eWeek articles from October 2007

eWeek archives from October 2007

Adobe Takes Competition to the Max.(Adobe Systems Inc.)
October 1, 2007... CHICAGO--Adobe Systems is looking to expand its competition with titans such as Microsoft and Google by entering into new areas, including word processing and document sharing, and bolstering its positions in other areas. At its annual Max...

Microsoft Office Goes Online.
October 1, 2007... Microsoft is ratcheting up its software-plus-services strategy with a new offering known as Office Live Workspace that is due later this year and that will let customers access, share and collaborate on documents online. But there is a...

Web SWAT Initiative Targets Threats.
October 1, 2007... SWAT is raiding the Web, and it's after Web 2.0 threats. SWAT, which stands for Secure Web 2.0 Anti-Threat Initiative, is the brainchild of Secure Computing, of San Jose, Calif. Despite its name, there are no guns or body armor...

You Wouldn't Actually Turn Off Your Firewall, Would You?
October 1, 2007... For weeks now I've been thinking on and off about "deperimeterization," a term that has been used in a variety of ways for years. Some analyst talk got it in the news recently. At least the goal of deperimeterization is to enhance security....

Google's Terms of Endearment in Europe.
October 1, 2007... The revelation by a top Google engineer that the search company is planning to hire thousands of engineers in Europe is partly a political move to endear itself to the European Union. That was the assessment by some experts who believe...

EU Targets Qualcomm.
October 1, 2007... The European Commission is opening a formal antitrust proceeding against Qualcomm, the embattled San Diego-based chip maker. The EU said it is investigating whether Qualcomm abused its dominant position in the market. Qualcomm holds key...

Comparison Shows Very Little Shift in PCI Failures.(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... When a PCI audit firm released its annual summary of PCI audit weaknesses, a comparison with the prior year showed retailers are still struggling with the same issues. For 2007, the most frequently failed credit card security requirements...

Nokia Gets LBS Directions from Navteq.
October 1, 2007... Nokia's $8.1 billion purchase of digital mapmaker Navteq marks a major move by the world's largest handset maker to establish a new beachhead in location-based services. According to analyst Jack Gold, the acquisition is critical to the...

AT&T Gets Interwise for Web Collaboration.
October 1, 2007... AT&T picked up Internet-based conferencing and collaboration software provider Interwise Oct. 1 and with it a bigger play in the video, Web conferencing and collaboration race against rivals Sprint, Verizon and Cisco Systems. San...

Sun Merges Storage, Systems Groups.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
October 1, 2007... Sun Microsystems today announced that it will merge its storage and systems groups into one group, to be called the Systems Group, much like competitors Hewlett-Packard and IBM already have done. John Fowler, executive vice president for...

Adobe Gets Buzzword.(Adobe Systems Inc.)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Adobe Systems is buying Virtual Ubiquity, a move company officials said is a key step to creating a rich Internet applications environment based on its Adobe Integrated Runtime platform. Virtual Ubiquity, of Waltham, Mass., is known for its...

ForeScout Looks to Lead NAC Pack.(ForeScout Technologies Inc.)
October 1, 2007... ForeScout Technologies is expanding the capabilities of its flagship network access control product with the goal of adding flexibility and security to endpoints and voice over IP deployments. CounterACT 6.2, announced Oct. 1, includes a...

Salesforce.com, Bay Partners Announce Venture Fund.
October 1, 2007... Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has long been buddy-buddy with the venture capitalist community. He's quoted frequently as saying that the venture capitalists are investing more in software as a service than in software. Now Benioff, along with...

Building a Smarter MSP.
October 1, 2007... PODCASTembedSWF(); Building a Smarter MSP Do IT Smarter coins itself as a master managed service provider, or an MSP to the MSPs, explains Don Begg, the company's CEO, and Lane Smith, its president, in this Channel Chat podcast. Host:...

Nokia Offers $8.1 Billion for Navteq.(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... HELSINKI--Nokia said on Oct. 1 it will offer $8.1 billion for U.S.-based digital map supplier Navteq in one of its largest takeovers ever, but its shares fell as analysts dubbed the deal "expensive." The acquisition would give the world's...

