Baseline articles from May 2006

Baseline archives from May 2006

Internet Explorer Security Problems Multiply.
May 1, 2006... The list of serious unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser keeps getting longer and longer. Less than a week after researcher Michal Zalewski went public with a new zero-day vulnerability that could be used in...

Planner: Calculating the Costs of a Portfolio Project Management System.
May 1, 2006... Your large multinational company sells everything from energy bars to energy reserves. But while your multifaceted business units are in tight alignment with corporate goals, the hundreds of technology projects that support those units are not....

Emerging Tech: Jeff Hawkins Reinvents Artificial Intelligence.
May 1, 2006... Jeff Hawkins has a lot on his mind&#151not least, a new theory about how the brain works. And he's confident his theory will change the entire computing industry. In Silicon Valley, Hawkins is best known as the founder of Palm Computing...

Mobile Computing: More Options.
May 1, 2006... As the battle for mobile operating-system supremacy heats up, one vendor, AppForge, is giving technology executives the option to ignore the fight and focus on creating line-of-business programs. In April, the Atlanta-based firm released...

Levi's New Style: RFID.
May 1, 2006... Radio-frequency identification technology, also known as RFID, has its supporters and detractors. Both groups now have something to talk about. A working group of major companies--IBM is the charter member--and advocacy groups announced...

Planner: Calculating the Costs of a Portfolio Project Management System.
May 1, 2006... Your large multinational company sells everything from energy bars to energy reserves. But while your multifaceted business units are in tight alignment with corporate goals, the hundreds of technology projects that support those units are not....

Startup Finds New Ways to Free Up Application Bottlenecks.(Crescendo Networks introduced application-layer processing software)(Brief article)
May 2, 2006... To date application accelerators have addressed performance bottlenecks in front of the Web server. Startup Crescendo Networks on May 1 at Interop in Las Vegas introduced new technology that deals with the bottlenecks behind the Web server. ...

Q&A: How to Pitch a $270M Project.
May 2, 2006... Bert Reese, 58, is chief information officer of Sentara Healthcare, which operates seven hospitals in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. Sentara, which had $2.2 billion in revenue in 2005, in January began rolling out Epic...

Homeland Security Audit Flags 'Critical' Linux Bug.
May 2, 2006... An open-source security audit program funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has flagged a critical vulnerability in the X Window System which is used in Unix and Linux systems. Coverity, the San Franciso-based company managing...

Enterprise Search: Dave Girouard on Taking Google to the Corporation.
May 2, 2006... When it comes to making sense of the overwhelming volume of data that's been unleashed upon the world over the past ten years, no company has had more of an impact than Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc. Anyone who had the misfortune of...

Behind Oil Profits: A Look At ExxonMobil's Technology Alignment.
May 2, 2006... Rocketing oil prices are driving the nation's big oil companies to record profits, but even among this powerful group, one stands out: ExxonMobil. No company seems clearer about itself and its mission. Exxon uses its financial might to...

Research: New Study Suggests Strategies for Managing Your Intellectual Property.(PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of chief executive officers)(Brief article)
May 2, 2006... Companies need to do a better job managing their intellectual property, according to a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. The study, which surveyed CEOs from 339 private, fast-growing companies, revealed that less than a third of such...

Survey: HIPAA Compliance Drops, Patient Concerns Grow.
May 2, 2006... Fewer hospitals and health care facilities are complying with federal laws to protect patient privacy, and more patients are refusing to sign forms to release health information, according to a survey by the American Health Information...

Would Another Vista Delay Matter?
May 2, 2006... If yet another Windows release date falls by the wayside, would anyone care? That's the question that Microsoft watchers are asking, as Microsoft comes into the home stretch with its Windows Vista release. Researchers with the Gartner...

As IT Certifications Devalue, Vendors Up the Ante.(Foote Partners research report)(Brief article)
May 2, 2006... A recent research report by Foote Partners, a New Canaan, Conn.-based management consultancy firm, found that noncertified IT skills have been growing in value at a rate nearly two times that of certified skills. A new follow-up report...

Technology Alignment: ExxonMobil.
May 2, 2006... Rocketing oil prices are driving the nation's big oil companies to record profits, but even among this powerful group, one stands out: ExxonMobil. No company seems clearer about itself and its mission. Exxon uses its financial might to...

US FTC Sues Companies for Selling Phone Records.
May 3, 2006... WASHINGTON (Reuters)--U.S. authorities said on Wednesday they had filed suit against five online companies, charging they had illegally sold confidential phone records. The Federal Trade Commission said it is asking a court to bar the sale...

