eWeek articles from January 2008

eWeek archives from January 2008

Making the Most of Marketing.
January 2, 2008... PODCASTembedSWF(); Making the Most of Marketing In this Changing Channels: How VARs and solution providers can get more from their marketing dollar is the subject of this Changing Channels podcast, with Circa 65 President and Chief...

Qualcomm Barred from Using Broadcom 3G Patents.
January 2, 2008... LOS ANGELES (Reuters)--A federal judge in California ruled on Monday that wireless chip maker Qualcomm Inc must immediately stop selling third-generation, or 3G, WCDMA cellular chips that infringe on the Broadcom Corp patents. U.S....

Qualcomm Readies New Chip Sets.(Brief article)
January 2, 2008... NEW YORK (Reuters)--Wireless chip maker Qualcomm Inc. said on Wednesday new chipsets, designed to comply with a court's patent infringement ruling, were now available and expected to be in handsets before the end of March. Qualcomm also...

More Bad Drivers on the Information Superhighway.
January 2, 2008... It's as true of any operating system as it is of Windows, but Windows gets a harder time for it: Bad device drivers make for a bad computing experience. Device drivers are effectively system software. Very often it's hard to tell the...

IBM Acquires Israeli Storage Vendor XIV.(International Business Machines Corp.)(Brief article)
January 2, 2008... TEL AVIV--IBM said on Jan. 2 it had acquired XIV, a privately held storage technology company based in Tel Aviv. Financial terms were not disclosed. "This is about IBM further strengthening its infrastructure portfolio," Daniel Powers,...

Apple, Microsoft to Tangle over Music Extras.(Apple Inc.'s iTunes and Microsoft Corp.'s Zune)
January 2, 2008... DENVER (Billboard)--There is a reason people still buy CDs more than they do digital albums. Actually there are several, but viruses that come along with music via peer-to-peer sites (P2P) and a concern over digital rights management (DRM)...

Study: Cell Phone Users Tie Up Traffic.
January 2, 2008... CHICAGO (Reuters)--If you're late for work, a driver using a cell phone may be to blame. U.S. researchers said on Wednesday that people who use cell phones while behind the wheel impede the flow of traffic, clog highways and extend commute...

How to Spend (and Not Bust) Your 2008 IT Budget.(information technology budgeting)
January 2, 2008... With IT budgets remaining essentially flat for 2008 and uncertain economic times ahead, it's more important than ever to make sure you don't overspend on IT. The situation is so uncertain, in fact, that Gartner recommends preparing two IT...

Businesses Feed on Social-Networking Input to Grow.
January 2, 2008... The owner of an online lingerie business posts a request on a social networking site to find an ethical, effective search engine optimization company. Within 24 hours, she receives nearly two dozen suggestions from other small business owners....

IBM Acquires XIV Plus a Key Storage Brain.(International Business Machines Corp. acquires XIV)
January 2, 2008... Not only did IBM land an up-and-coming storage technology company with its acquisition of Israel-based XIV on Jan. 2, but it also acquired one of the leading storage system architects in the world. Big Blue acquired the privately held...

Japan Floats Extensive Web Regulations.
January 2, 2008... The Japanese government is considering new Internet and mobile phone regulations in 2008, including banning downloads of copyrighted files for personal use and requiring mobile operators to filter Web content for users under the age of 18. ...

Debian 4.0 Gets Security Update.(Brief article)
January 2, 2008... No operating system, no not even Linux, is ever completely secure. So it is that the Debian Project released on Dec. 27 its second update to Debian 4.0, Etch, with an eye to improved security. While not a new release as such, Debian's core...

Judge Rules Qualcomm Chips Infringed on Broadcom Patents.(Brief article)
January 2, 2008... NEW YORK (Reuters)--Sprint Nextel Corp said on Wednesday it does not expect any delay to its plan to launch QChat, a walkie-talkie cell phone service, despite a court ruling against QChat developer Qualcomm Inc. A federal judge in...

SanDisk Does Storage on a Stick and in the Cloud at Once.(Brief article)
January 2, 2008... LOS ANGELES (Reuters)--SanDisk Corp introduced a new flash storage drive on Wednesday that also automatically backs up data to the Internet. When consumers store documents, photos and music onto SanDisk's new Cruzer Titanium Plus USB flash...

