Trevor Floyd

All right, Microsoft, 'fess up: How many takes did you need for your video of Samsung Intrepid's TellMe feature, which sends text messages and searches the Web by voice, to go smoothly? One that, given some of the things we've heard about Windows Mobile 6.5 in general, is particularly worthy of praise. Because honestly, it's a pretty impressive feature.

See, voice dialing has never really excited me. Using voice to replace typing, however, can be more convenient in more scenarios. It's useful for those occasions when your hands are busy, but anyone comfortable with their phone can generally get to a number easily with buttons. Here's how it works: The Sprint Intrepid has a dedicated button for the TellMe feature. Then, you can just dictate your message, and the phone will transcribe it.

Press it, and you can start a text message by saying "text" and the contact's name. You are, of course, able to check it before sending the message. I'm aware that the Google Mobile app for Blackberry, Android, and the iPhone also lets you search the Web by voice (and it's fairly accurate, too), but the difference with the Intrepid is hardware. The search function is even easier, as you can just say what you're looking for, and in one step the phone initiates a Bing search. Even on the iPhone, you've still got to slide out of the phone's lock system or get out of whatever app you're using, find the Google Mobile app, and then lift the phone to your ear to start a voice search. Indeed, I'd like to see other phone-makers (ahem, Apple) extend their phones' voice dialers to include these functions.

By fusing TellMe's voice features to a dedicated button on the hardware, Microsoft and Samsung make texting and searching much easier. Wait, did I just say other tech companies should copy Microsoft? I must be in the Bizarro world.

Startup Cloudera is introducing a set of applications on Friday for working with Hadoop, the open-source framework for large-scale data processing and analysis. It allows an application workload to be spread over clusters of commodity hardware, and also includes a distributed file system. Cloudera, which provides Hadoop support to enterprises, developed the new browser-based application suite to simplify the process of using Hadoop, according to CEO Mike Olson. "It's an easy-to-use GUI suitable for people who don't have a lot of Hadoop expertise," Olson said. "The big Web properties with sophisticated and talented PhDs have been successful [with it], but ordinary IT shops ... have had a harder time." Hadoop is known for its behind-the-scenes role crunching oceans of information for Web operations like Facebook and Yahoo. But although the technology is "at its best" when data volumes get into multiple terabytes, Hadoop has relevance for a wide variety of companies, according to Olson. "It's increasingly easy to get your hands on that much data these days," especially from machine-generated information like Web logs, he said.

Cloudera and its partners are fine-tuning the suite, which is now in beta, before issuing a general release. The browser-based application set is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux, and includes four modules: a file browser; a tool for creating, executing and archiving jobs; a tool for monitoring the status of jobs; and a "cluster health dashboard" for keeping tabs on a cluster's performance. Hadoop needs many more tools like it, according to analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research. "If Hadoop is to consistently handle workloads as diverse and demanding as those of [massively parallel processing] relational DBMSes, it needs a lot of tools and infrastructure," Monash said via e-mail. "The three leaders in developing those are Yahoo, Cloudera, and Facebook. There's a long way to go."

As 2009 winds down, are you having trouble remembering exactly what you spent the past year doing? Anyway, if you'd like a bit of a jumpstart to the old memory, Apple's posted a feature called iTunes Rewind 2009 on the iTunes Store, recapping the best music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks, and apps of 2009. Music As you might expect, Michael Jackson gets prominent billing-the iTunes staff has picked him as the artist of the year. That happens to me sometimes: for example, it only started snowing on the east coast this week, and already I can't remember ever being warm.

Kings of Leon's Only By the Night took top album of the year, and best new artist went to the seemingly omni-present Lady GaGa. iTunes also doled out the same awards to each genre of music it sells in the store, so if you're itching for the best in hip-hop, jazz, or western, take a look. The list of top sales and rentals in the store was topped by-duh-Twilight, surprise second-placer Pineapple Express, and Quantum of Solace (Star Trek placed fifth, though it's only been out for a few weeks). TV shows Television, now, that's my bailiwick. There's also a list of the top-selling songs of 2009-and strangely enough, I own not a single one of them: "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas took the number one spot, followed by Flo Rida's "Right Round," and Lady GaGa's "Poker Face". Movies The movies section features twelve top titles, including Pixar's Up, J.J. Abrams's Star Trek and indie titles like (500) Days of Summer and Sunshine Cleaning. iTunes pimped Fox's freshman comedy Glee for the best season in that category, with the top episode going to an installment of 30 Rock. The store also breaks out a number of other categories-I was pleased to see Dollhouse's unaired "Epitaph One" taking the top episode for sci-fi.

Drama saw an AMC sweep with sophomore series Breaking Bad taking best season and Mad Men's pivotal "The Gypsy and the Hobo" nabbing best episode. The top-selling season list was headed by Mad Men's third season, and followed by Lost's season five, and 24 season seven. Apps Meanwhile, in apps, iTunes made a distinction between the year's best and best-selling apps and games. Top-selling episodes were headlined by Family Guy, Gossip Girl, and Lost. Best game awards went to Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Real Racing, and Zenonia, among others, while top sellers included The Sims 3, The Oregon Trail, and the apparently Teflon Tiger Woods PGA Tour.

Free apps were apparently not recognized, however. Best apps, on the other hand, were headlined by titles like CBS Sports: Live College Games, Convertbot, and Leaf Trombone: World Stage, while the top-selling apps included MLB.com At Bat, QuickOffice Mobile Office Suite, and SlingPlayer Mobile. Audiobooks In the audiobooks category, the best of the year included fiction titles like The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley, Under the Dome by Stephen King, and Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked (which, incidentally, I just finished in dead-tree format and can't recommend enough). The non-fiction list was topped by Dave Cullen's Columbine, Thomas E. Ricks's The Gamble, and Tracy Morgan's I Am the New Black. Philosophy. On the best-seller side, William P. Young's The Shack amazingly edged out all four Twilight books slavering at its heels to take the fiction side, while Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture topped the non-fiction section, followed by Sun Tzu's unabridged The Art of War and The Ricky Gervais Guide to... Podcasts Finally, the best in podcasts was topped by The Adam Carolla Podcast for this year in audio, CNBC's The Suze Orman Show for this year in video, This American Life for "classic" audio, and The Onion News Network for "classic" video.

Except, of course, the actually important things. And that's it for Apple's 2009 year in review: everything you need to remember about this year compiled in a series of helpful lists of media. For that, we recommend shutting down your copy of iTunes, firing up your copy of iPhoto and browsing through the last year of photos for some real memories.

Among Microsoft's trials and tribulations in the mergers and acquisitions space, a Microsoft official on Tuesday evening cited fear of dealing with the company as an obstacle Microsoft has had to overcome. Brown made the comments at a Churchill Club event in Mountain View, Calif., during a panel discussion on mergers and acquisitions that also featured representatives from Cisco, Google, and Accel Partners. [ Microsoft and Yahoo recently agreed to partner in an effort to better compete with Google. | Stay ahead of the key tech business news with InfoWorld's Today's Headlines: First Look newsletter. ] After the event, Brown said he was referring to a time when he started at the company years ago.  In general, people were just scared of Microsoft, he said. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 "[For a while] there was a fear of dealing with Microsoft and we've worked really hard to try to overcome that," said Marc Brown, managing director of corporate development at Microsoft. This fear existed with both the entrepreneurial and venture capital communities, said Brown. The three technology companies represented on the panel have made waves over the years with their acquisitions.  Cisco is known for numerous purchases, ranging from Scientific Atlanta to Grand Junction Networks; Microsoft has acquired companies such as Great Plains Software and attempted to buy Yahoo, while Google bought YouTube and others.

Panelists discussed their companies' mergers and acquisitions strategies. "The M&A and acquisitions strategy's pretty straightforward," Brown said. "We are a technology buyer. Panel moderator Steve Smith, senior managing partner with Arma Partners, noted Microsoft actually began with an acquisition. "[Founder Bill] Gates bought PC DOS for something under $100,000 and turned it into a thing called Windows and a company called Microsoft," Smith said. Most of our acquisitions are of earlier-stage companies."  Microsoft then leverages sales and distribution channels and processes to bring acquired technologies to the widest audience possible, he said. "What I would say is M&A  is not really the strategy. We start with the idea of what should be our growth strategy," said Carmel. M&A is the tool," said Charles Carmel, vice president of corporate development for Cisco. "The strategy is really about capturing innovation." Cisco realizes it does not have a monopoly on good ideas, he said. "We don't start with the idea of what company we should buy. When pondering an acquisition, Google looks at the caliber of leadership being brought over to the company from the acquired venture, along with factors including time to market and opening of new markets, said David Lawee, Google vice president of corporate development.