Project Snafu: X-Ray Bug Shuts Down Airport.
May 3, 2006... THE PROBLEM: On April 19, a baggage security screener at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport saw what looked like a bomb on her X-ray machine--leading to the evacuation of the nation's busiest airport and grounding flights for two...

Yahoo Slapped with Spyware Syndication Fraud Suit.
May 3, 2006... Anti-spyware activist Ben Edelman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Yahoo, accusing the online media giant of partnering with spyware purveyors to perpetrate syndication fraud against advertisers. The bombshell suit, filed in the...

Researchers Chart Sizable IM Threat Growth.(report of Postini about instant messaging bugs)
May 3, 2006... New research indicates that hackers are increasingly turning their efforts toward IM-borne attacks, with experts saying that businesses and end users remain largely ignorant to the growing problem. According to the latest report from...

Grid Computing Efforts Fight Avian Flu.
May 4, 2006... Over the last few months, a number of major international grid computing collaborations have been working to uncover more effective treatments for avian flu. Scientists are focusing on a particular research target in the strain of avian flu...

Customers Wait for Oracle Security Patches.(Brief article)
May 4, 2006... Just call it Oracle's May critical patch update. Three weeks after the database server vendor announced the release of its April 2006 CPU, customers are still waiting for the several important fixes. The update, which addresses 36...

Avian Flu: Can IT Handle a Pandemic?
May 4, 2006... VeriCenter Chief Technology Officer Dave Colesante is a rare bird. Unlike many IT executives, Colesante has actually thought about a potential avian influenza virus, or bird flu, pandemic and reckons his company, which provides technology...

May 2006 Online Extras.
May 4, 2006... BASELINE ONLINE Follow the Mobile Money View the detailed results from Baseline's exclusive mobile computing survey of I.T. executives. Will Your Project Soar--or Flop Here's a way to figure the odds. Download this interactive tool to...

'Critical' MS Exchange, Windows Patches on Tap.
May 4, 2006... Microsoft plans to release three security bulletins on Tuesday, May 9, to cover several code execution flaws in Windows and the enterprise-facing Microsoft Exchange messaging and collaboration product. The patches will carry a "critical"...

Microsoft's adCenter Now Open for Business.
May 4, 2006... Microsoft appears to be letting anyone now sign up for adCenter, the long-awaited, self-serve Internet advertising feature that competes with Google's pioneering AdWords. To create an adCenter account, you must leave a credit card number....

Research May 2006: Which Emerging Technologies Make Sense For Your Company?(CIO Insight survey of IT executives )(Brief article)
May 4, 2006... CIO Insight has surveyed IT executives on emerging technologies since 2003. This year's survey covers 45 emerging technologies in five different categories. Some, such as Web services, open source, VoIP, collaboration tools and, more recently,...

Hewlett-Packard: Screen Gem.
May 5, 2006... Can sprawling tech colossus Hewlett-Packard--whose offerings range from printers to high-end Unix servers--produce a handheld that's sexy and powerful enough to compete with specialists like Palm and Research in Motion? You bet, say...

Palm: Size Matters.
May 5, 2006... Like Research in Motion, Palm won customer loyalty with its earliest innovation: the Palm Pilot, an easy-to-use handheld organizer. But as wireless technology grew up, so did the demands of Palm's customers. Some applaud Palm for improving...

Research in Motion: The Uncomplicated Type.
May 5, 2006... Research in Motion's BlackBerry has created a generation of business executives who've learned to type with fumbling thumbs (and inspired a new verb for the activity: "squirreling"). But while most customers say the BlackBerry is a great phone,...

Voice of Experience: Mobile Medicine.(Sameer Bade of Medstar Health Columbia developed MedStar's infrastructure )(Brief article)
May 5, 2006... Dr. Sameer Bade Chief Medical Technology Officer Medstar Health Columbia, MD. www.medstarhealth.org MANAGER'S PROFILE: Oversees clinical and medical information technology for $2.7 billion nonprofit system of seven hospitals in the...

Handheld Computing: Picking Devices for Data on the Run.
May 5, 2006... Didn't get the memo because you were on the road? Those days are probably numbered: Companies today are stepping up their mobile computing efforts, armed with new handheld devices and programs to track sales, monitor inventories--and even save...

Handheld Devices: Helping Workers on the Run.
May 5, 2006... As a concept, mobile computing is nothing new--but the devices themselves are constantly evolving. More companies are opting for handhelds with voice, data and Web capabilities to speed up business processes. But are all handhelds created...