Microsoft Looking at Emacs for .Net.
January 2, 2008... Microsoft is working on a project that would essentially bring the functionality of the Emacs text editor to .Net. Microsoft software architect Don Box on Dec. 29 posted a blog entry stating that his colleague, Douglas Purdy, was hiring...

Code Testing Tools Could Be Acquisition Targets in '08.
January 2, 2008... If application security has to be baked into the development process, source code analysis tools are the technological equivalent of oven mitts--making their providers natural targets for acquisition, some analysts predicted. "There's a...

7 Steps to a Highly Effective Mobile Strategy.
January 2, 2008... We believe that companies must focus on building out a mobile strategy that addresses the peculiarities inherent in mobile computing. The strategy leverages a number of uses across a variety of lines of businesses within the company so as to...

Study: Collaboration Overload Costs U.S. $588B a Year.(Basex)
January 2, 2008... As much as e-mail, instant messages, blogs and their brethren technologies have helped knowledge workers better collaborate, interruptions and duplications derived from these forms of digital communication and content are overwhelming workers...

xTuple Network Aims to Ease Open-Source ERP Concerns.(enterprise resource planning)
January 2, 2008... Open-source ERP software developer xTuple on Nov. 3 will launch a new three-tiered network service, the xTuple Network. Dubbed XTN for short, the network is essentially a suite of managed services designed to help users better maintain and...

Is Tech Immune to Manufacturing Decline?
January 2, 2008... U.S. manufacturing shrank by the largest margin in almost five years, despite news that the overall economy still grew in December, which marked the 74th straight month of expansion. The Institute for Supply Management's factory index,...

R.I.P. Netscape.(Netscape Communications Corp.)(routing information protocol)
January 2, 2008... Netscape, the Web browser that opened up not only the Web, but the entire Internet to mass use, is dead. It died after a long decline caused by its murderer, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. It was only 15 years ago that only a handful of...

Netflix, LG to Offer Movie Set-Top Box.(LG Electronics Inc.)
January 3, 2008... LOS ANGELES (Reuters)--DVD rental company Netflix Inc on Wednesday said it was developing a set-top box with LG Electronics Inc to let subscribers watch movies streamed directly from the Web to their TVs. Netflix, with about 7 million...

How to Prepare for Next Year's Security Threats.
January 3, 2008... With pundits making predictions for the state of cyber-crime and malicious software in 2008, one might be tempted to say, "OK, but what should I do with this information?" In some cases, this means an increase in specific types of attacks....

Three Smart Ways for the Network to Save Power.
January 3, 2008... A valuable part of the green movement is to create momentum for the cause; where simple actions and smart methods of running electrically connected devices, repeated many times over, add up and make a great difference. This extends into a...

Microsoft Takes Heat for Office 2003 SP3 File Format Blocking.
January 3, 2008... Microsoft is facing criticism from a competitor as some customers for its decision to block some older file formats with Office 2003 Service Pack 3, which it released last September. The only non-Microsoft file format that was blocked by...

NeoOffice: The Open-Source Office Suite Alternative for Macs.(Product/service evaluation)
January 3, 2008... I'm sure that the new Microsoft Office for the Mac, which will be coming out in January, will be just dandy. Well, actually, given Microsoft's track record and that Leopard has only been out for a few months, I'm anything but sure that...

High-end Caterer Orders Out for IT.(MTV Networks Inc.)(information technology)
January 3, 2008... When executives at MTV wanted to throw a bash to celebrate the MTV Music Awards, they knew just where to turn. Ditto for American Express, Coca-Cola, and Jaguar. When these groups want to throw a party, they turn to high-end caterer Abigail...

A More Open Microsoft.(Protocol Freedom Information Foundation)(Brief article)
January 3, 2008... You might have missed the news just before the holidays that Microsoft has become slightly more open with respect to its networking protocols. Late last year, they announced a way for third parties to license their core file sharing protocols...

