognize that IT is a men’s club. Just walk the floor of any tech conference or, in all likelihood, your own office — XY chromosomes everywhere you look. January 29, 3:00 a.m. PST The smart business of diversity Carly Fiorina served as CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, the first woman to run a Fortune 20 company. After she was ousted, along with a $21 million exit package, Fiorina did what a lot of us would do if we had millions of dollars in the bank and some time on our hands: She wrote a book. In Tough Choices, published in October, Fiorina talks about rising to the top of a male-dominated culture. Fiorina spoke with InfoWorld correspondent Carmen Nobel for our upcoming feature on the issues women face in IT. January 22, 3:00 a.m. PST Brightcove lands $59 million in VC Internet TV startup Brightcove announced Wednesday that it has raised more than $59 million in venture capital that it plans to use to expand and solidify its lead as a provider of Internet TV content. January 17, 10:46 a.m. PST Technology of the Gods January is named after Janus, the two-faced Roman deity of beginnings and endings, who reportedly was able to look both forward and back. So for our Jan. 1 issue, we pay homage to the mythological immortal with our seventh annual Technology of the Year Awards, an analysis of where IT has been and where it’s going in 2007. January 1, 3:00 a.m. PST Update: Santa's Web site hacked With Christmas fast approaching, Santa Claus reached out for a little help from Stopbadware.org this week. December 22, 9:39 a.m. PST 2006 Year in Reviews: Platforms Novell’s Suse Linux 10 was the landmark operating system launch of the year, giving us a bigger and badder Linux server and a startlingly smooth Linux desktop. We also got good looks at Microsoft Vista and Windows Longhorn betas, and at BEA’s venerable WebLogic 9.1. December 18, 3:00 a.m. PST Review of reviews It’s coming up on closing time for 2006. All around us, everyone is going into holiday mode. Not to be curmudgeonly contrarians, InfoWorld will be following suit, taking a one-week break before returning on Jan. 1 with our first print issue of the year. (It’s really only a semi-hiatus; InfoWorld.com will continue to perk over the holidays with a slightly reduced slate of stories.) December 18, 3:00 a.m. PST Sun needs to find some sizzle Last week I attended an interesting dinnertime event at Silicon Valley's Churchill Club. For the sake of full disclosure, I’m on the club’s board of directors. The main attraction was Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, being ably interviewed by New York Times journalist John Markoff. November 10, 3:00 a.m. PST Redefining innovation Innovative ideas are a dime a dozen, according to Jim Andrew, senior partner at big-time consultancy BCG. In fact, at most companies, coming up with great concepts for a product, service, or process isn’t even an issue. But turning those ideas into money … ah, there’s the rub. October 30, 3:00 a.m. PST Update: Google's official blog hacked A hacker broke into Google Inc.'s main official blog and posted a false message on Saturday, saying that the company had decided to cancel a joint project with eBay Inc. October 10, 9:15 a.m. PDT Oracle to support Itanium platform Oracle will soon begin certification of its database software to run on Itanium 2 computing processor platforms. September 26, 4:05 a.m. PDT BEA's 360 vision still fuzzy BEA jumped ahead of the pack last week, announcing the industry’s first native SOA platform, SOA 360. But the company left enough unanswered questions about the new platform to prompt one analyst to say there’s still much explaining to do. September 25, 3:00 a.m. PDT Technology with no past To the extent that it’s possible, I’m declaring today the beginning of recorded history in information technology. On this day, the phrase “information technology,” abbreviated IT, came into being as shorthand for electronic devices that aid humans in storage and sharing of, analysis of, protection of, and access to significant amounts of digitized content. Content? That’s anything you’re capable of holding in your brain for even a nanosecond. IT is not a department or a group of people. It’s a smart phone. It’s a room full of SPARC servers. A telephone headset? A keyboard? I don’t know. They’re new terms. We’ll work that out as we go. I do know that if we didn’t have such things, information technology would be inaccessible. September 20, 3:00 a.m. PDT BMC updates batch management In a real-time world, batch processing has all the sex appeal of an old gray filing cabinet, but as Gur Steif, a product marketing vice president for BMC, said, "Almost every Web transaction we execute online actually ends up being processed in batches." So when you buy your Motorola Q phone with one click, the processes that order kicks off will crank some time later with a barrel full of others. August 28, 3:00 a.m. PDT IT laughs at itself A British TV show has taken the best and worst