Researchers Chart Leap in Mac Vulnerabilities.
May 5, 2006... The volume of security vulnerabilities discovered in Apple's Macintosh platform has increased significantly over the last several years, according to a new report released by McAfee's Avert Labs. The security software maker contends that...

Opinion: John Parkinson on the Ins and Outs of Benchmarking your IT Department.(Column)
May 5, 2006... Late in 2005, the CIO of a fortune 20 company whom I have known for many years asked me to take a look at benchmarking his IT organization against its peers. On the surface, this was a reasonable request. The CIO wanted to know how well he was...

How Big Oil Uses XML.
May 6, 2006... Almost every industry, from financial services to pharmaceuticals, has struggled with integrating data from legacy software or multiple vendors. The oil and gas industry is no different. In the process of drilling for oil and gas deposits...

Roadblock: Earning Respect from Business Managers.
May 6, 2006... THE OBSTACLE Steve Comstock, ExxonMobil's manager of upstream information technology, aims to ensure that new technology initiatives are aligned with the company's goals to find better and more cost-effective ways to discover, drill and...

Behind Oil Profits: A Look At ExxonMobil's Technology Alignment.
May 6, 2006... The scene was not at all flattering. The leaders of the nation's top six oil exploration and refining companies stood before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in March, hands raised, ready to be sworn in. The chief...

Calculator: Figuring Your Information Management Ratio.(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... How much of your company's resources are devoted to managing its information versus producing and delivering goods and services? I have devised a model called the Information Management Multiplier (IMM) to identify the scope of information...

Tutorial: Predicting Project Success.(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... Can you predict a project's success? Countless studies over the last three decades point to similar findings: Approximately 50% of projects you undertake will be late and/or exceed budget, and approximately 25% will be cancelled. The...

Primer: Grid Computing.
May 6, 2006... Is grid computing right for your company? Click here [link omitted] to take the quiz. What is it? An approach to pooling the computational resources of many computers--typically, low-cost ones built from commodity components--to accomplish...

Florida's Turnpike Spin With Remote Monitoring.(Florida's Turnpike Enterprise)(Company overview)
May 6, 2006... If you've driven across the sunshine state--say, to the estate of a certain four-fingered mouse--odds are good you were on roads run by Florida's Turnpike Enterprise. The division of the state's Department of Transportation operates 180...

IT Integration: The Army's Pay Misstep.
May 6, 2006... Army reserve staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly was still recovering from his Iraq War wound--an amputated lower right leg--in Abilene, Texas, when he received a disturbing note with his pay stub: The Army said it had overpaid the 23-year-old soldier 22...

Baseline Survey: The Mobile Motive.(mobile computing survey of IT executives)
May 6, 2006... What's driving mobile computing purchases by enterprises? Hint: It's not the junior executive pining to pocket the shiniest device he can get his mitts on. The clear-cut No. 1 business benefit of mobile computing applications is keeping...

How Katrina Made a Business Better.
May 6, 2006... All things considered, New Orleans-based Pan-American Life Insurance did a good job of recovering from Hurricane Katrina. Still, it wants to do better if, as is all too likely, it is tested this way again. Pan-American, which had revenue...

How Globalization Can Work for I.T.
May 6, 2006... When you visit a small- to-medium-size enterprise, you can't help but be struck by how much time and energy is sucked away by the seemingly never-ending battle just to hold things together using safety pins, rubber bands and baling wire. ...

Can You Measure Info Management?
May 6, 2006... The term "Information management" is perhaps the most over-used expression in the computer business. Google retrieved 123 million references to it, so I figured there must be a good explanation of what it means. The Google search turned up...

Survival of the Fittest--And Flexible.
May 6, 2006... The incredible pace of enterprise software company mergers and acquisitions continues. In little more than a week in April, CA announced a deal with job-scheduling tools supplier Cybermation, Red Hat agreed to acquire open-source...

The Technology of Oil Exploration.
May 6, 2006... ExxonMobil uses a global deployment of SAP to run the majority of its standard business operations, but relies heavily on proprietary applications for finding, tapping and producing oil and gas. APPLICATION PRODUCT SUPPLIER...

IBM Mainframes: Let's Make a Deal.
May 6, 2006... Suffering from a case of data overload? Sick of poor performance from distributed computing systems? If so, IBM's System z mainframes may be the cure for your malaise--as long as you can negotiate the right price for the treatment. It's...

Gotcha! Don't Let Grid Computing Trip You.
May 6, 2006... Grid computer systems--clusters of many cheap computers--provide an economical alternative to supercomputers, particularly for scientific and engineering problems like simulating an oil field's yield. But there are obstacles for deploying these...

