InfoWorld.com articles from January 2007

InfoWorld.com archives from January 2007

Earthlink CEO Betty dead at 49; Social networking site figures in memorial to longtime chief.
January 3, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts The Chief Executive Officer of Atlanta-based ISP Earthlink, Garry Betty, died on Tuesday due to complications from cancer, a statement on Earthlink's Web page says. Betty joined Earthlink in 1996, and was...

Cisco warns of vulnerabilities in NAC product; NAC in a box vulnerable to remote hackers.
January 4, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts Networking equipment vendor Cisco Systems Inc. issued an advisory to customers Wednesday about two serious vulnerabilities in its Cisco Clean Access software, a network access control product. The two issues...

Cisco buys e-mail security firm for $830m; IronPort brings messaging security smarts.
January 4, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts Cisco Systems Inc. said on Thursday that it was buying IronPort Systems Inc. of San Bruno, Calif. for $830 million in cash and stock. The deal for privately held IronPort, which makes e-mail, Web, and security...

Google upgrades enterprise search engine; Results clustering and adding bias help refine search.
January 4, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Google announced on Thursday that two new search features will be added to its Enterprise Search Appliance by the end of the month. The Result Hit Clustering feature does what its name claims to do: it...

Lattix tackles software architecture complexity; Upgrade adds ability to gauge databases, Web services.
January 4, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Looking to salve complexity in enterprise software environments, Lattix on Thursday is announcing an upgrade to its software architecture management system, extending it to databases and Web services. The Lattix LDM...

Packet Island offers converged network monitoring; Device targeted at SMB VoIP market.
January 5, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Real time performance management, a must-have technology for converged networks, is only now finding its way into enterprise-level companies, but it is already becoming well-established in the SMB market. This...

Another H-1B fight looms in Congress; Numerous employers are expected to file visa applications as soon as they can to beat a visa blackout.
January 8, 2007... Byline: Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld As the new, Democrat-controlled Congress took office last week, Elena Park, immigration practice leader at Philadelphia-based law firm Cozen O’Connor, had this piece of advice for companies...

Salesforce teams up with communications giant Siemens; Companies to offer real time mashup for CRM.
January 8, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz The SaaS (software-as-a-service) model continues to gain adherents and strength as Salesforce.com announces this week that it will team up with Siemens, a global technology giant to offer a mashup between...

Adobe ships Flex Builder 2 for Mac; Rich Internet design tools will combine benefits of desktop software with Web reach.
January 9, 2007... The Adobe Flex 2 SDK, which includes the Flex framework and command line compiler, is available free of charge. Adobe Flex Builder 2 is available for an estimated street price of $715. Adobe Flex Builder 2 with Charting is available for an...

Apple drops “Computer” from name; Company is more than just computers, says Jobs.
January 9, 2007... Byline: Mathew Honan Formerly Apple Computer, the name change reflects the company's newfound emphasis on consumer electronics. Jobs revealed the change following announcements on the new Apple TV and iPhone, with no new Mac configurations...

Jobs introduces iPhone, AppleTV; Jobs said of the Mac OS-based phone: "Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.".
January 9, 2007... Byline: Peter Cohen, Macworld.com Apple Computer Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs unveiled the highly anticipated iPhone during his opening keynote speech at the annual Macworld Conference & Expo Tuesday in San Francisco. (See video and...

Geophoto displays photos by location; Application lets users drag photos to a specific location on a 3D Earth.
January 9, 2007... Byline: Peter Cohen, Macworld.com Ovolab on Tuesday introduced Geophoto, a new Mac OS X application that displays pictures on a three-dimensional representation of the Earth, showing you where the pictures were taken. It's coming in...

New Office for Mac coming; Microsoft says it will ship by year’s end.
January 9, 2007... Byline: Yardena Arar Office for Mac users who've been wondering about a new version -- and Office 2007 compatibility -- got some answers today as Microsoft said it will ship Office for Mac 2008 by year's end. At MacWorld in San...