of IT administrator stereotypes and packed them into a clever, side-splitting comedy. August 9, 4:16 p.m. PDT Yahoo worm demonstrates AJAX threat There are few of us in life who really want to dig into the nitty gritty details of how things work -- to visit the proverbial “sausage factory” that makes our favorite food, assembles our cars, or puts cheap gadgets on the shelves at Best Buy and Target. June 19, 3:00 a.m. PDT InfoWorld CTO 25 The top technology slot in the enterprise has changed. Once, forward-looking CTOs and CIOs scanned the horizon for new technologies that would improve the lot of IT. Today, as many of this year’s top 25 CTOs can tell you, technology leaders must also focus on understanding the business goals of the enterprise -- and then craft technology strategies to meet those objectives. June 5, 3:00 a.m. PDT Don't upgrade Web software, just keep improving it When I logged in to my bank’s online system to pay some bills last night, I was greeted with the following message: “Bill payment system upgrade completed.” May 31, 3:00 a.m. PDT Tech startups to watch Startups are back! or at least, startup fever is back. Scan the latest numbers from PricewaterhouseCoopers and you won’t find any hockey sticks -- the level of investment in enterprise-related technology startups has actually remained fairly flat, hovering between $1.5 and $2.3 billion per quarter from 2003 through 2005. May 15, 3:00 a.m. PDT Christian Science Monitor seeks closer technology relationships The Christian Science Monitor for the past nine years has been saddled with an inflexible content management system that makes it difficult to modify the newspaper’s Web site or deliver content to new devices, such as smartphones. That tool is emblematic of what Curt Edge sees as a larger issue at the First Church of Christ, Scientist, which publishes the Monitor in newspaper and online editions. April 3, 3:00 a.m. PDT Orbitz gets up and running fast with open source When Orbitz launched its online travel site in June 2001, it had two well-entrenched competitors: Travelocity and Expedia. Orbitz's goal was to offer something better, quickly. April 3, 3:00 a.m. PDT Frustration drove Owens Forest Products to open source The IT group at Owens Forest Products went the traditional route of many smaller companies: a custom ERP system using tools such as Microsoft SQL Server, ASP.Net, and Business Objects’ Crystal Reports. April 3, 3:00 a.m. PDT eFashion Solutions seeks agility, not do-it-yourself To deliver branded e-commerce sites for customers such as JLO by Jennifer Lopez, Members Only, and OP, eFashion Solutions wanted a platform it could easily customize and enhance, without being chained to custom, homegrown code. Open source was the answer, says Mitch Pirtle, the company’s director of open source initiatives. April 3, 3:00 a.m. PDT ICANN's 3-year plan under scrutiny at meeting The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is seeking to refine its master plan for the next three years at its international meeting in Wellington, New Zealand, ICANN Chief Executive Officer and President Paul Twomey said Monday. March 27, 2:01 p.m. PST Court likely to rule Google must give up data Google will likely have to turn over search-engine usage records to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) following a hearing Tuesday in which the judge indicated he will probably order the company to comply with a government subpoena, according to published reports. March 14, 3:01 p.m. PST Tools for enterprise mashups It was inevitable that someone would coin the phrase “enterprise mashup,” and SOA analyst Phil Wainewright seems to have gotten there first. A mashup, for those not at the white-hot center of Silicon Valley’s latest craze, is a composite Web application. March 8, 3:00 a.m. PST Getting smart about languages and libraries The ever-quotable Sean McGrath penned another of his trademark aphorisms this week: “The library IS the language.” By “library” he means the great edifices of reusable code that are, in their modern form, delivered as the core Java and .Net class libraries. Mastering them is a challenge that can take years, McGrath wrote. Mastering programming languages, he suggested, is comparatively trivial. February 22, 3:00 a.m. PST IBM opens lab in India for advanced IT deployments IBM has opened a new lab in Bangalore, India, where it will work with customers on advanced IT deployments that involve high levels of scale and performance, the company announced Thursday. February 16, 5:56 a.m. PST The browser as orchestrator It’s been a busy week for my LibraryLookup project, which first launched in December 2002. In its original and still most widely deployed incarnation, LibraryLookup is a JavaScript bookmarklet that connects an Amazon book page to the corresponding record in a library catalog. The success of this technique got me thinking about themes I’ve pursued ever since: the dynamics of user-driven innovation, the protean flexibility of