Skype Co-founder Zennstrom Bows Out.(Skype Technologies S.A.)
October 1, 2007... Niklas Zennstrom, one of the driving forces behind the growth of peer-to-peer file sharing on the Internet, has stepped down as CEO of Skype, according to parent company eBay. The early departure of Skype co-founder Zennstrom three years...

Telecoms' Censorship Policies Stir New Controversy.(Verizon Communications Inc.)(AT&T Inc.)
October 1, 2007... Disclosures over the weekend that AT&T and Verizon reserve the right to suspend or terminate the service of customers who are critical of their conduct have prompted a call for congressional hearings on the censorship practices of the nation's...

Vontu Looks to Plug Data Leaks.
October 1, 2007... Vontu has added new data discovery capabilities to the latest version of its data leak prevention product that it says will help enterprises locate data stored anywhere. Officials at San Francisco-based Vontu said the ability of Vontu Data...

iPhone Security Hellhole?
October 2, 2007... "To err is human, but to really screw up requires the root password," is an old Unix saying. That's because as the root, the super-user, of a Unix, Linux or Mac OS system, there's nothing you can't do. This includes an almost endless array or...

MPC Closes Deal for Gateway Professional Division.(Brief article)
October 2, 2007... MPC has completed its acquisition of Gateway's professional division. The deal was originally announced about a week after Acer said Aug. 27 that it would buy the majority of Gateway's business for $710 million. On Oct. 2, Reuters reported...

SAP Offers Annual Subscription for NetWeaver Developer License.
October 2, 2007... LAS VEGAS -- At its annual TechEd conference here, SAP announced on Oct. 2 that developers can download a NetWeaver license on a yearly subscription basis. The goal for SAP in changing its licensing structure around NetWeaver is to open up...

Signing Off on IBM Lotus Forms 3.0.(International Business Machines Corp.)
October 2, 2007... IBM unveiled on Oct. 2 a new version of its electronic forms software that allows users to create, fill out, sign and submit forms data via a Web browser without downloading additional software. Lotus Forms 3.0, announced at the IBM Lotus...

Cotton Companies Walks the Walk.(Terian Solutions)
October 2, 2007... Cotton companies knows all about disaster recovery. The company, which specializes in the restoration of fire- and water-damaged properties, also realizes that practicing what it preaches goes a long way to preserving credibility. That's...

Sign Me Up for Whitelisting.
October 2, 2007... Symantec has been turning heads with its suggestion that whitelisting might be a better way forward for ensuring the security of PCs than the blacklisting approach currently used by anti-virus products--including those from Symantec. My...

McAfee Goes for a Security Triple Play.
October 2, 2007... McAfee is bringing a new licensing strategy, enhanced features and a security-as-a-service model to the latest versions of its security software. In a move it dubbed a "triple play," the security vendor announced Oct. 1 that it is taking...

Printers Ain't a Box of Nails.(Brief article)
October 2, 2007... Printers--both single function and multifunction printers--are sometimes accused of having reached generic status. The truth is, they're far from it. A box of nails is generic. There's not much chance of telling one brand from another...

AT&T, Verizon Pricing Policies Under Attack.
October 2, 2007... WASHINGTON--Gary Forsee, CEO and President of Sprint Nextel, told lawmakers on Oct. 2 that a competitive, high-volume business telecommunications market is unfairly rigged to favor AT&T and Verizon. As a result, Forsee said, the nationwide...

Oracle's Database 11g Streamlines Management.(Product/service evaluation)
October 2, 2007... Database 11g is the cornerstone of Oracle's dynamically allocated computing grids and should garner the attention of database managers with its improved management, recovery and table compression capabilities. Oracle Database 11g, released Aug....

AT&T, Others Asked About Government Access to Records.
October 2, 2007... WASHINGTON (Reuters)--The House Energy and Commerce Committee asked AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and Qwest Communications International Inc on Tuesday to describe how U.S. government agencies sought to obtain information about...