Motorola Introduces Mobile Video Player.(Brief article)
January 3, 2008... NEW YORK (Reuters)--Motorola Inc, the world's third biggest cell phone maker, on Thursday introduced a mobile media player that shows live television, on-demand video clips and programming saved on digital video recorders. Mobile TV, which...

'Stock' Beats 'Sex' on Google China.(Brief article)
January 3, 2008... BEIJING (Reuters)--The names of three banks and the word "stocks" beat "sex" to become four of the most Googled words in China last year, according to a Google China list seen on Thursday. China Merchants Bank, Industrial and Commercial...

Enterprise Monitor Eases Management of MySQL Installations.
January 3, 2008... With the latest release of MySQL Enterprise Monitor, database administrators get advanced replication and database monitoring, as well as easier installation, to help manage both commercial and no-cost MySQL open-source database installations....

Microsoft: Critical Vista Patch Coming.(Brief article)
January 3, 2008... Microsoft's first Patch Tuesday for 2008 will be unusually quiet. The Redmond, Wash. software maker plans to ship just two security bulletins on Jan. 8 to patch code execution vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system. One of...

Virtual PCs Add New Layer of Security.(personal computers)
January 3, 2008... BOSTON (Reuters)--Worried about people accessing your private information whenever you use a public computer? There is a way to protect yourself: Devices as small as a keychain allow you to use any computer without leaving a trail of evidence....

IBM Sued for Cancer Cluster.(International Business Machines Corp.)
January 3, 2008... The birthplace of Big Blue is now the focal point of a massive lawsuit contending IBM released over decades toxic and hazardous contaminants into the environment of New York's Village of Endicott and the town of Union. IBM opened its first...

SanDisk Signs License Deal with PNY.(PNY Technologies)(Brief article)
January 3, 2008... SanDisk Corp said it signed a patent cross-license agreement with PNY Technologies to settle patent cases it filed against PNY regarding flash memory products. Under the terms of the cross-license, specific terms of which were not...

Ask.com for Directions, Do the Cha-Cha When Mobile.(IAC Search & Media)(ChaCha Search Inc.)
January 3, 2008... Ask.com and ChaCha Search on Jan. 3 introduced free search services to make it easier for users to find what they're looking for from their mobile devices. Ask.com has added a voice activation utility called Click to Speak to its Ask.com...

HP Gives AMD's Phenom a Boost.(Advanced Micro Devices Inc.)(Hewlett-Packard Co.)
January 3, 2008... After a bruising month where it had to admit a series of missteps with its quad-core microprocessor strategy, Advanced Micro Devices got a boost Jan. 3 from Hewlett-Packard. On Thursday, HP announced that it would begin selling a consumer...

Rocket gOS 2.0, the Latest Ubuntu-Google Marriage, Days Away.(Good OS)(Brief article)
January 3, 2008... That was fast. Only two months ago, Good OS, a startup Linux distributor, exploded on the scene with gOS 1.0, an Ubuntu-based desktop Linux with dedicated links to Google applications. Now, the company has announced that it will release the...

Interoperability Still Stumbling Block for Open Source in 2008.
January 3, 2008... Enterprise customers are using open-source software more and more, but issues of interoperability are still a stumbling block to widespread adoption, say customers and open-source software vendors. Enterprise customers need assurance that...

SAP-Business Objects Deal Threatens IBM Relationship.(International Business Machines Corp.)
January 3, 2008... With SAP's acquisition of Business Objects set to close this quarter, the deal leaves a rarely-asked question regarding Business Objects' long-standing relationship with IBM: What impact will the SAP buyout have on Business Objects'...

R&D Tax Credit Expires.(United States. Congress)(research and development)
January 3, 2008... Congress has allowed the research and development tax credit to expire, even though it appeared initially that lawmakers were set to renew it before recessing for the holidays. "It was a huge disappointment and that's a fairly vast...

How to Integrate People, Processes and Technology.(Symantec Corp.)
January 3, 2008... As organizations continually increase their dependence on IT systems to conduct business, mitigating IT risk has become a top priority. But effectively managing IT risk is no longer a matter of only addressing technology--it's now about...