Tutorial: Predicting Project Success.(Brief article)
May 6, 2006... Can you predict a project's success? Countless studies over the last three decades point to similar findings: Approximately 50% of projects you undertake will be late and/or exceed budget, and approximately 25% will be cancelled. The...

A Look at IBM's Supercomputers and the Oil Business.
May 6, 2006... Suffering from a case of data overload? Sick of poor performance from distributed computing systems? If so, IBM's System z mainframes may be the cure for your malaise--as long as you can negotiate the right price for the treatment. It's...

Integration: The Army's Pay Misstep.
May 6, 2006... Army reserve staff Sgt. Ryan Kelly was still recovering from his Iraq War wound--an amputated lower right leg--in Abilene, Texas, when he received a disturbing note with his pay stub: The Army said it had overpaid the 23-year-old soldier 22...

I.T. and Business Alignment: ExxonMobil's Well-Oiled Machine.
May 6, 2006... The scene was not at all flattering. The leaders of the nation's top six oil exploration and refining companies stood before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in March, hands raised, ready to be sworn in. The chief...

RFID: How Big is the Security Risk?
May 8, 2006... Critics of radio frequency identification technologies are just making noise, and technology executives shouldn't fear RFID's capabilities, a Symbol Technologies executive said late last week. Responding to concerns over RFID's security and...

Apple to Replace iBook with Intel-Based MacBook?
May 8, 2006... Speculation sprang up across Macintosh enthusiast Web sites late during the week of May 1 that Apple Computer would soon introduce a new computer model, possibly dubbed the MacBook. This MacBook would replace the consumer laptop iBook G4...

Itanium Needs Linux, but Does Linux Need Itanium?
May 8, 2006... For years now, I've been hearing about how Intel's Itanium platform was going to be the server chip to end all other server chips. It hasn't happened. I don't think it ever will happen. Recently, some of Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip...

Thin Clients Yield Large Returns.(New London Hospital is using ClearCube Technology Inc.'s ClearCube blade PCs)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... The long-term care of PCs, just like people, can be expensive. For New London Hospital, which needed to replace several hundred aging desktop PCs recently, thin clients were the answer. The hospital now has nearly 300 ClearCube blade PCs....

Microsoft Advances into High-End Clustering.
May 8, 2006... Microsoft's foray into the high-end clustering software market took a step forward May 8 with the availability of the release candidate for its Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 product, a 64-bit operating system for industry-standard x64...

Check Point Pitches UTM Security for Enterprises.(unified threat management solutions developed by Check Point Software Technologies Inc.)(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Check Point Software Technologies introduced its newest package of enterprise security applications on May 8, rolling out new capabilities for using so-called unified threat management technologies alongside its existing VPN and anti-malware...

Spending On Mobile Computing On The Rise.
May 8, 2006... What's driving enterprise spending on mobile computing? Baseline's survey of 143 information-technology executives shows a clear No. 1 reason: Companies want to improve how employees collaborate and communicate. Get the scoop on mobile...

Thin Clients II: The Comeback.
May 8, 2006... David Foss needed new computers, stat. As the CIO at New London Hospital in New London, N.H., Foss had to devise a method for replacing the facility's entire aging fleet of desktop PCs while better securing its sensitive patient data, easing...

Report Casts Doubt on Vista's Security Impact.
May 8, 2006... An early review of the much-publicized security features due in Microsoft's next-generation Windows Vista operating system concludes that the tools may be so unfriendly to users that they delay enterprises' move to adopt the new product. ...

Online Extra: Baseline's Mobile Computing Survey.
May 8, 2006... Enterprises continue to pump more data outside of the office. In 2006, large companies--those with more than 1,000 employees--are planning to spend 5% to 14% more on mobile computing projects than last year, according to a Baseline survey of...

Case Study: Backcountry.com Bets the Shop on Open Source.(Brief article)
May 8, 2006... Backcountry.com is a small player in the outdoor sporting goods market. But thanks in part to an unconventional approach to IT, it's experiencing eye-popping growth, nearly doubling its revenues in 2005. How? By using a variety of open source...

Microsoft Readies 'Project Bronx' Office Live Services.(Brief article)
May 9, 2006... Microsoft is readying an addition to its Office Live services lineup that will target mobile devices. Code-named Project Bronx, the technology could be released to beta later this month, according to a post on the Neowin.net Web site. ...

Tech Support: How to Draw the Line.(customer service)(Brief article)
May 9, 2006... A poster on Ask Slashdot on May 8 requested advice on how to reduce or turn down requests for technical support requests, especially from users who aren't necessarily clients. Click here [link omitted] to read more about the conflicts and...

