News


Microsoft On Skype Outage: Don't Blame Us

Microsoft's official stance on the recent Skype outage that left millions of users without phone access for two days last week? "Hey, it's not our fault."

SOA's 'Lack of ROI' Cited in Report

A benchmarking report that tracks how well service-oriented architecture (SOA) fits with return on investment (ROI) found an underwhelming correlation so far, based on a survey response. Of 106 enterprises surveyed, just 37 percent indicated a positive ROI from SOA.

Bebo To Add IM Powered by Microsoft

Social-networking site Bebo Inc. said Tuesday it will launch a Microsoft-powered instant-messaging program this fall.

Microsoft To Launch Communications Tools in October

The next generation of Microsoft's efforts at unified communications will be unveiled on Oct. 16.

CodeGear To Release Eclipse Plug-Ins

CodeGear, the development-tools arm of Borland Software Corp., is set to release a group of specialized plug-ins for the Eclipse open source development platform next month. Collectively called JGear, the plug-ins are designed to address pain points faced by Java developers using Eclipse-based tools.

SOA Security Basics

Security for the service-oriented architecture (SOA) was described by Brian V. Cummings of Tata Consultancy Services at the IBM SHARE conference this week.

Skype Outage Caused by Microsoft Update

A two-day outage that left millions of Skype users unable to use the popular Internet phone service was caused by an abnormally high number of restarts after people had downloaded a Windows security update, the company said Monday.

Companies Clamping Down on Messaging

Whenever a doctor, nurse or administrator in Georgia's DeKalb Medical Center sends an e-mail, the message detours through a special box in the three-hospital system's computing cluster. The box analyzes the e-mail, scanning for sensitive information like patient names, prescription histories and Social Security numbers.

Judge's Ruling Signals 'Game Over' for SCO

The Utah federal court judge's ruling on August 10 -- that SuSE Linux distributor Novell does, in fact, own the copyrights to the UNIX operating system -- signals a major legal blow for The SCO Group. It ends a nearly-five-year-old legal campaign that sowed fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) among Linux users and developers.

Airline Sues Google Over Keyword Ads

American Airlines is suing Google Inc. over the Internet company's sale of keywords ads for rivals triggered by its own trademarks.

HP 3Q Profit Beats Wall Street Estimates

Hewlett-Packard Co.'s third-quarter sales and profit breezed past Wall Street's estimates as the technology bellwether continued to cash in on healthy sales of laptop computers and lucrative printing ink. Shares inched higher on a boosted financial forecast.

SOA for Your Home

Peter Rhys Jenkins brought home several important points about service-oriented architecture (SOA) -- literally -- at this week's IBM SHARE conference in San Diego. Rhys Jenkins is senior integration solutions architect for IBM's worldwide WebSphere team.

Dell To Restate Earnings After Probe

Dell Inc. executives have finally wrapped up a yearlong internal investigation into accounting problems at the computer company, and the mistakes could end up costing them as much as $150 million.

Eclipse Process Framework 1.2 Gets Released

The open source community hit a milestone in improving software project management with a release on Aug. 1 of Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) version 1.2. The framework now includes version 1.2 of the EPF Composer authoring tool, as well as version 1.0 of the group's first process, known as the Open Unified Process (OpenUP).

Script Start Going Open Source

Entrigue Systems will release Script Start, a Windows logon scripting tool, free of charge to open source developers in September. The aim is to spur custom development of Script Start -- something for which its users have been clamoring, according to Entrigue President Jon McDonald.

Longtime Rivals IBM, Sun To Collaborate

Two longtime rivals in computing, IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., plan to cooperate on some server technologies, a move that could put pressure on their joint competitor Hewlett-Packard Co.

Google Distributing Sun Office Software

Two years after announcing a somewhat vague software-distribution partnership, Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have clarified their tactics for jointly attacking Microsoft Corp. and its ubiquitous Office software.

Citrix Buying VMware Rival for $500M

Citrix Systems is buying XenSource Inc. for $500 million, marking the second big deal this week in thte virtualization segment.

Review: New IMac Tempts a Windows User

Apple Inc. has dropped "Computer" from its name, but its computer business is still growing, even if the iPod player is the company's real star.

Private Funds Needed for Safety Network

The nation's emergency communication system is inadequate, and the government has come up with a solution -- a nationwide wireless broadband network that will operate on a highly valuable portion of the publicly owned airwaves.