The 2008 Security Checklist.(Brief article)
January 4, 2008... PODCASTembedSWF(); The 2008 Security Checklist In this Channel Chat: David O'Berry, IT Manager with the State of South Carolina government, talks about his hot buttons for 2008, where he thinks endpoint security is headed, and how VARs...

Intel Out of One Laptop Per Child Scheme.(Brief article)
January 4, 2008... NEW YORK (Reuters)--Intel Corp said on Thursday it will drop out of the One Laptop Per Child project and resign from the board after the project's board demanded the chipmaker stop supporting other efforts in emerging markets. One Laptop...

Ohio Orders Paper Ballot Alternative.
January 4, 2008... Ohio's secretary of state is ordering that paper ballots must be made available to voters using touch-screen voting machines in 57 of the state's 88 counties. The Jan. 3 decision came after a Dec. 12 report concluded the touch-screen machines...

VARs Still Favor Specialized Events over CES.(Consumer Electronics Show)
January 4, 2008... Home theaters and the newest audio technology may headline the Consumer Electronics Show, now a fixture in Las Vegas in early January every year, but the event also attracts a handful of IT VARs and solution providers looking to meet with their...

After SCO Dies.(The SCO Group Inc.)(Brief article)
January 4, 2008... It's going to happen. Sometime in 2008, SCO will finally stop thrashing on the floor and die. Will it be Novell draining it dry of its last financial resources in the U.S. District Court in Utah? Or, will it be the bankruptcy court in Delaware...

Tech-Savvy Gen Xers Boost Obama Win.
January 4, 2008... It turns out the Internet vote was right, at least about the Democrats campaigning in the Iowa caucuses. Since the presidential campaigns lit their networks a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama quickly sparked as one of the hottest political...

Who Owns Your Social Data? You Do, Sort of.
January 4, 2008... When Facebook kicked blogger Robert Scoble off of Facebook Jan. 3, it revived the great debate over data portability. Who owns the data on a social network? You or the site? Scoble himself during a videocast admitted he broke Facebook's...

VAT in Europe: 7 Steps to Success.(Value added tax)
January 4, 2008... As we help American high-tech companies deal with value-added tax problems in the U.K. and continental Europe, the hit movie "Groundhog Day" often comes to mind. Just as Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, found himself repeating the...

Is Plaxo on the Block?(Plaxo Inc. chooses Revolution Partners L.L.C.)
January 4, 2008... SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)--Plaxo, a site that helps users keep their friends' contact information up to date, is considering a sale of the company for as much as $200 million, media reports said on Thursday. Plaxo is seeking as much as $100...

Salesforce.com Ramping New Year with Focus on Force.com.
January 4, 2008... Salesforce.com is ramping up the New Year with a focus on its platform play, Force.com. The company announced Jan. 3 it hired a new executive, Polly Sumner, to lead the Force.com team (the last one left after 4 months on the job) and a big...

OLPC: Intel Contributed Little to the Project.(One Laptop Per Child)
January 4, 2008... The day after Intel announced that it would leave the One Laptop Per Child board, the nonprofit organization shot back that the chip giant had contributed little to help the project during its six months with the group. In a statement Jan....

IBM Reorganizes Systems Group for SMB Push.(International Business Machines Corp.)(small and midsize business)
January 4, 2008... IBM is reorganizing its hardware group to focus more on specific market segments, particularly the small and midsize business market. In an internal memo sent to employees in the company's Systems and Technology Group on Jan. 3, William...

Spam on the Run: Notorious Spammer on the Lam.
January 4, 2008... Infamous spam king Alan M. Ralsky is on the run following the Jan. 3 indictment of Ralsky and 10 others for operating a sophisticated spam scam involving pump-and-dump Chinese stocks. The 41-count indictment, unsealed in a Detroit federal...

Google Must Make or Break GAPE in 2008.(Google Apps Premier Edition)
January 4, 2008... This may be the year Google makes or breaks GAPE, the enterprise version of Google Apps that lets businesses license hosted e-mail, instant documents, spreadsheets and other applications for $50 per user per year. The numbers sound great...