RESTful (Representational State Transfer) Web applications, and the dynamics of lightweight service orchestration. February 8, 3:00 a.m. PST Communications panel studies lessons of Katrina An independent panel to study the effects of Hurricane Katrina on communications networks, convened by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), met for the first time Monday. January 30, 2:10 p.m. PST Silicon Valley group pushes for local wireless network The region that spawned the microprocessor and helped wire the world now wants to unwire itself with the help of local chip giant Intel Corp. January 30, 12:01 p.m. PST State CIOs need more IT security support from DHS The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) must improve its support for U.S. state and local governments so they can better protect their IT infrastructures from attackers, two organizations of top IT officials said Wednesday. January 25, 2:57 p.m. PST SQL Server could make 'better together' ring true From the viewpoint of skeptics, SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft’s whole “better together” campaign are clever levers for strong-armed upgrades and whole-catalog purchases. It’s clear that Microsoft is targeting Unix competitors with an enterprise portfolio focused on integration and out-of-the-box functionality. Better together. Sounds a lot like “lock yourself in, you’ll love it.” January 11, 3:00 a.m. PST 2006 Technology of the Year Awards: The winners' list See correction at end of article January 2, 3:00 a.m. PST ECMAScript: The Switzerland of development environments? There is a perpetual debate in programming circles about the pros and cons of static vs. dynamic typing. I've always favored dynamically typed languages, such as Lisp, Perl, and Python, because my own coding efforts tend to focus on application prototyping, content wrangling, data analysis, and system automation. December 28, 3:00 a.m. PST Tech reviews for the holidays Even IT takes a holiday now and then. Same goes for the InfoWorld staff, which chills out by taking a one-week break following the publication of this, our 51st and final issue of the year. December 19, 3:00 a.m. PST Sun updates portal server for 'Web 2.0' Sun Microsystems announced on Thursday a new version of Java System Portal Server that will allow developers to offer collaborative and identity-based content through Web-based applications. The portal can be downloaded for free and used with Java Enterprise System, Solaris Enterprise System and Java Application Platform Suite. December 16, 4:27 a.m. PST Firefox 1.5 browser debuts Last week, the Mozilla Corporation unveiled the first major update to its popular Firefox Web browser. Version 1.5 offers improved support for Web standards, including JavaScript 1.6 compatibility and the ability to render SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) images. The new version also brings speed and UI enhancements, including a redesigned Options panel; enhanced pop-up blocking and RSS feed integration; the ability to change the ordering of browser tabs via drag and drop; and accessibility features for the sight- and mobility-impaired. December 5, 3:00 a.m. PST CA seeks revival at user show At its user conference this week in Las Vegas, Computer Associates will have its work cut out as a new management team attempts to regain the trust of CA’s customers in the wake of an accounting scandal and a legacy of poor customer support. November 14, 3:00 a.m. PST AJAX at a glance AJAX (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) isn't a new technology. Rather, it's a method of using several existing technologies -- including CSS, JavaScript, XHTML, XML, and XSLT -- to develop Web applications that look and act like desktop software. Jesse James Garrett, director of user experience strategy and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, coined the term in a paper he published on the Adaptive Path Web site in February. October 17, 3:00 a.m. PDT IT's seven dirty words Remember the George Carlin routine “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”? (No, I’m not going to print them here; if you’re really curious, Google ’em.) I got to thinking the other day that IT has its own set of dirty words. Try saying any one of these in polite IT company, and someone will hand you a bar of soap to wash your mouth out. My filthy seven: August 15, 5:00 a.m. PDT That Aha! moment You gotta love Greg Raleigh’s attitude. The man who invented the technology behind the forthcoming 802.11n Wi-Fi standard insists that solving problems is easy. The real challenge, he says, is “deciding what problems are interesting to solve.” August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT Sonic’s ESB takes new approach to fail-over If the SOA movement had an official flag, on that flag would be a diagram of an ESB (enterprise service bus) — an open and distributed integration platform that provides interfaces to a wide variety of systems and applications