Panelists also cited increasing interest in potential overseas acquisitions in places such as China. "There's nothing to prevent us from being as aggressive internationally," Lawee said. The company's acquisition of Urchin resulted in the Google Analytics platform while Keyhole, also bought by Google, became Google Earth, Lawee said. But panelists declined to make any predictions when asked whether the European Union should approve the planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle. Tuesday's event was held at Microsoft's Silicon Valley offices. They also would not discuss what impact this acquisition would have on their own businesses. "Everybody's got their own twists and turns to their M&A activities," Carmel said. "No comment," Brown added. This story, "Fear of Microsoft subsides in mergers and acquisitions arena," was originally published at InfoWorld.com.

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Virtualization and cloud computing has taken off, despite strong concerns lingering over how companies can secure and manage those apps and data. Over the next year, Novell plans to release eight new products or upgrades to aid in what it calls "intelligent workload management." The upcoming Novell Identity Manager 4 will add the new ability for IT managers embed identity management and other security features into both Web-hosted and virtualized apps, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian said in an interview last week. Novell Inc. says it can help companies with both sides of the equation, accelerating the creation of virtualized and cloud apps with built-in security.

Novell Identity Manager 4 will arrive by the middle of next year. These will work closely with a Novell's Suse Appliance Toolkit, which is due in the first quarter next year. That will work closely with Novell Cloud Security Service, also due in 2010, in order to extend identity and security policies onto apps and data hosted in the cloud. The Toolkit helps ISVs and large enterprises quickly build and deploy virtualized appliances, i.e. self-contained apps prepackaged with a thin operating system layer that can be moved from server to cloud-based server without crash or conflict. The most popular is a DIY version of the Chrome OS built with Google 's browser running on Novell's OpenSUSE Linux.

Hovsepian said customers are already starting to use Novell's existing generation of virtual appliance building tools in a major way. "In the last three months, we've had 40,000 registered users come into our system and build 100,000 different virtualized appliances and workloads," Hovsepian said. Hovsepian said that virtual appliance has been downloaded 750,000 times. Gerry Gebel, an analyst with the Burton Group, agreed, saying that other leading players in the identity management and security space, including CA Inc., IBM Corp. and Oracle Inc., haven't laid out a comprehensive roadmap for virtualized and hosted management. "This is pretty significant," he said. "It's the kind of capability that more advanced organizations with large virtual environments are going to need, as they continually stop, start, reactivate and archive workloads." Companies who push forward on virtualization or cloud computing, or let their employees and departments do so, without setting up an identity management and security framework, are putting themselves in "real danger," Gebel said. "You can't dismiss security and identity management just because the computing model is changing. Novell is also upgrading its Platespin virtual management product so that users can use it as their single console for managing all of these workloads, whether they are run virtually or hosted in the cloud, Hovsepian said. "We are way ahead of everyone else," he said. It's no excuse," he said. Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata Inc., said it will be a challenge for Novell to make all of its tools work together elegantly. "A lot of moving parts and the trick is to get everything glued together in a coherent way," Haff said. "I also don't see it as fundamentally different from what other vendors are doing, whether it is VMware, IBM, Citrix, or Microsoft ."

Gebel said Novell has the technical goods to back up its marketing push, citing a demonstration of the beta for Novell Identity Manager 4, which he said was "pretty impressive." "The integration with the virtualization and cloud workloads looked like it was working well," he said.

Ethernet switch vendor Extreme Networks is replacing its CEO and laying off 70 employees in an effort to quickly improve the company's bottom line and set it up to run profitably with lower revenues. Canepa receives $639,354 severance. CEO Mark Canepa, who took the position in 2006, has resigned, but will remain for a short period to help recently hired CFO Bob Corey transition to Acting CEO. The company is seeking a permanent replacement.

As part of the restructuring, the company also eliminated the job of chief counsel, getting rid of Robert Schlossman, and replacing him with Vice Presideint Diane Honda, according to a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company didn't say where the 70 layoffs would come, but it represents about 9% of Extreme's workforce. Judging from the company Web site, the head of human resources and head software developer are also gone. Most Notable IT Layoffs of 2009  The moves will lower the company's expenses by $2.5 million per quarter, with the larger goal being to have the company break even if it makes $70 million per quarter. The company hasn't reported its financial statement for the quarter ended Sept. 27, but it said earlier this month that it expected to come up $14.4 million shy of what Wall Street analysts forecasted. The measures will cost the company a one-time $4.2 million hit.

The analysts projected Extreme would take in $66 million but the actual revenues will be more like $80.4 million, the company said. The company's stock prices hit a low of close to a dollar in March, struggled back to just over $3 last month then dipped to about $2.25 over the past weeks. "They're in a tough spot," says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee group. "This is a company that's truly having a hard time finding its way." He says the company is smaller than its main competitors, HP, IBM, Cisco, Juniper and Brocade (which has reportedly put itself up for sale).  Extreme makes a range of switches from edge, to aggregation to core, as well as wireless switches and security gear. A the time Canepa blamed the company's North American business as being particularly soft because some deals it had hoped for fell through and others were delayed beyond the end of the quarter. The company burst onto the networking scene in the mid-1990s as one in a pack of Gigabit Ethernet and Layer 3 switching pioneers and differentiated itself, among other ways, by uniquely packaging its technology in purple boxes.  "When you look at all the network vendors out there, what problem is it that Extreme is trying to solve that isn't being solved by somebody else?" Kerravala says. "If you look at data centers, all the emphasis is on converged fabric, and they just don't have a roadmap to get there. They'll get smaller and smaller and continue to exist off their installed base until their assets get acquired by somebody else." Insiders and channel partners said the firm seemed to be too focused on long range strategic planning instead of trying to figure out how to survive the dire economy.

I think they'll go the route of Enterasys. Extreme's Chairman of the Board Gordon Stitt said in a written statement: "Management and the Board decided to take this action to streamline our operations, reduce our breakeven and create an operating model that will position Extreme Networks for sustained profitability as quickly as possible. We remain committed to the products, markets, channels and customers and to continuing to introduce new and innovative products." These reductions have been taken across the entire organization.

This won't be a long post so I'm going to make you wait until the end before revealing the sum of money this plaintiff wants to extract from Gartner because Gartner had the audacity to relegate its software to "niche player" status in the firm's legendary "Magic Quadrant." (Opinion) On Friday, a judge in San Jose will hear arguments regarding Gartner's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed in May by ZL Technologies that seeks to not only eviscerate the Magic Quadrant but also punish Gartner severely for ever having foisted it upon the IT world. (That some of you are cheering grants ZL's case not a scintilla of validity, but point taken.) Having spent too much of my day reading four separate documents filed in the case, allow me to simplify the arguments: San Jose-based ZL Technologies accuses Gartner of "defamation, trade libel, false advertising, unfair competition, and negligent interference with prospective economic advantage." All of these purported wrongs allegedly arose from the decision of Gartner analyst Carolyn DiCenzo to place ZL's e-mail archiving software in the "niche" corner of the Magic Quadrant - along with other niche players (in this market) such as IBM, HP and EMC - instead of in the "market leaders" quadrant with the likes of market leader Symantec. You can read the original complaint here. ZL takes wounded exception to the fact that Gartner considers such squishy criteria as vision and marketing ability when determining quadrant placement.

Gartner responds that it is known far and wide among IT professionals as a purveyor of expert opinion - "views" is the word it emphasizes to the court - that are designed to facilitate technology purchasing decisions. In a follow-up filing, ZL sputters and spews that Gartner cannot be allowed to claim First Amendment protections because … well, well … I'm sorry, but it doesn't even warrant a summarization. Gartner's reports - including the Magic Quadrants - amount to nothing more or less than protected free speech, the company argues here. You can read it here. And, whatever one may think of Gartner's judgment - in this case, or any other - it isn't actionable as long as First Amendment law rules.

Gartner's response to that response demonstrates why lawyers get paid more than trade-press pundits, in that the company's attorneys manage to maintain their composure and point out yet one more time that ZL isn't really complaining about anything more than Gartner's judgment. You can read that reply here. Try $132 million, "and" - emphasis mine - "that such damages be trebled." They want $396 million? … That's not a judgment request, it's an exit strategy. OK, so how much does ZL want for having been so maligned and mistreated? But, wait, there's more.

