January, 2008 Issue

Managers of the Internet's addressing system may change the registration process to support small customers.

Google on Wednesday launched its revamped mobile-search service in the UK, streamlining the interface and introducing an experience it believes will be more relevant to mobile-phone users.

MySpace, the world's largest online social network, will launch its program to court outside software developers in February in a bid to widen the gap against rival Facebook.

Fraud Sciences, a private company, has developed technology designed to differentiate between real and fraudulent transactions.

A High Court Judge has blocked moves to allow an adult video computer game to be sold in the U.K.

Nokia hopes to use Trolltech's expertise to improve the interfaces on its S40 mobile phone and S60 smartphone platforms.

The Mozilla Foundation is celebrating what it regards as its 10th anniversary this week.

The site sports a Korean-language interface and content from local partners, but faces established rivals.

It's a case of the professional fraudsters scamming the amateurs with a phishing tools supply site.

Automattic, the company best-known for blog publishing software WordPress, has raked in $29.5 million in Series B funding. Originally reported on several blogs, the funding round was confirmed by Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg in his personal blog Tuesday evening.

Open source data integration vendor Talend has been working with Microsoft to build better interoperability between Talend's Open Studio product and Microsoft's business software, Talend says.

Microsoft's decision to allow Home versions of Vista to run inside virtual machines may have far-reaching benefits in the coming years.

Microsoft is making a new bid to get governments to go with its technology, rather than open-source alternatives such as Linux and OpenOffice.

With the multitude of programming languages out there such as Fortran, Java, C++ and C#, you may wonder why Ruby on Rails has suddenly become such a hot topic in the development world. Created in the late 1990s by an individual in Japan, the Ruby programming language had a cult following but never reached top-tier status. In 2004, a company called 37 Signals released a Web programming framework called Rails, which was originally developed for their own in-house projects. Rails was written using the Ruby programming language. It is the combination of Ruby and Rails together that has generated notable excitement in the development community, and the emerging language and application framework is proving to be a game-changer to the world of Web application development.

GNUCitizen is describing an apparent vulnerability that could use VoIP to trick people into revealing personal data.

Vendors in the WiMax forum are developing a variation that broadens the spectrum of the wireless technology.

Sun put its money where its mouth is Wednesday, with the announcement that it would buy open source database vendor MySQL for a whopping $1 billion.

A programming error in Skype could let hackers use "Add Video" feature to run malicious code on the victim's system.

Mozilla should soon be experimenting with some novel user-interface technologies for its browser and other products, according to one of its new hires.

A new and reportedly dangerous exploit has been discovered already in the wild, and this time it affects users of Excel with the older file format.

It was by any measure a stellar year for the world's leading microprocessor manufacturer, but what's disappointing investors this quarter is the disheartening news that 2007 is over.

Microsoft, once again, is in the crosshairs of European antitrust regulators, but major American technology companies have to wonder whether this will stop with Microsoft.

Since we had a lot of time at CES this year thanks to lackluster exhibitors, we talked a lot about the future (like we wouldn’t normally). These days, music players are aplenty, but there’s nothing that’s truly disruptive about them. Even the cheapest (and we mean that with utmost respect) of the bunch can display photos, play back audio/video, and support in-line recording. What makes one better than the other? Audio quality could be a distinguishing factor only if mainstream consumers could hear the difference. Many of them continue to sport stock earphones, so asking them to compare audio quality between two MP3 players is stretching too much. Besides, who really buys anything other than the iconic iPod these days anyways?

Microsoft now has opened public access to the latest beta build of Vista Service Pack 1 to all who are interested.

The company said at Macworld Monday that it will retool its all-in-one Google application for the iPhone, improving the UI and speeding up loading times.

The share of Google searches that result in visits to Google Maps has skyrocketed since last year, according to the online traffic-measurement firm Hitwise. Over the week ending Jan. 6, 2007, 0.22 percent of Google searchers went on to Google Maps. During the same week this year, 0.67 percent did. Hitwise calculated the figures by analyzing the behavior of 10 million Internet users.

As another indication that the already big stakes at play in the search technology market are sliding higher, Ask.com has announced the departure of its Jim Lanzone as CEO, only a couple of days after Microsoft made its controversial $1.2 billion bid for search technology firm Fast Search & Transfer.

Want to know what the weather is like right now somewhere else? Today, you can just click around on a radar-enabled Google map to quickly get the lowdown on temperature, humidity, wind conditions, and a lot more.

The cost of upgrading Britain's schools to Vista would be $350 million, two-thirds of which go to deployment costs, testing and hardware upgrades.

Internet-calling software provider Skype sees the mobile market as the next frontier for its service, but economic realities in the voice market--coupled with mobile operators who feel threatened by Skype--could put the kibosh on large-scale adoption for some time to come.

One way to get Windows to load faster is by using the System Configuration utility (aka Msconfig) to disable programs that start unnecessarily when you boot the operating system. To view this list in XP, click Start>Run, type msconfig, press Enter, and click the Startup tab. In Vista, open your Startup list by pressing the Windows key, typing msconfig, pressing Enter, and clicking the Startup tab.

WeGame, a user generated content site for video games, announced the launch of the beta 1 version of their site today. At the risk of sounding like a marketing robot, the best way that I can explain the site is "YouTube for game videos." WeGame provides a free downloadable application that allows you to record in any of their currently supported games, which includes just about all of the hottest PC titles of the moment. After you record your video, the client allows you to easily upload to the site.

Yahoo may soon launch OpenID, a Web standard that relieves people of the need to remember multiple passwords to log into different Web sites.

Don't be using Voip though

Companies at CES debuting cheaper 802.11n gear, plus options for adding the faster standard without getting rid of your existing equipment.

In an attempt to put aside speculation that it might sell its Xohm WiMAX service, Sprint dutifully but formally reminded everyone this morning that it's proceeding with its plans for a soft launch in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.

Microsoft's Extender for Windows Media Center isn't altogether new. But the extender products announced at CES 2008 -- from Samsung, HP, Linksys, and others -- are a different kettle of fish due to their use of Vista and HDTV.

BT and Cisco have landed a deal to provide VoIP connectivity to Cambridge University users, replacing their current telephone system which provides communications across 200 locations.

Google has filed a patent for the recognition and use of text contained in images and videos.

Microsoft has acknowledged it made a mistake over a security advisory it released concerning Office 2003.

Aiming to boost the appeal of its Windows Home Server software, Microsoft is offering an update to the operating system that will add both fixes to the existing product as well as add-ons and new features.

While it started out in January 2007 as a traditional computer worm, Storm quickly emerged as a key element toward building one of the largest botnets active on the Internet today.

Realignment will enable the division to better determine and integrate hardware, software, and services

One update is critical, the other important -- both will be announced next week

AJAX is bolstered in new release

If you’re someone who is responsible for a Web site, then it’s important for you to know how your visitors are using your site. Your job is to better optimize the content and layout of your Web site so that your visitors will enjoy their visit to your online property.

It seems as though the planned obsolescence that Microsoft committed so blatantly in Vista is now impacting Office 2003, too, with the arrival of Service Pack 3.

Warner Music Group is making its music available for US downloads from Amazon in MP3 format without copy protection.

It is not just the average net user who is a fan of social network sites, so are hi-tech criminals.