Dems Push Telecoms for NSA Disclosures.(Democrats )(National Security Agency )
October 2, 2007... A group of U.S. House Democrats upped the pressure on Oct. 2 on the nation's major telecom carriers to account for their alleged complicity in turning over unauthorized telephone and e-mail records to national intelligence agencies, including...

New Jersey Subpoenas Facebook Over Sex Offenders.(Brief article)
October 2, 2007... NEW YORK (Reuters)--New Jersey State Attorney General Anne Milgram said on Tuesday her office has subpoenaed Facebook to discover whether convicted sex offenders in the state have profiles on the popular social networking site. Milgram...

iPhone Turned into Pocket-Sized Hacking Platform.
October 2, 2007... The iPhone has been turned into a "pocket-sized... network-enabled root shell," said H.D. Moore, thanks to the well-known security researcher having published shell code for the smart phone and instructions on how to use it as a portable...

Symantec Managed Service Swats Bots.
October 3, 2007... Symantec has a message for bot herders: Beware. The security vendor is expanding its managed security service to provide protection against bots through its Global Intelligence Network. By integrating new bot intelligence into its security...

Microsoft's Open-Source Trap for Mono.
October 3, 2007... Microsoft is claiming that releasing the .NET Framework reference source code under the Microsoft Reference License will give developers the opportunity to understand more about .NET. That sounds good for open source, doesn't it? Wrong!...

Red Condor Zeros In on Fast-Flux Spam.
October 3, 2007... E-mail security provider Red Condor hopes its new technology will serve as a stop sign for "fast-flux" e-mail spam campaigns and will beat spammers at their own game. The company announced the technology, which it calls Zombie Harvester...

Websense to Support SurfControl Products After Buyout.
October 3, 2007... Websense closed its acquisition of SurfControl Oct. 3, opening a new phase for the company. The roughly $416 million acquisition represents a major milestone in an 18-month journey since Gene Hodges took the helm as CEO of Websense, in San...

Adobe Readies New Servers, Services, Tools.(Adobe Systems Inc.)
October 3, 2007... CHICAGO--Adobe Systems showed off new and upcoming technology that will take the company into new areas and propel it further along in areas where it competes with key industry players. At its Adobe Max 2007 conference here on Oct. 2,...

BlackBerry 8820 Embraces Enterprise Wi-Fi Trend.(Product/service evaluation)
October 3, 2007... Although just released in July, the iPhone is already the country's leading Wi-Fi-enabled device, according to analyst firm M:Metrics. Out of 1.9 million U.S. mobile devices with Wi-Fi, M:Metrics' numbers show the 8GB iPhone at the top of the...

Web Coalition Calls for Carrier Censorship Hearings.
October 3, 2007... Momentum continues to build in Washington for a congressional investigation into the censorship polices and other anti-free speech actions of telephone and cable companies. In an Oct. 3 letter to the commerce and judiciary committees of the...

Microsoft Unified Communications Ready to Debut.(Interview)
October 3, 2007... Microsoft will announce that its integrated Unified Communications products are ready for delivery at an event in San Francisco on Oct. 16. The software maker, based in Redmond, Wash, will also use the event to tout how its offering is...

Intel Confirms Product Name Changes.
October 3, 2007... Intel is confirming that it plans on changing some, but not all, of its product names by the beginning of 2008 in order to help streamline and simplify its platform and processor portfolios. At its 2007 Developer Forum in San Francisco,...

The Mainstreaming of Mobile Phone Hacking.(Apple Inc.)
October 3, 2007... The name "iBOT" is already taken. It may soon be taken in vain if the iPhone becomes a popular target for malware. For years I've been continuously incredulous at the lack of interest by the black hat community in the Mac platform. There...

N.J. Attorney General Subpoenas Facebook.(New Jersey)
October 3, 2007... Is the noose tightening around social networking site Facebook? One week after N.Y. State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo subpoenaed Facebook for information about its safety controls, his New Jersey counterpart, Attorney General Anne...