They want attorneys' fees, too, naturally. ZL wants the judge to order Gartner to fund an advertising campaign to "correct any misperceptions resulting from Gartner's unlawful acts," and "disgorge all profits" derived from said acts. Done? Oh, not by a long-shot: ZL wants the court to impose "punitive damages … in the amount of $1,300,000,000." Sell it to the judge.

She was one of the first women to shatter IT's glass ceiling and become a top technology executive at Xerox Corp. back in the 1980s. She has been a senior vice president at Citibank, CIO for the city of Phoenix and a director at American Express. So what is the one question that Laraine Rodgers, now president of her own consulting company, Phoenix-based Navigating Transitions, has been asked more than any other? " 'Will you fix my PC?' I get asked that all the time. In the late 1990s, U.S. Vice President Al Gore requested her help with his "reinventing government" program. It's a situation I'm very familiar with," she laughs.

One network administrator tells how she has come home to find PCs sitting on her front porch - new "patients" from friends and relatives who heard through the grapevine that she had a special talent for ridding computers of viruses, pop-ups and spam. There's no doubt that family - and friends of family, and friends of friends of family - gravitate toward their relatives in IT for help with any and all things digital: cell phones, cameras, GPS gadgets, big-screen TVs, electronic pinball games, you name it. Every IT person seems to have a few friends-and-family fix-it stories. We asked IT folks to tell us about their most unusual support requests; here are some of our favorites. Even CIOs can't say no to their loved ones' pleas for tech help. Google guru saves day, basks in adulation Google CIO Ben Fried says that many of the phone calls he receives from his 74-year-old father, an author with 23 history and political science books to his credit, involve questions about either hardware or software. "This is a man whose main tool prior to getting a Mac not that long ago was a 1938 Smith-Corona typewriter," Fried says.

Upon closer examination, Fried discovered that his father had written the first 275 pages of the book he was working on as a footnote - rather than as a document - in Microsoft Word. Fried doesn't mind fielding unusual support calls, like the one he received from his dad complaining that his computer was running very slow. Fried simply copied and pasted the manuscript into a text document - a feat that his father responded to by saying, "Son, you're a genius." After that, Fried says, the volume of calls from his dad's friends stepped up for a while. CIO Jeff Steinhorn describes himself as "the default help desk for my wife, my kids, my friends and my parents." So it wasn't at all unusual for him when his 11-year-old son called him at work with "an emergency situation at home." Steinhorn recalls, "He had just ordered four tickets online to an exciting amusement park we typically treat the kids to once a year, and he needed to get them printed." But the printer wasn't working, and Steinhorn couldn't troubleshoot and fix it over the phone. "I know my son's e-mail ID and password - as every parent of an 11-year-old should - so I went into his account and found the e-mail confirmation number, so that he could take that to the entrance gate and have the tickets reprinted there," he recalls. Hess honcho is family hero Hess Corp. But Steinhorn got more than he bargained for.

The Steinhorn family did make it to the amusement park - several times, in fact, since they had a dozen tickets and never managed to get a refund for the extras. "And looking on the bright side, in the end it was just a printer jam, so the actual equipment failure did not end up costing me anything." Accenture expert makes multiple connections Chris Crawford, a global applications architect for internal functions at Accenture in Chicago, recalls the panicked call he received from a good friend who had just purchased and set up a very expensive sound system for his home. He found a confirmation for 12 tickets at a cost of about $500 charged to his credit card. "I can only assume that he hit Enter a couple times too many," Steinhorn says. "I was much less concerned about the printer than I was about the season's [worth of] passes to the park I had just funded." The story does have a happy ending. His friend couldn't discern any significant difference in sound quality - despite the great amount of money he had paid for the system. Crawford adjusted the wire and was an instant hero. As it turned out, a woofer on one of the speakers wasn't hooked up properly. Crawford says he's especially busy with requests around the holidays when friends and family want to know which electronic gadgets he recommends for gift-giving.

Once, for instance, he was summoned to a former CEO's home to fix a phone. (He plugged it back in.) But he's also gone above and beyond answering calls for high-tech help. He even started an internal blog at Accenture where colleagues post their favorite tips and recommendations. "I like computers so much that it's fun to be an expert," Crawford says. "It can also come in handy as an ice breaker at cocktail parties." Amerisource Bergen ace gives new meaning to "software support" Tom Murphy, senior vice president and CIO at Amerisource Bergen, a $70 billion pharmaceutical services company based in Valley Forge, Pa., says he has certainly received his fair share of tech fix-it requests throughout his career. He has been asked to fix colleagues' personal work-life balance issues, and once, he recalls, he even had a request to see if he could help fix a marriage. "For whatever reason, people have always approached me to discuss personal issues," Murphy says. "To me, the best part of my job is helping to fix the real 'software' - i.e., human - challenges."

Google today rolled out Social Search within the Google Labs site. The Google Labs page explains that with Social Search, you "sign in to Google and do a search. Google announced the new experimental search tool at last week's Web 2.0 Summit.

If there's relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called 'Results from people in your social circle'." Limited by Your Social Circle Ok. I'm game. It only took one search for me to figure out that my 'social circle' needed some work. I clicked the button on the Google Labs page to 'Join this experiment'. Now, when I visit the main Google search page I get a special Google Experimental Labs logo to let me know I am using the cutting edge Social Search capabilities. As far as Google Social Search is concerned, your 'social circle' is defined by the contacts you have built up in Gmail and the sites that you have linked to in your Google profile. I have a Gmail account and a Google profile, but I don't rely on either regularly so the network of contacts I have established there is scarce at best.

Social Search can incorporate people you're connected with in Twitter, FriendFeed, or LinkedIn, but only if you have established those connections within your Google profile. My search results demonstrated to me that I will have to invest some time expanding my social circle within Google in order for Social Search to provide any value to me. Social Search is a sort of hybrid approach to real-time search indexing and social networking which provides posts and content from contacts in your social network within your search results. Where's Facebook? It isn't hard to see then that the proverbial elephant in the room is the conspicuous absence of content from Facebook, the biggest social networking site there is. Aside from pulling publicly available content from your social circle to include in your search results, Social Search borrows from the six degrees of separation concept leveraged in LinkedIn to provide content from the social circle of your social circle as well.

Interestingly, when Microsoft and Facebook announced that Bing would begin providing real-time indexing of Facebook status updates, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg stated that no money changed hands in the arrangement and that Facebook is "not trying to make money on data." Sandberg's statement begs the question 'if Facebook isn't trying to make money on data, what is the hold up with coming to a similar deal with Google?' A follow up question also comes to mind: 'if Google Social Search doesn't include posts and content from the biggest social networking site, how much value can it really provide?' Innovative Approach Google Social Search brings some unique elements to the concept of web search and real-time indexing. I spoke with Robert Scoble, technology evangelist and social networking guru. He explained that with Twitter searches you get results from everybody, with FriendFeed you get results only from your friends, but with Social Search you get results from two levels- your own social circle and the contacts of your friends in your social circle, expanding the sphere and providing greater value. He likes what he sees so far from Google's experimental service. Scoble pointed out that this approach "could eliminate spam." Restricting your search to only your direct social circle limits the potential results, but the Twitter-style search of indexing every public post provides too much opportunity for spam. He said "If I am following you I know you won't spam me, and you won't have spammers in your network.

According to Scoble, the Google Social Search approach will weed out spam. If I start getting spam from you, I can just drop you from my social circle." Users will be more discriminating about who they connect with, and more diligent about protecting their own reputation. In a video overview of Google Social Search, Google stresses the ability to customize the social circle and opt out of any service. As with all things social networking, Social Search has to walk the tightrope between sharing information with the social network, and protecting privacy. Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience.

He tweets as @PCSecurityNews and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com.

In the days leading up to NASA's crashing of two halves of a space probe into the moon, doubters turned to the Internet to express fears that the lunar bombing would have negative effects on the Earth. In a quest to find out if there's water on the moon , NASA sent two separated halves of a spacecraft crashing into a permanently dark crater on the south pole of the moon this morning. Scientists and astronomers were quick to step forward to refute any rumors and quell concerns, but rumors are still circulating online. The crashes were meant to send up a huge debris plume that could be measured and analyzed for evidence of water ice hiding in the cold, dark crater.