Apple has urge to converge; Mac is prologue, the iPhone is the future.
January 10, 2007... Byline: Tom Yager Steve Jobs delivered this year’s Macworld Expo keynote to an over-capacity crowd. He boasted that the Mac’s PowerPC-to-Intel transition had been completed in seven months, grinned about having sold half of new...

Survey: Offshoring does not cost developer jobs; Lack of engineers in U.S. is cited by software companies as reason for increasing offshore work.
January 11, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Offshoring of software development by software companies is not costing Americans jobs, according to a report being announced Thursday by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). The association is...

Tibco backs BPEL 2.0 in ESB; BusinessWorks 5.4 also adds security, 64-bit boosts.
January 11, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Tibco Software on Thursday upgraded its BusinessWorks enterprise service bus to leverage the Web Services BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) 2.0 specification. This makes Tibco's the first ESB to back the...

Report: SEC delving into Jobs options grant; Phony board meeting to approve options a focus.
January 12, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts The bloom may be coming off the rose for Steve Jobs as investigators at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission scrutinize the timing of a 2001 options grant that netted Apple's charismatic CEO an estimated $20...

Salesforce.com launches Winter 07 release; Apex programming language still not available.
January 16, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz Salesforce.com released its Winter 07 upgrade to its CRM software as a service on Tuesday, with immediate availability. But customers waiting for the release of one of its key components, the Apex programming...

Zend readies PHP for Windows; Arrangement with Microsoft bears fruit.
January 16, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Zend Technologies on Tuesday is unveiling a public beta program for Zend Core 2.0, which extends the company's PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) platform to Microsoft Windows. The company also is introducing its new CEO,...

Brightcove lands $59 million in VC; NY Times Co. among investors whose funds will be used to expand Internet TV startup.
January 17, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts 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. The...

Retailer TJX reports massive data breach; Credit, Debit data stolen. Extent of breach still unknown.
January 17, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts The TJX Companies, a large retailer that operates over 2,000 retails stores under brands such as Bob's Stores, HomeGoods, Marshalls, T.J. Maxx and A.J. Wright said on Wednesday that it suffered a massive computer...

VersionOne tunes agile ALM platform; Customization, security enhancement touted.
January 17, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill VersionOne will bolster its application lifecycle management platform for users of agile development methodologies on Thursday, adding customization and simplification. The Winter 2007 edition of the company's V1:...

Microsoft makes multimedia app design play; Expression line touted at event.
January 18, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill At its ExpressionSession07 event on Thursday, Microsoft drove home the point that multimedia technologies are critical to applications and that it is ready to be a major player in this space. Capabilities for 3D...

NetBeans adds ties to devices, ALM; Sun-driven open source platform boosted by Ricoh, Intland.
January 18, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Sun Microsystems will advance the NetBeans open-source tools platform on devices and the application lifecycle management (ALM) front on Thursday. Sun and the NetBeans community are announcing the availability of...

IEEE 802.11n working group approves draft 2.0; Latest version is stable and will require only firmware upgrade for existing products.
January 22, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz After much debate and a lot of contention among the overall IEEE membership, the all-important IEEE 802.11n working group has given its stamp of approval to the next draft version of the specification. ...

SaaS continues to smash on premise; SuccessFactors boasts 2 million subscribers and Kana makes on premise, on demand.
January 23, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz SaaS (software as a service) continues its onslaught against traditional on-premise applications this week with two announcements that reveal the increasing depth of the on-demand model. SuccessFactors, a SaaS...

Microsoft makes AJAX technology available; Using ASP.Net AJAX 1.0, developers can build interfaces with reusable AJAX components, enhance sites with controls.
January 23, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Without further adieu, Microsoft released its ASP.Net AJAX 1.0 technology, formerly called Atlas, to the Web on Tuesday. ASP.Net AJAX 1.0 enables Web developers to build AJAX-style (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)...

Webroot: Vista’s Defender stops only 16% of spyware; Microsoft challenges the study, saying it is confident in Windows Defender.
January 25, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts Users who put their faith in Vista's new security features and Microsoft's Windows Defender antispyware product may find themselves under attack from spyware all the same, according to the results of a study by...