Microsoft Reveals .Net Source Code.(Interview)
October 3, 2007... Microsoft is willing to show its code but doesn't want anyone touching it. Scott Guthrie, general manager of the Microsoft .Net Framework in Microsoft's Developer Division, said that based on customer and developer feedback, Microsoft is...

Court Rules Against Target in Web Site Accessibility Lawsuits.
October 3, 2007... When a federal court judge issued rulings Oct. 2 that the $60 billion retailer Target needed to stand trial on charges that its Web site is not sufficiently accessible to visually-impaired shoppers, it sent a strong signal to much of the...

Pillar Introduces 1TB SATA Drive.(Pillar Data Systems)(1-terabyte serial advanced technology attachment)
October 3, 2007... Pillar Data Systems Oct. 3 introduced its first 1-terabyte Serial ATA disk drive, for use in its frontline Axiom storage system. On Jan. 5, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies unveiled what it claimed to be the industry's first 1TB hard...

Iron Mountain Acquires Records Management Firm.(RMS Services)
October 3, 2007... Data protection provider Iron Mountain announced on Oct. 2 the acquisition of RMS Services-USA, a $27 million records management company and a major provider of outsourced file room services for hospitals. Terms of the deal were not disclosed....

Business Group Calls for Anti-Piracy Action.(Brief article)
October 3, 2007... WASHINGTON (Reuters)--Business leaders called on the federal government on Wednesday to do more to combat product counterfeiting and piracy, which they said hurts the software, pharmaceutical and entertainment industries and threatens the...

Spam-Scam Crackdown Nets $2B in Fake Checks.
October 3, 2007... WASHINGTON (Reuters)--An international crackdown on Internet financial scams this year has yielded more than $2.1 billion in seized fake checks and 77 arrests in the Netherlands, Nigeria and Canada, U.S. and others, authorities said on...

EU Opens In-Depth Probe of IBM's Telelogic Buy.(International Business Machines Corp.)(Telelogic AB)(Brief article)
October 3, 2007... BRUSSELS, Oct 3 (Reuters)--The European Commission said on Wednesday it had opened an in-depth investigation of plans by IBM to buy Swedish business software company Telelogic AB for about 5.2 billion crowns ($798.6 million). The proposed...

Apple Fixes QuickTime for Windows Glitch.(Brief article)
October 4, 2007... Attackers can slip past Windows system defenses due to a flaw in the way Apple's QuickTime for Windows handles URLs in the "qtnext" field in QTL files--i.e., media link files. Apple on Oct. 3 put out a security advisory with an update for...

IE 7 Update Drops WGA Validation Requirement.(Microsoft Corp.)(internet explorer)(windows genuine advantage)
October 4, 2007... Microsoft is making its Internet Explorer 7 browser available to all Windows XP users--even those using pirated software--and installation will no longer require that the operating system first be validated as genuine. The company said the...

Sun Unveils Virtualization Platform.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
October 4, 2007... SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems has unveiled its virtualization platform, which consists of two pieces, one being the open, cross-platform Sun xVM Server, which will host Windows, Linux and Solaris guest operating systems. It will also...

Feds Suspend California Government Web Sites.(Interview)
October 4, 2007... It was bad enough that federal officials essentially deleted the ca.gov domain in the process of shutting down a hacker's redirect to porn pages on Oct. 2. What's worse: There are still fully hacked ca.gov sites up and serving redirects to drug...

Full-Disk Encryption Is Partial Protection, Analysts Say.
October 4, 2007... It seems to be in the news about once a month--another laptop disappears containing thousands of pieces of corporate or personal data. Now the legal department wants to know whether IT can confirm that some or all of the data was encrypted...

TJX Judge: Consumers Selling Vouchers Won't Cut It.(TJX Companies Inc.)
October 4, 2007... When U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young told lawyers Sept. 27 that he had serious concerns about the proposed TJX settlement, he also took issue with the part that would allow for consumers to turn the vouchers into cash by selling...