But detractors were quick to post online warnings about possible negative effects of the experiment. With NASA still hopeful to one day create a viable human outpost on the moon , it would be helpful for anyone there to find water rather than haul it up from Earth. Amy Ephron, an author and screenwriter, wrote an article for the Huffington Post earlier this week, questioning NASA for taking the risks associated with sending two spacecraft crashing into the surface of the moon. "Who did the risk assessment? Ephron was far from alone in her concerns. I mean, what if something goes wrong?" asked Ephron. "I could say something scientifically lame and ask, 'What if it gets thrown off its axis?' or something funny and suggest something (that I actually sort of believe), like, 'What if it somehow throws off the astrology?' Or that we're not risking - as we have the earth with continued experiments of this kind - sending the solar system out of balance.

The Chicago Surrealist Movement posted an online petition , which was signed by 560 people, calling for NASA to halt the bombing of the moon. Faith Vilas, director of the MMT Observatory , said she's been amazed by such negative reactions to the mission. And people against the LCROSS mission started their own Twitter presence with @helpsavethemoon . While some people said they felt NASA's plan was simply too aggressive an attack on the Earth's orbiter, some claimed that the impacts would change the Earth's tides, throw the moon off its axis or even affect women's menstrual cycles. There's simply no danger, she added. "The moon is impacted by nature and meteors all the time," said Vilas. "Nature has done much more damage to the moon than we just did. What we did was nothing. We were not likely to have any effect on the moon at all.

We didn't have much of an impact at all." Bruce Betts, director of projects at The Planetary Society , said in an email to Computerworld that this morning's crashes will have no negative impact on the moon or the Earth. "The spacecraft are far too tiny compared to the moon, in fact, to have any significant effect on the moon's orbit or dynamics," he added. "The impact might be likened to a gnat hitting the windshield of a truck."

It's hard to imagine NASA could face more challenges than the ones it stared at in October. On the cloudier side, the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee said NASA faces significant challenges in continuing the manned space flight program. On the good side, the space agency had a couple major successes first with the NASA LCROSS satellites successfully crashing into the moon looking for water and then the Ares X rocket launch that went off without a hitch at the end of the month. Then the GAO said NASA network faces myriad security problems.

That was the conclusion of the Augustine Review of United States Human Space Flight Plan Committee report delivered to the White House today. Here's a look at those NASA stories and more from October: NASA's future: Now the space battle beginsWhen it comes down to it, NASA is the most accomplished space organization in the world but its human spaceflight activities are at a tipping point, primarily due to a mismatch of goals and money. The report's 157-pages worth of findings will now be debated and in the end, dictate the future of NASA and space flight operations. The short test flight - about 2 minutes - will provide NASA an early opportunity to look at hardware, models, facilities and ground operations associated with the mostly new Ares I launch vehicle. NetworkWorld Extra:12 mad science projects that could shake the world10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmos "Frickin fantastic" launch of NASA Ares X rocket NASA saysWith a hiss and roar NASA's Ares X rocket blasted into the atmosphere this at about 11:33 am EST taking with it a variety of test equipment and sensors but also high hopes for the future of the US space agency. NASA network security torchedWhile NASA may be focused on keeping its manned space flight plans intact, apparently it has seriously neglected the security of its networks.

NASA teams with Air Force to step up commercial space paceAs it looks to significantly reshape its future, NASA today said it would partner with the US Air Force Research Laboratory to develop a technology roadmap for use of reusable commercial spaceships. Watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office issued a 53-page report pretty much ripping the space agency's network security strategy stating that NASA has significant problems protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the information and variety of networks supporting its mission centers. The study of reusable launch vehicle, or RLVs will focus on identifying technologies and assessing their potential use to accelerate the development of commercial reusable launch vehicles that have improved reliability, availability, launch turn-time, robustness and significantly lower costs than current launch systems, NASA stated. NASA spacecraft crash into the moonNASA' Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellites (LCROSS) took dead aim and crashed into the moon around 7:31 am ESD. Watching the results on NASA TV, scientists were pleased with the impact of the two satellites. The study results will provide roadmaps with recommended government technology tasks and milestones for different vehicle categories. The impact of the $80 million LCROSS satellites into the moon was to create what the space agency hopes is an ice-filled a debris plume that can be analyzed for water content.

The space agency said on Oct. 15 it will start a series of 17 flights to study changes to Antarctica's sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. NASA takes ice hunt Earth-boundWhile NASA is crashing into the moon to look for ice, it's also looking for the frozen stuff here on Earth, only in a much more conventional way. The flights are part of what NASA calls Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year project that is the largest airborne survey ever made of ice at Earth's polar regions. The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields and updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million, NASA stated. NASA says 200-yard long asteroid will miss EarthNASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid known as Apophis and now say it has only a very slim chance of banging into Earth. NASA Ares rocket battles lightning strikesNASA's Ares I-X test rocket has been delayed today in part because of the number of lightning strikes in the area - 154 since last evening, NASA said.

That's because NASA built an enormous lightning protection system at the Kennedy Space Center that will not only protect people and equipment but collects strike information for analysis by launch managers. While NASA can't control the weather, the Ares launch pad and surrounding area as well protected from lighting strikes as can be.

I just got back from the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles and I am very excited. The attendees included developers, end users, graphic artists, small businesses … you name it. This event attracted some 6,000 people, each paying between $595 to attend for a single day and $1,695 for late registration to attend all three days.

Adobe brings Flash apps to the iPhone The event occupied the West Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center, every conference room and theater in the complex, and took over the enormous Nokia Theater opposite the LACC for various presentations. There was a lot to be impressed about and one of the technologies getting a lot of attention was augmented reality (AR). AR is the technique of overlaying graphics on an image of the real world such that the graphics enhance and recontextualize the scene. In short, it's a massive show and, considering the harsh economic times, an amazing success that underscores the vibrancy and scope of the Adobe market. AR has been used for years in the military in heads-up displays in fighter aircraft where the pilot's view is enhanced with markers highlighting other aircraft (note that data such as airspeed that is also shown on heads-up displays is not, strictly speaking, augmented reality as it is not an integrated part of the visualize context of the scene). The connection between the Adobe conference and AR is that developers favor the use of Flash content to provide the visual overlay for an AR scene. Alliban, who works for Skive, a London digital agency, which does some amazing work, showed a number of his AR projects that were visually stunning as well as one project that, should you have doubts about the business potential of AR, should change your mind: The USPS Virtual Box Simulator. The whole Flash model combined with the impressive 3D features now available in a number of Adobe products (check out the 3D functions built-in to Photoshop CS4 Extended – amazing!). At the conference, a great presentation by Jesse Freeman and James Alliban showcased some impressive examples that explored both the artistic and business potential of augmented reality.

Developed by AKQA, an international digital agency, the Virtual Box Simulator is a Web application that lets you check whether something you want to ship will fit in one of the USPS flat rate shipping boxes as well as order real, physical boxes. You then print out a "target" – a black and white image that the AR application uses to determine the scene geometry. To use the Virtual Box Simulator you need a Web cam pointing at a table. When you hold this target so the camera can see it, the target is displayed on your computer screen is overlaid with a semi-transparent USPS box - move and rotate the target and the virtual box also moves simultaneously. You can change box sizes and alter the transparency of the virtual box and, when satisfied, use the same Web application to order your shipping supplies. If you can lay the target (and therefore the virtual box) on the table and place the thing to be shipped on the target it is very easy to whether the thing actually fits the box.

While you might say that if you had the actual boxes to hand you could easily test the real fit and therefore the Virtual Box Simulator is more for show that misses the point. Augmented Reality looks like it is about to take off, big time. The point is that this is actually useful and useable and applies to the real world, it isn't just an art project or a test of the technology. Not only are people talking about the concept and producing useful examples, but the marketplace is making the building process easier with libraries that combine Flash with AP such as FLARToolKit and the library wrapper FLARManager. I expect to see a lot more augmented reality not only at next year's Adobe Max conference but in the real world as well.

One unmistakable trend at this year's DEMOfall show is the number of Web sites and applications that rely to some degree on crowdsourcing. 13 hot products from DEMOfall '09 Crowdsourcing – a buzzword loosely defined as giving large crowds of users the ability to collaboratively create or change content on Web sites or applications – was made popular by open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia and has since become a staple of Web 2.0 applications. So why does crowdsourcing have such an appeal for developers? "With all due respect it's because developers are lazy," laughs Micello founder and CEO Ankit Agarwal. "When I crowdsource it means that I don't have to do the work to get data myself." But crowdsourcing does have perks beyond getting other people to do your work for you. Among the new crowdsourcing technologies to debut at DEMO this fall are Article One Partners' AOP Patent Studies, an open-source enterprise service that employs an online community of patent advisors to research patent claims; Waze, a mobile application that can be used to update traffic conditions in real time; TrafficTalk, a mobile application that is similar to Waze but also lets users provide traffic updates simply using their voice rather than typing into their mobile phone; Micello, a mobile app that aims to be the Google Maps of indoor spaces; and Answers.com, a Web site that combines established reference resources and crowdsourcing to create a comprehensive information database.