and ensures reliable messaging among them. And if you dotted the flag with the logos of leading SOA vendors, Sonic Software’s would surely have to stand out from the rest. August 1, 5:00 a.m. PDT Starwood nears end of SOA revamp Every major enterprise applications vendor has hopped on the SOA (services-oriented architecture) bandwagon and extolled the virtues of using standards-compliant software to expose business processes as Web services, reducing the pain of integrating heterogeneous systems. But for customers, implementing an SOA environment in their own data centers can be a complex and lengthy process. One chief technology officer nearing the end of a five-year SOA project says the results, though a long time coming, are worth it. July 20, 10:40 a.m. PDT Netli accelerates Web services Netli on Monday rolled out a new service designed to speed the delivery of Web-services traffic over the Internet. July 18, 2:34 p.m. PDT New judge named in Microsoft-EU case Microsoft's appeal against the European Union's antitrust ruling will be judged by Bo Vesterdorf, the president of the Court of First Instance (CFI), the court said Friday. Vesterdorf was the judge who in December 2004 threw out Microsoft's attempt to temporarily halt measures imposed by the European Commission, the E.U.'s antitrust watchdog, in April last year. July 11, 2:54 a.m. PDT Dude, you're getting a Mac! One reason that Dell didn't make my short list of companies with vision is its lousy business decision to remain the lone first-tier player not to add AMD's processors to its server lineup. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems, among others, like Dell's decision fine. They know Dell's missing out on AMD's secret sauce. AMD's CPU line is so very manufacturer-friendly -- meaning that it's also profit-friendly, as system vendors evolve from model to model and reach into new markets, especially the higher-density value server market that AMD is certain to own. June 29, 5:00 a.m. PDT Java, 10 years later Java’s first decade has proven it to be remarkably adaptable. Originally conceived as an embedded language for consumer devices, Java emerged from Sun Microsystems in 1995 as the programming language for Web browsers. It then morphed into the leading tool for business computing and serious application development -- in many ways the successor to both Cobol and C++. June 27, 5:00 a.m. PDT ActiveGrid blazes path for enterprise LAMP Back in 1998 I built a mission-critical application using the technology suite now called LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and Perl/PHP/Python). It was a killer combination: blazing performance, rock-solid reliability, rapid development. Perl's dynamism was an essential ingredient, but looking back, I see it was also a crutch. If I had needed to redeploy to a cluster, swap in a different authentication scheme, or alter the flow of the application, I'd have been able to do those things quickly, but it would have been harder for somebody else to. June 22, 5:00 a.m. PDT Microsoft patches critical bugs in IE, Windows Microsoft released 10 security patches, including three deemed "critical," for bugs in a variety of the company's products. Released Tuesday as part of the company's monthly updates, the critical patches repair flaws in Windows and Internet Explorer that could allow attackers to take complete control of a computer, Microsoft said. June 14, 2:51 p.m. PDT Firefox keeps chipping away at IE's share The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox managed to slightly increase its usage share in the Web browser market in May, as it continues to compete against the market's Goliath: Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). June 10, 1:54 p.m. PDT SOA styles Infoworld’s first SOA Executive Forum rolled out in San Jose, Calif. two weeks ago. This week we held the second installment in New York. At both events it was my privilege to engage some of the industry’s brightest minds in a series of conversations about SOA, and I’d like to thank everyone who participated. May 25, 5:00 a.m. PDT AJAX breathes new life into Web apps One year ago, Thomas Lackner didn’t ask much of JavaScript. When he sketched out the architecture to a Web application, he knew he could count on the browser language for “set-a-cookie hacks” and for loading images, but he turned to the server side for the heavy lifting. But when Google began launching highly interactive Web sites such as Gmail and Google Suggest, the scales dropped from Lackner’s eyes and he saw the opportunity. May 23, 5:00 a.m. PDT Getting HTTP right Last month, when I discussed the proper use of the HTTP verbs POST and GET, the benefits and hazards seemed abstract. Recently, though, two compellingly concrete examples emerged. The first involved a collision between Google’s new Web Accelerator and an application called Backpack, which is built with Ruby on Rails, a Web application framework for the Ruby programming language. This was an unfortunate