Walmart.com Hangs Up on Customers.(Wal-Mart Stores Inc.)
October 4, 2007... In an effort to force online shoppers to use their online tools--and only their online tools--Walmart.com has decided to continue its online telephone help desk, but--I swear I'm not making this up--not tell anyone the phone number. In the...

Yahoo to Block Fake eBay and PayPal Phishing.
October 4, 2007... SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)--Yahoo Inc. is working with auction leader eBay Inc. and its PayPal payments unit to block fake e-mails to users purporting to be from eBay and PayPal, hoping to spur on an industry that has been slow to fight the...

Cell Phone Checks Heart Rate, Breath.(NTT DoCoMo Inc.)(Brief article)
October 4, 2007... TOKYO--Worried that you're not getting enough exercise or that you've eaten way too much garlic? A Japanese firm has come up with a phone that can help. Japan's largest cell phone carrier NTT DoCoMo unveiled this week a "Fitness Phone,"...

Retail Group Lobbies to Stop Credit Card Data from Being Stored.
October 4, 2007... Retailing's most powerful lobby is launching a campaign to change the way that credit cards and retailers interact. Conceding that the PCI (Payment Card Industry) procedures have not been effective at stopping massive retail breaches, David...

DHS Injects Itself with DDoS.(Department of Homeland Security)
October 4, 2007... The Department of Homeland Security self-inflicted what one observer called a mini distributed denial of service, with a reported mass of more than 2.2 million messages stuffing the inboxes of the nation's security experts. All this is...

Microsoft Launches Health Care Platform.
October 4, 2007... WASHINGTON--Microsoft rolled out a software and services platform Oct. 4 aimed at connecting physicians, patients and their records across a unified platform. Microsoft's HealthVault is an online repository where consumers can store...

Google Accuses Verizon of Violating FCC Lobbying Rules.
October 4, 2007... Google accused Verizon Oct. 3 of fudging Federal Communications Commission rules in its lobbying efforts to convince FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to roll back the open access requirements for the January 700 MHz auction. The FCC ruled July 31...

Critical Security Fixes on Tap for Windows, Outlook.
October 4, 2007... Microsoft will be putting out seven security advisories on Patch Tuesday, Oct. 9, with four critical bulletins out for Windows, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Internet Explorer and Word. Three bulletins are also on tap that target...

The Best Linux System Repair Distribution Gets Better.(Brief article)
October 5, 2007... If there's a better system repair kit than the Gentoo-based SystemRescueCD Linux distribution, we haven't seen it yet. The new 0.4 version of SystemRescueCd was released on Oct. 4. This new edition focuses on disk partitioning, Vista...

Analyst: Yahoo Worth More if Broken Up.(Brief article)
October 5, 2007... NEW YORK--Yahoo would be worth far more to shareholders if it broke up its Internet businesses or embarked on a major overhaul, including a departure from Web search, but management is unlikely to do either, according to an analyst note issued...

Upfront.
October 5, 2007... 'Girls Can't Do Physics' This story actually starts on a day when my older daughter and I walked across the sun-filled lawn at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. We visited the physics department so that my daughter, intent on...

Katt Tests Web 2.0 Waters.
October 5, 2007... "There must be something to this Web 2.0 stuff," quoth the Kitty as he sorted through this week's collation of tips and rumors. The Fastidious Feline has always been suspicious of any designated technology trend cooked up mostly by market...

Microsoft Pushes Secure, Quality Code.
October 5, 2007... Microsoft is continuing its thrust to help developers write more secure and better quality code. The Redmond, Wash., software company is putting new code analysis features into the next version of its development tools suite, Visual Studio...

Building an Online Database.
October 5, 2007... Untitled PODCASTembedSWF(); Building an Online Database In this Tech Rising podcast, eWEEK Chief Technology Analyst Jim Rapoza talks to Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna about Zoho DB, one of the first products to try to bring true database...