Some crowdsourcing developers say if you can create an application that meets a common need and gives people a real stake for getting involved, then it can go a long way toward growing your product's popularity. It's a shared pain of being frustrated by traffic jams and the like, but our goal is to resolve that pain and to minimize the wait during commutes." Greenfield says that while larger crowds are obviously better for an application such as TrafficTalk, the application can be relatively successful even if only two people who trust each other are using it. TrafficTalk founder Larry Greenfield, whose product is still currently in its alpha testing phase, says that he has found fertile crowdsourcing ground in the form of frustrated commuters during tests he has run of his software. "For us, crowdsourcing has to create a sense of community among our users," he says. "There has to be something that binds people together. After all, he notes, if one friend who shares a commute route with another friend can notify that friend of a traffic accident using TrafficTalk, the application will have served its purpose. Demo's biggest stars of all time Answers.com, on the other hand, is a Web site that really does require massive participation if it is to meet its lofty goal of becoming a central hub for people seeking answers to their queries.

Even so, he says the application needs around a dozen or so people to really reach its potential. Right now, the Web site lets users ask questions whose answers are partially provided by information culled from licensed professional encyclopedias and dictionaries and partially provided by user-generated Wiki-style content. This past August, for instance, Answers.com got around 45 million unique visitors. "Crowdsourcing for us really starts to work when you get to a certain scale," he explains. "Right now we get 45,000 new questions asked each day and then about one third of those are answered every day. Answers Corp. founder and CEO Robert Rosenschein says that as the Wiki portion of the Web site has grown over the past year, participation has snowballed to the point where the company doesn't have to work as hard to promote itself. Those answers are the most valuable thing we have even though some are more detailed and some less so… When you start to get that sort of scale it just sort of happens.

As Rosenschein acknowledges, crowdsourced answers are far more likely to contain factual errors than are answers taken from professional sources. The more new questions you get, the more new answers you get." Of course, the paradox of success is that the more popular your crowdsourcing site is, the more likely it will become the target of vandals. This is why, he says, it's so important to foster a tight community that takes pride in keeping the site accurate and will work quickly to clean up any vandalism. Because the service uses its online community to research the validity of patent claims – a time-consuming task if there ever was one – it pays money to users who are the first to come up with a correct solution to whether a patent is valid or not. For AOP Patent Studies, developing a sense of community is also important, but it's not the only incentive it uses to push its users toward greater accuracy.

It basically works like this: a company comes to AOP Patent Studies and pays them to look into a patent claim. The first two people to get results get paid a portion of the money. The Web site then throws the case to its online community for research. Still, Article One Partners CEO Cheryl Milone thinks that monetary incentive can't help your crowdsourcing site if you don't first develop a strong sense of cooperation among users. "There really has to be a sense of camaraderie and loyalty," she says. "Whether people are brought to the site because they know a lot about a particular technology or because they feel strongly that the patent system needs to be strengthened, it's the feedback they get from the community that keeps them coming back and is in itself compensation for their efforts."

Fake security software "SpywareGuard" and "AntiVirus" are said to be the top two scareware programs out of about 250 fake security programs detected, according to a Symantec report. According to the Symantec report: "There are two prevalent ways in which rogue security software can be installed on a user's computer; either it is downloaded and installed manually by a user after he or she has been tricked into delivering the software as legitimate, or it is knowingly installed onto a user's computer, such as when a user visits a malicious Web site designed to automatically download and install illegitimate applications." Some scams even return e-mail messages to the victim with a receipt for purchase that includes a serial number and a valid functioning customer-service phone number. Symantec examined evidence of what it could detect online for a six-month period, how it was propagating, and what fake security software programs were costing, says Mark Fossi, editor of the report. "Sometimes it's sold as a complete security suite," he said, adding, "it mostly does nothing." Rogue security software is often called scareware because these fake antivirus and registry cleaners can convince the victim to purchase based on flagging screens warning them about threats that don't exist outside the scareware itself.

Distribution networks are rampant in which "affiliates" earn money to ensure the rogue security software is circulated, such as Traffic. Affiliates are paid 55 cents for each U.S. computer, 52 cents for a U.K. computer, 5 cents for Norway or Mexico, but only a penny in many other countries. Coverter.biz, where affiliates are paid based on numbers of computers they manage to get malware on to enable the sale of fake security software. SpywareGuard2008, said to be made by Pandora Software, was called the most prevalent rogue security software for the time period investigated, and its price started at $49.95. Customers often pay for scareware with credit cards, and the report notes, "Since the payment services used are often legitimate, there is constant threat that the payment services provider will discover that its service is used for fraud." But "scammers also benefit from phishing personal information for users who register rogue applications." This could include the credit card number and payment details that can be sold into the underground economy for further abuse. About half the servers for scareware are in the United States, the report says, with Germany holding 11% and Ukraine 5%. Other countries are said to include Canada, the United Kingdom, China, Turkey, Netherlands, Italy and Russia, making it very global in scope.

Internet-enabled TV sets could see wider adoption in the next few years as viewers get comfortable with the idea of running widgets on TV screens, according to a study released by Ernst & Young on Thursday. TV widgets are designed to pull selective content from the Internet to complement TV watching. Widgets - or mini-applications - are already being used in devices like mobile phones and computers to run light applications, and those applications could reach TV sets, the analyst firm said in the study. For example, users can view weather information on TV or buy products advertised on TV from online stores.

Web-connected TV shipments could total less than 500,000 in 2009, but top 6 million by 2013, E&Y said in the study, citing statistics from Parks Associates. Many consumers consider it an "appealing" idea to mesh TV with information from the Internet, according to the study. Widgets could also be the glue that brings together Internet and TV content. Many Web sites and technology companies are developing an ecosystem to bring content from the Internet and TV together. Broadcast TV is already competing with the Web for viewership, and widgets could facilitate content searches through both mediums, giving more entertainment options to viewers. Myspace.com, for example, has developed a widget that blends TV with its social-networking offerings.

Users don't need to rely on a browser to access MySpace content. TV watchers could exchange e-mail messages or browse photos on MySpace by activating a widget at the bottom of the TV screen. TVs and chips, for instance, are also being developed to build Web-enabled TVs. Sony, Samsung and LG have said select flat-panel high-definition TV models would be able to run widgets or download movies from online entertainment services like Netflix. Intel is also working with companies like CBS and Cinemanow to bring widgets to TVs. Web-enabled TV has struggled over the past 15 years since Time Warner Cable launched the iTV service in Orlando, E&Y said. Intel last week announced the CE4100 media processor, which enables the use of Internet and multimedia applications on TVs, Intel said.

Ever since, it has seen many iterations, with companies like AOL, BSkyB, RespondTV, Hewlett-Packard and Apple trying to bring the Internet to TV through devices like set-top boxes or adapters. Widgets for TV use also need to be adopted by television programming and cable operators. The success of widgets depends on applications that users will want to have on their TVs. For example, one-click access to on-demand content from online movie stores is well-suited for widgets. The operators will look to monetize widgets by developing an ad sales model around it, which could face some challenges, the study found. Conflicting advertising could also appear on a TV screen and widget at the same time, which could affect ad sales models.

For example, viewers could migrate their attention from TV shows to widgets, which could affect the ratings of a program.

Apple again used its software update tool to push a program that was previously not installed on a PC, according to Computerworld tests early Monday. Apple's Software Update for Windows - a utility most often installed on PCs when users download iTunes - was offering something called "iPhone Configuration Utility" to Windows users, even to machines that have never connected to an iPhone. Later in the day, however, Apple removed the software from the update list. Popular Windows blogger Ed Bott first reported on ZDNet that the tool was included in new updates.

The tool, chimed in Simon Bisson of itexpertmag.com , is actually an enterprise-grade tool for network administrators, who use it to create and deploy device profiles so users can securely connect to a company's Exchange mail servers. Computerworld confirmed that the 22MB download was offered to PCs, including those running Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Vista SP2, that had never been used to synchronize an iPhone. According to Bisson , the iPhone Configuration Utility also adds the open-source Apache Web server software to the PC. "The thing with that iPhone config utility is that it's an enterprise tool for building device profiles. Apple has been criticized in the past for using its software updating service to push unwanted software. It's not for consumers!" Bisson said on Twitter. Last year, for example, the company came under fire for offering Safari for Windows to users who had not installed the application, going so far as to pre-check the program so that users who simply accepted the default downloads received the browser.