Microsoft Patches Two Critical Vulnerabilities.
May 9, 2006... As expected, Microsoft issued patches for two critical vulnerabilities in its software on May 9, including flaws in its Windows and Exchange products, as part of its monthly security update. While the company's latest patch distribution is...

Novell Aims Linux Suite at Small Business Server Customers.
May 9, 2006... On May 9, Novell Inc. announced a new package, the Novell Open Workgroup Suite, that is intended to go head to head with Microsoft's Small Business Server. In no coincidence at all, Microsoft had just announced its release candidate for...

Symantec Touts New Server, Storage Foundations as IT Standards.
May 9, 2006... SAN FRANCISCO--Symantec executives and customers extolled the virtue of "standards" on May 9 at the Symantec Vision conference here, as the company introduced its bid to provide that standard, a soup-to-nuts integrated process solution for the...

Is 'Big Daddy' Choking Google?
May 9, 2006... Web site operators are clamoring to understand what can best be described as an ongoing disturbance in the Google Force. Google's search engine, once a clean, lean indexing machine, from a Webmaster's perspective has been slipping badly...

Silicon Graphics Goes Chapter 11.
May 9, 2006... Silicon Graphics (SGI), the company whose high-end workstations have powered everything from oil and gas reservoir simulators to the computer wizardry behind the Lord of the Rings film series, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Monday....

Virginia Official Discusses the Fight Against Cyber-Crime.(Gene Fishel speaks at the Ziff Davis "Enterprise Applications Virtual Tradeshow")
May 9, 2006... Gene Fishel, assistant attorney general in the state of Virginia's Attorney General's office, works with businesses, IT professionals, citizens and law enforcement agencies to track down and prosecute computer criminals, in both state and...

Big Oil Versus Microsoft.
May 9, 2006... Microsoft has long held the crown as the technology world's biggest generator of cash. But as Americans empty their wallets at the pumps on $3-plus per gallon of gas, a new cash king is emerging: ExxonMobil. According to the latest figures...

IBM Tries to Resuscitate Interest in Big Iron.
May 10, 2006... Seventy-five percent of the college participants in IBM's "Master the Mainframe" competition, which ended Dec. 31, 2005, had never logged onto a mainframe before the challenge, an ominous sign of the drain in relevant technicians to come. ...

British Computer Hacker Set for U.S. Extradition.
May 10, 2006... LONDON (Reuters)--A British computer expert accused by Washington of the world's "biggest military hack of all time" should be extradited to the United States to stand trial, a court ruled on Wednesday. Gary McKinnon, 40, was arrested last...

Audit Clears MS Phishing Filter as Privacy Risk.
May 10, 2006... A third-party audit of the new phishing filter built into the Internet Explorer 7 browser and the MSN Toolbar has given the technology a thumbs up on the sensitive issue of user privacy. Jefferson Wells International, an IT auditing group,...

Report: U.S. Lags in Health IT.(Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development)
May 10, 2006... The United States lags far behind other countries in its adoption and funding of health IT, according to a study published in the May/June issue of Health Affairs. At the same time, the United States pays much more per person for health care...

Are CIOs Ignoring Web 2.0 Technologies?(chief information officers)(Brief article)
May 10, 2006... Is IT innovation just the privilege of IT organizations? That appears to be the attitude of many IT executives. According to the June 2005 Innovation survey, CIOs believe that IT has a critical role to play in innovation, particularly process...

Reality Check: Stressing Out Microsoft's SQL Server.
May 10, 2006... Six months after Microsoft officially shipped SQL Server 2005, First American Title Insurance--which operates one of the biggest SQL Server databases in existence--still hasn't cut over to the new version. Why not? Larry Godec, CIO of the...

Spyware, Rootkit Maker Stops Distribution.(ContextPlus)
May 10, 2006... ContextPlus, an adware company implicated in a large number of stealth rootkit infections, has stopped distributing its software, citing concerns over the practices of some distribution partners. In a brief note posted on its home page,...

Dell's Secret Channel.
May 11, 2006... Dell and the channel are secretly growing fond of each other. More and more VARs (value-added resellers), indifferent to shrinking hardware margins and prodded by price-sensitive customers, say they are buying Dell computers for their...

AJAX: Are You Experienced?(Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)(extensible markup language)(AJAX Experience conference )
May 11, 2006... SAN FRANCISCO--AJAX has taken the developer world by storm, but it could be even more effective with the right browser capabilities, said two AJAX experts at the inaugural AJAX Experience conference here. Dion Almaer and Ben Galbraith,...