Los Angeles School District ERP Snarls Teacher Pay.(enterprise resource planning)
October 5, 2007... Enormous cost overruns associated with botched enterprise resource planning implementations are the stuff of legend in IT circles. Now there's a new debacle to add to the list. Nine months after the Los Angeles Unified School District...

Apple Gives Hint About ZFS for Leopard.(Sun Microsystems Inc.)
October 5, 2007... Developers have received from Apple a "ZFS on Mac OS X Preview 1.1" package, which offers preliminary support for the ZFS file system, originally developed by Sun Microsystems for their Solaris OS. Currently, the Mac OS is based on the HFS+...

IT Execs Refuse to Turn Green.(Brief article)
October 5, 2007... IT executives are not ready to adopt a green technology strategy for their storage environments. This is according to a survey of 324 IT executives commissioned by storage software vendor BridgeHead Software. The report revealed that...

Adaptive Technology.(dialogue with Jenny Hallmats-Bergvik of Saab Security Systems)(Interview)
October 5, 2007... Headquartered in Jarfalla, Sweden, Saab Systems supplies customized decision support systems, products and components to the defense, aviation, space and civil security markets. The company has more than 1,200 employees in Sweden, South Africa,...

More Services, Software On the Web.
October 5, 2007... Major technology vendors are continuing to push initiatives to bring collaboration tools online, fueled by equal parts customer demand and competition from rivals. Moves by Microsoft and AT&T illustrate efforts by established tech...

BMC Ups IT Service Management Ante.(BMC Software Inc.)
October 5, 2007... BMC Software will compete even more closely with Hewlett Packard's growing software unit on Oct. 8 when it launches its BMC Service Automation initiative. On the heels of HP's Opsware acquisition, BMC will announce a small acquisition of...

Getting Away Cheap After a Hack.(California. Air Resources Board)
October 5, 2007... This is the Web site for the California Air Resources Board. It's nothing fancy to look at, but earlier this week it set itself apart for the simple reason that the possibility of its going offline didn't threaten to cut off the agency at the...

SAP Agrees to Buy Business Objects for $6.8 Billion.(Business Objects S.A. (San Jose, California))(SAP AG)
October 7, 2007... FRANKFURT (Reuters) - SAP has agreed to a cash offer to buy software group Business Objects for about $6.8 billion (4.8 Billion Euros) in the face of an aggressive acquisition spree by rival Oracle. The world's leading business software...

Novell Attempts End Run Around SCO's Bankruptcy.(Brief article)
October 7, 2007... When SCO went for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, it was thought that SCO was doing it in part to avoid losing its cash reserves and more to Novell in the next stage of the Novell/SCO lawsuit. Now, Novell is pursuing SCO from the IP (intellectual...

Keeping IT Small: ERP in SMB.
October 7, 2007... Untitled PODCASTembedSWF(); Keeping IT Small: ERP in SMB AMR Research President and CEO Tony Friscia and Senior Vice President of Research Jim Shepherd discuss emerging SMB-targeted players in the ERP market and how these companies are...

Spam and the Housing Bust.(Symantec Corp.)
October 8, 2007... If nothing else, spammers are good at following the news. Symantec's October State of Spam report found spammers were using homeowners' concerns about the real estate market as part of recent spam campaigns. The idea, researchers said, was...

Gateway Moves to Buy Packard Bell.
October 8, 2007... Gateway has moved a step closer to buying Packard Bell. In a statement released Oct. 8, Gateway executives announced that they would move ahead with an offer to buy Packard Bell, which is based in Paris and is one of the largest PC vendors...

Apple Bug Freezing iMacs.(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... The latest iMac Software update, 1.1, is causing random operating system freezes, requiring restarts, the company conceded Oct. 8, but users will have to wait for the end of October for relief. An Apple representative confirmed to eWEEK...

Social Networking Breaks BI Barriers.(Business Objects S.A. (San Jose, California))(business intelligence)
October 8, 2007... SAP's bid to purchase business intelligence market leader Business Objects for $6.78 billion Oct. 8 is reverberating throughout the industry and, for the moment, poses the question about the value of business intelligence without collaboration....