Later, Apple quietly changed Software Update so that Safari was unchecked, requiring users to explicitly request the browser. John Lilly, the CEO of Mozilla, the open-source developer responsible for Firefox, said Apple's tactic "undermines the Internet" because updates are traditionally used to patch or fix existing software, not install new programs. By 3:30 p.m. ET, Apple Software Update had dropped the iPhone Configuration Utility as a potential update to the same PCs that earlier had indicated the tool should be downloaded. Apple did not immediately respond to questions about why the iPhone utility had been offered, and whether the company had erred in listing it as an update for Windows users.

India's auction of 3G and WiMax licenses is now scheduled to be held in December, according to a notice on the Web site of the country's Department of Telecommunications. Bidding for 3G licenses will start Dec 7, with the WiMax auction scheduled to start two days after the 3G auction is complete, according to the notice. The auction was originally scheduled for January of this year, but was postponed after disagreement within the government on the minimum cost of the licenses. Both Indian and foreign companies are allowed to bid for the licenses, but foreign companies will have to set up joint ventures with Indian investors to run services in the country.

The Ministry of Communications will license four slots for 3G in each of India's 22 service areas, with a fifth slot reserved for two government-run telecommunications companies. A group of ministers, set up to resolve the dispute over pricing the licenses, has named Indian rupees 250 billion (US$5 billion) as the minimum revenue from the auction of the 3G and WiMax licenses in the country, India's Minister of Communications, A. Raja said last month. A telecommunications company bidding for 3G licenses in all 22 circles will have to pay at least Indian rupees 35 billion, according to the new minimum pricing proposed by the Indian government. Two companies, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd., were allotted 3G spectrum ahead of the auction, and have started offering services. By the pricing announced last year, they would have to pay about rupees 20 billion.

The government said last year that these companies would have to pay license fees equal to the highest bid in each service area. The final date for applications from bidders is Nov 13.

The kick-off for Texas Governor Rick Perry's 2010 re-election campaign was marred Tuesday by a Web site outage that staffers are now calling a denial-of-service attack. Perry was deliberately interrupted by a denial-of-service attack, preventing countless users from logging in to view the Governor's remarks," the Perry campaign said in a note posted to its Web site. "This planned and coordinated attack was political sabotage, and we are working to identify those responsible for this illegal activity." Before the site crashed, more than 22,000 visitors were able to access the event, the Perry campaign said. Perry had invited supporters to visit his campaign Web site at 11:30 a.m. Central time on Tuesday to attend a 10-minute online rally billed as "Talkin' Texas." Instead, site visitors were rebuffed with a computer error message. "Today's 'Talkin' Texas' Webcast by Gov.

But according to local coverage of the incident, the outage did not entirely resemble a distributed denial-of-service attack, (DDoS) which renders the server extremely slow or inaccessible to most visitors. Although he is not familiar with the particulars of Tuesday's outage, Trend Micro security researcher Rick Ferguson said that the Drupal message appeared to indicate that the Perry server was misconfigured rather than attacked via DDoS. Drupal would not have been accessible during a successful DDoS attack, he said via instant message. "If it was a DDoS, you'd never even get to the main page." According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, however, the Perry campaign's Internet service provider said that it was hit by what's known as a SYN Flood DDoS attack. Instead, Austin's KXAN reported that the site displayed the message "Unable to connect to database server," generated by the Drupal content-management platform. Politicians are often quick to blame hackers for technical glitches. An investigation into the matter found that Lieberman's server had failed because it was overutilized and misconfigured. During the 2006 Connecticut Democratic Senate primary Joseph Lieberman blamed a Web outage on an attack by supporters of his opponent, Ned Lamont.

Perry replaced former Texas governor George W. Bush, following his presidential election in 2000. He is seeking his third full term as governor.

Scientists at MIT have have used a combination of silicon and gallium nitride, a hard material frequently used in LEDs, to create a hybrid microchip that they say is smaller, faster and more efficient than today's processors. The predicted upgrades have continued since then, though some observers have long predicted that leakage and energy consumption could keep Moore's Law from continuing at some point. Researchers around the world have been working for decades to create such a hybrid microchip that could help chipmakers keep Moore's Law alive . The more than 40-year-old prediction by Gordon Moore holds that the number of transistors on a chip doubles about every two years.

However, if scientists can find new ways to increase efficiency while continuing to make the chips smaller and faster, then the law stands a much better chance of holding true for years ahead. "We won't be able to continue improving silicon by scaling it down for long, so it's crucial to find other approaches," said Tomas Palacios , an assistant professor at MIT, in a statement late last week. Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat, said the new hybrid chip is important because it shows that the industry is moving beyond a singular silicon focus. "We're really in a situation where we're now playing with the entire periodic table and experimenting with different combinations of materials," McGregor said. "The silicon is the basic building block that we put everything on. He added that besides microprocessor chips, the new integrated technology also could lead to more efficient cell phone designs, for instance, by combining the functionality of several different chips onto one. We've been messing around with the silicon and now we're adding something to it ... so we can change the properties and do things with the chip that we couldn't do before." McGregor said he suspects that MIT's hybrid chip design could reduce leakage and thus increase chip performance. "Chipmaking is becoming the ultimate chemistry and physics experiment," McGregor added. "We're using more and more parts of the periodic table and we're down to nanometers and looking at how many electrons can flow from transistor to transistor. Instead, they embedded it into the silicon substrate, which is an underlying layer. It's important for the entire industry, which is focused on this type of research." MIT noted that Palacios, along with student researcher Will Chung, didn't add the gallium nitride as a layer on top of the silicon.

Because the semiconductor industry already uses the same type of silicon substrate, MIT contends that the hybrid chip could be made using today's manufacturing processes, which would be less costly than using different substrates. "We are already discussing with several companies how to commercialize this technology and fabricate more complex circuits," said Palacios, adding that it could take several years before the technology is ready to be commercialized. The nanotubes should someday be used to replace the copper wires that connect the transistors and also may even replace the transistors themselves even further down the road. The move was the latest in a series of recent chipmaking announcements by MIT. Last week, the university announced that researchers there have found a new way to grow carbon nanotubes that could be used by manufacturers to build smaller, faster computer chips. Last year, MIT announced that a research team at the school had created a new chip design that could be 10 times more energy efficient than processors now used in mobile devices. The design is intended for use in portable electronics, like cell phones, PDAs and even implantable medical devices.

Pillar Data Systems Inc. said this week that it's replacing Intel's X25-E solid state disk (SSD) drive as an option for its storage arrays with a drive from STEC Inc. because of firmware problems with the Intel's drive that lead to performance slowdowns. The company also said it is now doubling the available cache on the array to 192GB , shipping boxes with 2TB hard drives - double the capacity of previous drives - and replacing the current dual-core processor controller blade with a quad-core AMD Opteron 2354 chip. The SSD change was one of several upgrades to Pillar's modular storage array, the Axiom. The new hard disk drives push the Axiom's overall usable capacity to more than 1.6 petabytes per system, while cutting overall power consumption by 50% and reducing the space required for the array.

Intel's X25-E, which has had firmware problems in the past, causes operational timeouts, Maness said. The change-over to STEC's SSD also means the company will be able to offer higher capacity 256GB flash drives, since Intel's X25-E tops out at a maximum capacity of 64GB. Bob Maness, Pillar's vice president of worldwide marketing and channel sales, said the company decided to go with STEC's Mach8 SATA SSD because it proved to have better performance in the array. Pillar is continuing to test its arrays with the X25-E and said Intel is working closely with it to solve the issue. Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pillar's decision. Intel has admitted to firmware problems with the X25-E SSD in the past, but said it resolved them with an upgrade.

Based on commodity hardware, the Pillar Axiom acts as an application-aware storage-area network (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS) server all controlled by a single management interface. In June, Pillar announced it would begin shipping the Axiom storage system with Intel's X25-E solid state drive as one option. The company's claim to fame is the software used to manage the array by automatically allocating CPU, cache and storage capacity separately to applications as they need more resources. STEC's Mach8 SSD is a consumer-rated drive not normally used in high-performance storage arrays. Maness said Pillar's Axiom achieves the maximum performance capable with the Mach8 SSDs, which use a serial-ATA interface and are less costly than the Zeus SSD. "I'd like to get back to Intel's SSD, but I think STEC has a corner on the market," Maness said. "STEC is just a little further along in terms of their drive." The Pillar Axiom enables users to use any number of drive types, from serial-ATA hard disks to SSD in order to tier storage and utilize the level appropriate to the application being supported.