Cisco Charts New Course.(dialogue with Paula Musich of Cisco Systems Inc.)(Interview)
January 4, 2008... As Cisco Systems continues to push further into the data center, CEO John Chambers is looking to make Cisco a strategic partner to large IT customers there. At Cisco's annual C-Scape industry analyst conference in December, Chambers went so far...

Microsoft Backs Down over Office 2003 SP3 File Blocking.
January 4, 2008... Microsoft will provide a new and easy way for customers to unblock the files that were shut off by default when they installed Office 2003 Service Pack 3. The software maker also confirmed to eWEEK Jan. 4 that all the same files are...

How to Apply Six Sigma Quality Practices to Your Business.
January 4, 2008... Part I: Six Sigma for IT Service Management--What you need to know: Delivering and supporting IT services is not enough to make IT a driver of business value. As IT increasingly plays an integral part in the business, it must consider...

10 Mistakes Companies Make When Implementing SOA Projects and How to Avoid Them.(Service oriented architecture )
January 4, 2008... There are fairly common mistakes to avoid when implementing an SOA project, and best practices are starting to emerge based on successful, enterprise-wide deployments. To follow are the 10 most common mistakes companies make when implementing...

OpenVZ to Release Pre-made Ubuntu VMs.(Virtual machines)(Brief article)
January 4, 2008... OpenVZ Project, the open-source community branch of SWsoft, the virtualization company behind Parallels and Virtuozzo, will release on Jan. 8, pre-made Ubuntu 7.10 server and desktop virtual machines. Here's how it works. Users will...

Red Hat Committed to Open Source.(Interview)
January 5, 2008... BOSTON (Reuters)--Red Hat's new chief executive said on Friday that the company will continue to pursue a business model under which it makes its software available at no cost and makes money selling services to businesses. "We are a...

Intel to Respond to EU Antitrust Charges.(European Union)(Brief article)
January 5, 2008... BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Chipmaker Intel has been granted a further short extension to respond to antitrust charges leveled by the European Commission, an Intel spokesman said on Friday. The response had been due on Friday but Intel will file...

CES Goes Green.(consumer electronics show)
January 5, 2008... LAS VEGAS (Reuters)--With its plethora of gadgets that become outdated almost as soon as they are sold, the consumer electronics industry is an unlikely champion of the environment. But since information and communications technology is now...

Warner Bros. to Back Blu-ray DVD Format Exclusively.(Time Warner Inc.)
January 5, 2008... NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros studio on Friday said it would exclusively release high-definition DVDs in Sony Corp's Blu-ray format, dealing a big blow to Toshiba Corp's rival HD DVD technology. Some saw...

How to Plan Your Disk-Based Backup with NAS or VTL--Understanding Your Requirements.(network-attached storage)(virtual tape library)
January 5, 2008... Organizations of all sizes face the dilemma of how to backup increasing amounts of data while reducing the hassles of traditional tape-based systems. In response, organizations are implementing new solutions using disks as the backup...

Sears Closes Part Of Site, Concedes Purchases Revealed.(Sears, Roebuck and Co.)(Brief article)
January 6, 2008... On the heels of admitting that it was using spyware on one of its e-commerce sites, Sears officials said Jan. 4 they were temporarily shutting down part of another Sears e-commerce site after discovering that it allowed consumers to see...

JVC Unveils "Thinnest" LCDs, TV with iPod Dock.(Victor Company of Japan Ltd.)(liquid crystal display)
January 6, 2008... LAS VEGAS (Reuters)--JVC on Sunday unveiled an LCD TV less than 3 inches thick, calling it the world's thinnest flat-screen television, as the Consumer Electronics Show began in Las Vegas. Also at the show, JVC, formally called Victor Co of...

Hosted Storage Saves Silicon Valley Data.
January 6, 2008... LA HONDA, Calif.--Naturally, eBay data mining engineer Dave Worthington and his wife, Carolyn, dread weather-related power outages in their sparsely populated village in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 1,500 feet above Silicon Valley here on...

Tuning In to Microsoft Silverlight for Olympic Gold.(Editorial)
January 7, 2008... Maybe it's just me, but when I read that Bill Gates had inked an exclusive deal with NBC to deliver live and on-demand Olympics coverage on MSN with its Silverlight, cross-browser, cross-platform video plug-in, I saw a new world of online video...