but timely demonstration of what can go wrong when HTTP-based software fails to distinguish between requests that alter resources and requests that do not. May 18, 5:00 a.m. PDT Akamai service speeds apps Akamai Technologies this week will roll out a new managed service designed to bump up the performance and scalability of Web applications. May 2, 5:00 a.m. PDT Adobe aims at Microsoft Adobe Systems’ agreement last week to acquire Macromedia for approximately $3.4 billion will give the company a formidable collection of Web publishing and document management software -- and will place it squarely in the path of tools rival Microsoft. April 25, 5:00 a.m. PDT End HTTP abuse You'd think that a language with a mere handful of verbs, only two of which are widely spoken, would be easy to learn. Not so in the case of the HTTP, though. After more than a decade, we're still sorting out how and why to use its most common verbs: GET and POST. April 20, 5:00 a.m. PDT A field guide to software as a service Everywhere you turn, another company pops up offering SaaS (software as a service). Inspired by the success of Salesforce.com, SaaS vendors are hoping customers large and small will get the message: Browser-based, pay-as-you-go applications mean fewer servers for your IT department to maintain and less capital to shake loose from the CFO for software licenses and hardware. April 18, 5:00 a.m. PDT The LAMP alternative to J2EE or .Net When you think of enterprise web applications, it’s only natural to think of J2EE and .Net. After all, these are the technologies most developers choose when implementing mission-critical apps. But as Friendster found out, the open source LAMP platform is a mature alternative that has a lot to offer, particularly for projects on a tight budget. April 4, 6:00 a.m. PDT Friendster scales the network with open source Who says open source can’t measure up to commercial software for mission-critical applications? Far from being a mere quick fix or low-cost alternative, open source software is helping real-world companies solve their most pressing IT problems. April 4, 6:00 a.m. PDT IBM props up mainframe with WebSphere Hoping to boost development around its venerable mainframe platform, IBM last week launched Version 6 of its WebSphere Application Server. For the first time, the server will be built on the same code base as editions of WebSphere for distributed platforms. April 4, 6:00 a.m. PDT Update 2: HP taps NCR's Hurd as new CEO After reviving NCR, Mark Hurd now has another reclamation project on his hands. March 29, 9:57 a.m. PST The consultant's view Steve Manzuik is an independent IT security consultant. March 28, 6:00 a.m. PST The CTO's perspective Kevin Bernstein is CTO of platinum capital group. March 28, 6:00 a.m. PST Patrick Grady's calculated debut How did Patrick Grady manage to build his service when others have failed? How did he draw in big-name customers? In addition to his forceful personality, 10 years in high-tech venture capital gave him extraordinary access. In the early development phase, for example, senior technologists from Ariba, BEA, BellSouth, CommerceOne, Genesys Labs, Palm, and Sun got together once a week to advise him on architecture. That lends some credibility to Grady’s claim that his platform will become “the global de facto standard for how you describe and discover and deliver and transact for services.” February 28, 6:00 a.m. PST SiteDigger unearths Web information leaks Without search engines, the Web wouldn’t be the premier information resource and significant economic force it is today. But there’s a dark side: Black hats easily exploit Google, MSN, Yahoo, and others to find confidential information that organizations might find embarrassing if it were widely circulated. Moreover, these same hacking techniques can expose security holes in organizations’ information networks, such as log-ins to terminal services, lists of user names and passwords, and other sensitive data. February 11, 3:00 p.m. PST IT tackles phishing This article has been modified from its original version. Certain quoted material has been removed because its veracity could not be confirmed. January 21, 3:00 p.m. PST Phishing ploys reflect savvy technical skills This article has been modified from its original version. Certain quoted material has been removed because its veracity could not be confirmed. January 21, 3:00 p.m. PST New IE hole could perfect phishing scams A newly reported security problem in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser allows attackers to create a fake Web site that looks exactly like a genuine site. December 17, 4:58 p.m. PST Give the gift of geekiness This is it. The much awaited Annual Holiday Gift Guide for the Windows IT administrator in your life. OK, so maybe not so much awaited as tolerated every 12 months, but why quibble about semantics? December 17, 3:00 p.m. PST > Platforms > Security > Web services |
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