STEC's Zeus-series SSDs have a Fibre Channel interface normally used for enterprise-class data center operations. Maness said a single tray that houses SSD drives for the Axiom will retail for $49,000, roughly the same cost as six trays of Fibre Channel hard disk drives.

CA Monday announced plans to acquire NetQoS for $200 million, adding application-aware network and systems management products to the software maker's broad enterprise IT management portfolio. The added technology will also boost CA's efforts to manage advanced infrastructures that feature virtual systems and cloud computing environments, the vendor says. "NetQoS technology complements CA's Wily products and will help network and systems engineers better design their infrastructure to ensure application issues don't occur from the start," says Roger Pilc, senior vice president and general manager of CA's infrastructure and automation business unit. "The technologies will help network and systems management be more application aware." The deal, anticipated to close in CA's fiscal third quarter, would augment an already full software lineup grown via previous acquisitions of Wily Technology, Concord Communications and Aprisma. Hottest tech M&A deals of 2009 CA executives say the pending acquisition offers little overlap by way of products and will help CA products diagnose the root cause of application errors within the network and systems infrastructure.

CA executives say NetQoS products, designed for network managers responsible in part for application delivery, will add to the company's Wily products that detect performance problems in the application environment. Customers can visualize the links and relationships between the delivery technologies and the business applications and services with Wily, and understand the real-time application and service activity across those links and relationships with NetQoS traffic flows," says Jasmine Noel, co-founder and principal analyst at Ptak, Noel & Associates. NetQoS tools are able to detect application performance problems using network-centric measures such as traffic flow. "The acquisition is good because NetQoS has a focus on application delivery, so when combined with Wily, it offers a good one-two punch. With some areas of overlap in the former Concord eHealth and Aprisma Spectrum tools, CA's Pilc say the company will work to address issues after the deal closes. NetQoS technology will target network engineers who focus on application delivery where the management of traffic flows is the primary task, rather than the management of thousands of network devices." CA also expects the NetQoS technology to play a bigger role in its virtual and cloud management offerings.

Noel says customers should not expect NetQoS tools to get lost in the shuffle as CA could have targeted plans for each product suite. "In terms of portfolio, CA now has two network performance management solutions, eHealth and NetQoS. But I think CA has specific targets for both solutions," she says. "CA's eHealth technology will target network engineers who spend most of their time managing performance of specialized network infrastructure. With its ability to track flows across virtual and physical elements, NetQoS tools could be coupled with Cassatt assets CA acquired earlier this year, the company says. NetQoS co-founder and CEO Joel Trammel says CA represented the best fit with his company's technology, and customers shouldn't expect any change in products or support as the deal unfolds. With no previous partnerships, the two vendors share some 200 customers and CA's Pilc foresees "very little modification in the NetQoS product set and its approach to customers going forward." That is why NetQoS executives found the deal to be synergistic. NetQoS has more than 1,000 customers worldwide and reported revenue of $56 million in 2008. "We sought out CA because we saw a clear fit with us and the company's success in acquiring Wily, Concord and Aprisma.

Industry watchers expect the deal could benefit both parties going forward if CA sales teams focus on the NetQoS suite. "For a small vendor, being acquired could be good because a larger sales force means a bigger pipeline. We were excited and see the clear fit between tying these acquisitions together," Trammel says. Or it could be bad if it gets lost in the portfolio. Do you Tweet? In the Swainson era, CA has handled its acquisitions fairly well, and with Wily as a tag-team partner I don't see NetQoS getting lost," Noel says.

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A San Francisco Superior Court judge has dismissed three of the four felony charges brought against Terry Childs, a former network administrator who was arrested last year for allegedly sabotaging a crucial city network.

The charges that were thrown out relate to allegations that Childs quietly placed three modems on a San Francisco city network to have backdoor access to the city network. In dismissing the charges, Judge Kevin McCarthy ruled on Friday that there was insufficient evidence to show that Childs had placed the modems on the network with malicious intent.

But the judge left standing a fourth charge, that Childs refused to hand over passwords he had used to lock up the city network for days. If Childs is convicted on that count, he faces up to five years in prison. A hearing is scheduled for today to determine a date for the trial.

A spokeswoman for the San Francisco District Attorney's office today said that prosecutors in the case will appeal Judge McCarthy's ruling. In December 2008, Superior Court Judge Paul Alvarado had held that Childs would need to stand trial on all four of the counts he had been charged with, the spokeswoman said. But, in response to motions filed by Childs' attorney, three of those counts were vacated last Friday, the District Attorney's spokeswoman said.

"We disagree with Judge McCarthy's ruling. We believe that Judge Alvarado's ruling should stand," the spokeswoman said.

Childs, a network administrator working for San Francisco's IT Department of Telecommunications and Information Services (DTIS), was arrested in July 2008 for allegedly locking up access to the city's FiberWAN network by resetting administrative passwords to its switches and routers.

He is also alleged to have planted network devices that enabled illegal remote access to the FiberWAN network, which carries almost 60% of the city government's traffic. He was arrested after first refusing to provide the passwords to city officials and then providing them with wrong passwords. Childs was jailed on a $5 million bond and is currently awaiting trial.

Judge McCarthy's ruling is a significant victory for the defense team, which has been arguing that Childs' actions were far from criminal, and were instead in line with standard network security practices.

Childs' lawyer, Richard Shikman, has argued that the three modems that Childs is supposed to have installed for criminal purposes were instead used for work-related purposes. In court filings the lawyer has maintained that one of the modems was set to dial out on Childs' pager in the event of a network emergency, while another was designed to connect city computers to a disaster recovery site. The third modem had been set up even prior to Childs' arrival at DTIS and was designed to test the citys access to the Internet, his lawyer has said.

In other court filings, Childs had said that he refused to hand over the network passwords to city officials because he feared the passwords would be shared with outside contractors and others who were unauthorized to access the network.

The case has evoked mixed responses so far. Some have argued that Childs may have felt justified in withholding the password information because he was concerned about unauthorized users gaining access to a crucial city network. They have also argued that Childs had been well within the scope of his job description and responsibilities when he installed the modems that prosecutors claimed were meant for malicious purposes.

Others though have highlighted the case as a classic example of the kind of havoc that an insider with privileged access can wreak on a network. They have pointed to the case as an example of why companies need to implement measures for limiting what users with administrative access to critical enterprise networks and systems can do with their access.

TransMedia, creator of the Glide cloud computing OS and suite of apps, will Wednesday announce the latest addition to its app set-Glide Engage, a micro-blogging tool with a lot of social media sharing functionality layered on.

Versus Twitter

First things first. Engage will no doubt be measured against micro-blogging's reigning champ, Twitter, and there are some important differences. Engage allows you to micro-blog messages of 1,400 characters in length, which addresses the sometimes confining 140-character limit of Twitter. You can also embed media files and links in your posts with a single click. Your media files are organized in the background in the Glide file management system, which allows users to store as much as 10GB of their docs and media "in the cloud" for easy access, sharing and collaboration with other Gliders. It feels like using Twitter, but with a lot more control and functionality happenning in the background.

Compared to the Twitter community, the Glide community is tiny. But Glide,TransMedia CEO Donald Leka tells me, now hosts just over a million users and is adding about 2,000 more every day. As with Twitter, as you begin posting messages, links, media, etc., some of those community members might find you "engaging" and then start following you. Of course you may begin to notice the same users posting stuff (news, links, media, photos, etc.) you like over and over, and then begin following them.

But micro-blogging is just the first level. You can also initiate discussion groups with just a few clicks, inviting just the members of the community you want to participate. Afterwards, if the discussion was worth keeping, you can output the whole thing as a PDF or word processing document with one click, and review or share the transcript later.

Engage also provides an impressive collaboration workspace, where you can call up any type of file, view it, and discuss it in real time. During the demo today, Mr. Leka pulled up both a music and a video file, played them, then began both a text-based chat and a video/voice chat with me to discuss the media in real time.

As in the micro-blogging and discussion groups functions, you can set exacting permissions around who may do what with the files you share. Some users may only read the files, while others may be given permission to edit them, but only in a certain time frame, for instance.