Palm finally delivers real push e-mail; Microsoft Direct Push will become part of VersaMail.
January 25, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz After many months, even years, of promising an e-mail push technology equivalent to what the RIM Blackberry service offers, it looks like Palm has finally done it. At least it has come close, with a management...

Tech firms swarm on data protection problem; Increase in breaches and vulnerabilities drive demand for new solutions.
January 25, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts Enterprise IT administrators didn't need the recent stories about large-scale data breaches at TJX Co. (network compromise potentially exposing credit data on hundreds of thousands of customers) or Canadian Imperial...

IBM advancing global-based software development; SOA seen as key driver in the push toward global cooperative development.
January 25, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Building on its Jazz strategy for collaboratively building software, IBM Rational will offer versions of its products geared toward global cooperative development with an eye toward boosting SOA in 2007. In an...

D2C targets insider fraud; ComplianceNow suite aims at segregation of duties to help ensure integrity.
January 26, 2007... Byline: Richard Gincel D2C Solutions plans to announce on Monday a new suite of compliance management software for ERP systems called ComplianceNow, which is aimed at reducing internal fraud and improving adherence to Sarbanes-Oxley...

AMD undaunted by Intel moves; Company not sweating rival's 45nm plans, Sun deal.
January 29, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill AMD is undaunted by rival Intel's recent headline-grabbing announcements of 45-nanometer processing technology and a deal to supply Xeon chips to Sun Microsystems, an AMD executive said on Monday. Interviewed at the...

Compuware details quality management product; Software development processes also boosted by Parasoft, AutomatedQA.
January 29, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Compuware, Parasoft, and AutomatedQA this week plan to offer products to improve software development processes, with Compuware focused on quality assurance, Parasoft on SOA testing, and AutomatedQA on build and release...

Eclipse, Novell near 'Big Bang' for identity; Will divided vendor allegiances keep us in the dark?
January 29, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts Two open-source identity management projects said on Monday that they had achieved a key milestone in the development of open-source identity services that connect products regardless of maker or platform. ...

MS exec touts Software Factory downloads; But analyst is unimpressed with the software development technology and number of downloads.
January 29, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Microsoft has had more than 100,000 downloads of its Software Factories software development technology since it debuted six months ago, S. "Soma" Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division,...

Demo 07 conference: 70 companies hope to please VCs; Consumer, enterprise, and enabling technologies demonstrated for the first time at the annual show.
January 30, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz The annual Demo 2007 conference in Palm Desert, Calif., this week will lay bare for an audience of venture capitalists the results of thousands of hours of blood, sweat, and tears on the part of hardware and...

Microsoft abandons IDE patent application; Technology in question came from the BlueJ project.
January 30, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill Citing a mistaken filing, Microsoft has abandoned a patent application for technology in its Visual Studio software development platform that originated outside the company, a Microsoft representative said on Tuesday....

Sony settles with FTC on rootkit fracas; Company to disclose the limits it imposes on use of CDs, pay $150 for each damaged system.
January 30, 2007... Byline: Paul F. Roberts More than two years after a security researcher first called attention to Sony BMG's use of a stealth program to enforce digital rights management on its music CDs, the company reached a deal with the U.S. Federal...

People, not technology, now at center of emerging tech; At DEMO 07, technology that puts the power in the user's hands takes center stage.
January 31, 2007... Byline: Ephraim Schwartz The DEMO 07 conference, the annual gathering of the haves and the have-nots -- venture capitalists with millions of dollars to invest and startups hungering for first-, second-, and third-round infusions of cash --...

IBM research projects cover SOA, Web 2.0; Company shows off dozens of projects in the networking, collaboration, on-demand, security, and consumer areas.
January 31, 2007... Byline: Paul Krill IBM showed off research efforts in a number of areas, including SOA, wikis, and mashups, at its IBM Silicon Valley Lab on Wednesday afternoon. Technologies on display leveraged concepts like social networking,...