Phishing at the Top Level.
January 7, 2008... The use of domain names in most phishing is relatively crude, You see a lot of names like www.somefreewebsite.com/~ingrid/www.bankofamerica.com/.... There's no SSL, and the tricky part of the domain name is off to the right. A user would...

A Marriage of Convenience Broken: OLPC and Intel.(One Laptop Per Child)(Brief article)
January 7, 2008... Can I be honest? Intel was never really interested in partnering with the One Laptop Per Child project. The marriage of Intel and OLPC was destined for divorce before the two ever walked down the aisle. As so often is the case in a divorce,...

CompTIA Unveils Vendor-Independent Printer Certification.(Computing Technology Industry Association)(Brief article)
January 7, 2008... Printer manufacturers have set aside their differences to support a vendor-independent certification for technology professionals, announced Jan. 7 by CompTIA. The accreditation, called the CompTIA PDI+ (Printing and Document Imaging),...

Gates Bids Farewell to CES.(Consumer Electronics Show)(Bill Gates)
January 7, 2008... LAS VEGAS--In what might have been his final keynote address at an International CES event, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates opened the 2008 expo with talk about entering a new "digital decade," where his company plans to play a major role. ...

IT Employment Rising.(Brief article)
January 7, 2008... Unemployment among business-technology professionals has fallen to a decade low as the size of the IT workforce has risen to a record level in 2007, according to CIO Insight analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Joblessness...

Yahoo Evangelizes Mobile Philosophy, Software at CES.(Consumer Electronics Show)
January 7, 2008... Yahoo on Jan. 7 used the Consumer Electronics Show as the stage to launch a mobile software developer platform, its new mobile service platform for consumers and a redesigned home page for its Web site for mobile device users. Just as...

Wait and See on IE 8.(Internet Explorer 8)(Brief article)
January 7, 2008... Internet Explorer 8 is coming! Yay! And it will be standards compliant! Woo hoo! I can't wait to get my hands on it! But just when will that be? Looks like there will be an initial beta sometime in the first half of 2008 (which probably...

The Risk Factor.
January 7, 2008... Untitled PODCASTembedSWF(); The Risk Factor AMR Research president and CEO, Tony Friscia, and research director Steve Hochman discuss ways companies can mitigate risk while maximizing profit, in this Research Matters podcast. ...

The Best Time-Saving Technologies of 2008.
January 7, 2008... Along with saving money whenever possible, saving time is a major goal for every organization. After all, the time you save could be spent strategizing and increasing profits. Here are some of the technologies expected to be major time-savers...

Showdowns to Watch in '08.
January 7, 2008... There are lots of predictable matchups for 2008: Republicans versus Democrats, Linux versus Windows and every NFL team versus the New England Patriots. Some less visible, but equally interesting, matchups are also brewing for the new year. Here...

Sears Unapologetic on Spyware.(Sears Holdings Corp.)(Brief article)
January 7, 2008... One of the funniest scenes from the 1995 Brady Bunch movie comes when the sugary-sweet brood stuck in a twisted '70s time warp believes they've saved their shag-rugged home. In triumph, patriarch Mike Brady declares: "Kids, put on your Sunday...

Bad Start to 2008 for the OLPC.(One Laptop Per Child)(Brief article)
January 7, 2008... The calendar has switched over to 2008 and so far it has been anything but a happy new year for the One Laptop Per Child Project. First, OLPC Chief Technology Officer (and the first employee of the OLPC) Mary Lou Jepsen announced that she was...

Sears, Where America Sues.(Sears Holdings Corp.)
January 7, 2008... With the recent slew of privacy incidents coming to light--including two this week from Sears--red-blooded Americans are doing what we always do in times of sorrow and anguish: filing lawsuits. But, as I was looking at two unrelated privacy...

Obama's Interactive Surge Faces New Hampshire Challenge.(Barack Obama)
January 7, 2008... A buoyed Barack Obama, a bloodied Hillary Clinton and a battling John Edwards all head into the Jan. 8 New Hampshire Democratic primary with continuing questions about their Internet support translating into votes. For Obama, it's a...