Engage is the latest of some twenty Glide productivity apps, which indclude word processing, photo editing, web presentation, web publishing, spreadsheet, and many more. The Glide applications are closely integrated with the Engage app, so that Glide users don't have to move between various siloed applications in order to modify and share various types of files (i.e. music, photo, word docs, etc.)

The Austria of Cloud Computing

But by far the coolest thing about the Glide cloud computing platform is that it is both OS and device-neutral. Leka says the Glide OS and app suite was built from the ground up to allow participation by virtually anyone, regardless of their desktop or mobile OS. So far, Glide works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris desktop OS's, and on the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile mobile platforms.

Glide's OS-agnostic approach really pays off in the new Engage app. For instance, if you share a QuickTime media file through Engage with a friend using a Windows Media mobile device, Engage automatically transcodes the QuickTime file into a Windows Media file that will display nicely on the mobile device. The reverse is true, too. Similarly, if you share a Microsoft Word doc with a Mac user via Engage, Engage will convert the file to an Open Office document that will work nicely on a Mac. Or on an iPhone.

Leka says larger technology developers have a business interest in making their platforms friendly to some file types, and unfriendly to others. "All of these companies want to get you into their ecosystem and then try to sell you other things that they make." The best example of this, perhaps, is Apple, which has aggressively leveraged Mac-friendly file types to sell hardware and applications, and vice versa. If Apple succeeds in selling you an iMac, Leka explains, it will naturally make that machine trade files easily with other Apple products (like a new iPhone for instance); meanwhile trading files with devices outside Apple's ecosystem will be, uh, more difficult.

Syncing Up

Glide also provides a syncing app that allows you to make your files in the cloud a constant mirror image of your files on your home, work or mobile PC. For instance, if you modify one of your "Glide" documents using your smartphone on the train ride home, your changes will be reflected in the version of the file on the Glide servers (i.e. "in the cloud") and on the versions of that same file residing on your home and work computers. And it works even if your home computer is a Mac, your work computer is PC and your mobile device speaks Android.

About TransMedia, Glide

TransMedia is a tiny (only 8 full-time employees) New York City-based company, but its vision has already attracted the attention of VCs, potential acquirers, and a fair number of tech writers like me. The company, which launched its first product-the Glide OS-in 2005 remains privately funded ($8.9 in angel funding so far) and is concentrating on growing its user base.

At any rate, Glide's vision of a neutral, cloud-based OS and application suite that may be setting the high benchmark by which other bigger cloud computing players (attention Google Wave Development Team) may be measured. I hope so.

A private equity firm bidding for all of Nortel is reportedly assembling a management team for the company led by a former Nortel executive.

MaitlinPatterson Global Advisors of New York, which prepared a bid last week for the bankrupt company, has put together a management team comprised of telecom veterans should Nortel accept its bid, FT.com is reporting. The team is led by Dion Joannou, former president of Nortel's North America operations, according to FT.com. 

Slideshow: The Rise and Fall of Nortel  

Other members of the team include Richard Burns, the former president of AT&T's wireless network; Richard Piasentin, a former group vice president of sales at Nortel; Tony Pirih, former head of Nortel's R&D operations; and Chris Smith, former executive vice president in charge of Alltel's network operations, the report states.

The FT.com report cited "people familiar with the negotiations" as its source.

MaitlinPatterson is looking to acquire, recapitalize and operate Nortel in whole rather than acquire or sell off pieces of the company. Nortel is liquidating its assets and has already received a $650 million offer for its wireless operations from Nokia Siemens.

MaitlinPatterson is agreeable to working with Nokia Siemens and other "strategic partners" of Nortel to "leverage Nortel's resources…long into the future," the FT.com story states.

MatlinPatterson is expected to table a counteroffer for Nortel's wireless assets as part of its bid for the whole company, the article states. Nokia Siemens' "stalking horse" offer is expected to be considered next week before a court-mandated auction July 24.

MaitlinPatterson owns $400 million, or 10%, of Nortel's debt.

The group that administers the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) wants feedback about how the current version of the standard, released last October, is working.

Retailers, financial institutions and others in the payment industry will be able to submit online comments between July 1 and Nov. 1 about how to improve the PCI DSS 1.2 standard, the PCI Security Standards Council (SSC) said this week. Over the next few months, the PCI SSC will hold two "community meetings" - one in the U.S., the other in Europe - where stakeholders can also weigh in.

Those comments will be reviewed to see what changes need to be made in the next version of the standard, which is due out in the fall of 2010, said Robert Russo, general manager of the PCI SSC. In addition, the PCI SSC has commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers P(wC) to review technologies such as end-to-end encryption, chip and PIN and tokenization to see whether these technologies should be made part of PCI requirements in the future, Russo said.

PCI standards were created by Visa, MasterCard and other major credit card brands and are administered by the PCI SSC. All companies that accept payment cards are required to implement the 12 high-level security controls prescribed under the standards. Larger companies face significantly tougher compliance requirements than smaller firms.

The request for comments and the review of new technologies by PwC come amid growing criticism of PCI from several quarters. Earlier this month, for instance, representatives from seven trade groups called for the standards to be developed in a more open manner. The letter, signed by representatives from the National Retail Federation, the Merchant Advisory Group, the National Restaurant Association and others, suggested that the PCI SSC adopt a standards writing process similar to those used by open standards bodies such as ANSI. The groups also recommended that retailers be given enough time to implement revisions and asked for a reduction in the number of requirements prescribed under PCI.

The letter added to a growing chorus of voices expressing concern about the burdensome and costly nature of PCI requirements and their effectiveness. At a House of Representatives hearing in April, U.S. lawmakers and representatives of the retail industry blasted PCI rules as being too static and wondered whether they were designed to protect card companies and banks from liability more than anything else.

Russo today pointed to the feedback process and the PwC review as efforts by the PCI security standard council to make the standards process inclusive, transparent and relevant. He noted that since its inception, the PCI council has relied heavily on input from its members and others in the payment industry to shape the standards.

The PCI council's move to ban retailers from using wireless networks based on the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol is one example where the council acted on the feedback from the community, he said. The PCI SSC has also eliminated or consolidated redundant requirements or tweaked requirements based on industry feedback.

"The changes in 1.2 were the result of feedback from the community at large and what they thought needed to be addressed with the standard," Russo said. "This is an opportunity for everyone to come together ... and discuss what needs to be changed for the good of the community or for the benefit of a particular vertical [industry]," he said.

Russo downplayed recent criticisms about the effectiveness of the standards and insisted that when implemented properly, they adequately protect companies against current threats. "At this point, we haven't seen anything in the standard that causes us concern," Russo said. He added that the PwC review was prompted by apparent interest in end-to-end encryption and other emerging technologies.

"What they will be doing is looking at these technologies and seeing what needs to be [included] for them to be considered for the standard," he said. The effort also includes seeing whether the technologies can be used as compensation controls in place of existing PCI requirements, he said.

Researchers have demonstrated a form of archive memory using carbon nanotubes that can theoretically store a trillion bits of data per square inch for a billion years.

The technology could easily be incorporated into today's silicon processing systems and it could be available in the next two years, a lead researcher said.

The scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California said the new technology can potentially pack thousands of times more data into one square inch of space than today's chips.

"We've developed a new mechanism for digital memory storage that consists of a crystalline iron nanoparticle shuttle enclosed within the hollow of a multiwalled carbon nanotube," said physicist Alex Zettl, who led this research.

Zettl, who was lead author of the paper published online by Nano Letters entitled " Nanoscale Reversible Mass Transport for Archival Memory," is perhaps best known for his work on creating the world's smallest radioin 2007, which is one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Zettl said this latest nanotube breakthrough uses an iron nanoparticle, approximately 1/50,000th the width of a human hair, that in the presence of a low voltage electrical current can be shuttled back and forth inside a hollow carbon nanotube with remarkable precision.

The shuttle's position inside the tube can be read out directly via a simple measurement of electrical resistance, allowing the shuttle to function as a nonvolatile memory element with potentially hundreds of binary memory states.

"The shuttle memory has application for archival data storage with information density as high as one trillion bits per square inch and thermodynamic stability in excess of one billion years," Zettl said in a statement. "Furthermore, as the system is naturally hermetically sealed, it provides its own protection against environmental contamination."

Zettl said the low-voltage electrical write/read capabilities of the memory element in the electromechanical device allows for large-scale integration and should make for easy incorporation into today's silicon processing systems.

Zettl believes the technology could be on the market within the next two years.