Brian King

What do you get when you combine the smarts of a computer scientist and a doctor of sleep medicine? The new test, known as thermal infrared imaging (TIRI), uses a thermal infrared camera to monitor breathing waveforms and airflow as a patient breathes in and out of his or her nose. A cool, less invasive way to figure out if patients have sleep apnea, a common problem that causes a snoring a person to momentarily stop breathing while sleeping. The measurements are processed using computer algorithms and produce results that have proved to be as accurate as traditional test for apnea known as a polysomnography.

If you have ever undergone a sleep apnea test, you know how terribly uncomfortable they are. NetworkWorld Extra: 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring The new method also provides doctors with more information about the patient's breathing, according to its creators Ioannis Pavlidis, Eckhard-Pfeiffer Professor of Computer Science at the University of Houston and Jayasimha Murthy, M.D., assistant professor of medicine from the Division of Pulmonary Critical Care Sleep Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston UTHSC at Houston. Traditional sleep tests use a variety of leads and probes on the patient's head, in their nose, one their legs, arms and chest to gather data. Data is collected from a distance by a thermal camera. TIRI eliminates the needs for the two most obtrusive probes under the nose, the thermistor and nasal pressure probe.

As the patient breathes in, cooler air is brought into his or her nostrils, creating a unique thermal signature for inhale. TIRI not only makes it more comfortable for the patient to sleep during the study, but it gathers much more data from an array of points across the patient's lower face. On exhale, the air blown from the lungs is warmer. The traditionally used thermistor only yields information about a specific point, the researchers stated in a release. "During a sleep study a subject has an average of more than 20 sensors attached to the head and body. However, these sensors can disturb sleep and contribute to the patient's anxiety," said Murthy. It's a very complex procedure where many physiological parameters are simultaneously monitored to help in the diagnosis of sleep disorders.

The researchers believe that this new technology could change the way sleep apnea is diagnosed, potentially helping millions of Americans sleep better and possibly live longer, researchers stated. . Approximately 24% of men and 9% of women experience sleep apnea, the researchers stated. The National Science Foundation-funded sleep research will be published in this month's issue of Sleep.

Perot Systems has bagged a 10-year IT outsourcing contract in India, its first outside the U.S. The win reflects Perot's bid to grow its health-care business in markets other than the U.S., as well as in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, and Mexico, company executives said on Friday. But only 4.1 percent of the company's revenue from the health-care industry was from outside the U.S., up from 2.5 percent two years ago, said Kevin Fickenscher, executive vice president for International Healthcare at Perot, in a telephone interview. In the second quarter, 48 percent of Perot's revenue came from the health-care industry.

Expansion outside the U.S. is a key focus area for Perot, said Raj Asava, Perot's chief strategy officer. The maturing health-care industry in these emerging markets has a big appetite and also funds to invest in technologies such as electronic health records and clinical information systems, Asava said. For its health-care business, the company is targeting emerging markets in the Middle East, China, India, and Latin America, besides more mature markets such as the U.K. and Germany. The contract with Max Healthcare, a large hospital chain in India, has an initial value of US$18 million, but could go up in value as more applications and services are added, Perot said. The deployment will be around the open source VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) electronic health record and health information system, he added. Besides running the applications already installed at Max, Perot will also deploy an electronic health records system and other IT infrastructure, Fickenscher said.

Perot already has a services subsidiary in India with about 9,000 staff that offer outsourcing services to customers in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world. Multinational and Indian service providers are targeting India's growing services market, including in the telecommunications sector where a number of mobile service providers are outsourcing their IT infrastructure. About 60 percent of these staff do work for the health-care industry. The immediate opportunity for vendors of IT targeting the health-care industry is from private sector providers, but government run hospitals will soon follow, Fickenscher said.

The iPhone GPS app market unleashed by the release of the iPhone 3.0 software update is getting more interesting by the day, with several developers in an arms race to add new features to their initial offerings. My own in-car navigation box doesn't even speak street names (other than numbered freeways), and it sure makes a big difference. Taking the lead in the GPS app race is Navigon MobileNavigator, which recently added support for spoken street names-a major failing in the three apps that I previewed in a Macworld Video last month.

Last week, I got to spend a little bit of time with Navigon's Johan-Till Broer, who showed me the next version of MobileNavigator, due as a free App Store update sometime in October. The traffic update also does a better job of estimating the speeds of various roads without live traffic data. It adds live traffic to the party, downloading traffic updates over the digital cell network and rerouting you around slow spots. The end result should be that MobileNavigator will do a better job of suggesting the fastest route you should take to your destination, based on both current conditions and the time of day you're traveling. I've found Sygic Mobile Maps to be a solid app, although it feels more like a port of a standalone GPS device than a native iPhone app. Sygic, maker of the Sygic Mobile Maps GPS navigation app, recently updated its app to support spoken street names, as well as catching up with the other apps by integrating the addresses of the contacts in your iPhone's address book.

However, you can't beat the price-Sygic is trying to drive sales of its updated app by reducing the price (temporarily, at least) to $40 for an app containing only United States maps and $60 for the app containing maps of all of North America. TomTom's promised car kit for the iPhone, which promises a mount, speaker, and improved GPS reception, has yet to arrive here in the States. (Our friends at Macworld UK are reporting that the car kit is available for order on that side of the Atlantic, with shipping times listed as "two to three weeks.") As for the TomTom app, the company promises "several updates by the end of 2009," but hasn't given details. While Navigon and Sygic are not familiar names to most Americans, TomTom is a strong brand and its iPhone app has sparked a lot of interest, although the iTunes charts would suggest that it may have fallen behind Navigon in terms of sales. Presumably spoken street names and live traffic are high on the agenda. Look for a comprehensive comparison of iPhone GPS apps from Macworld in the near future. Reviewing these apps is hard, requiring a lot of driving (and a dedicated driver so the reviewer doesn't cause an accident!), and the features of the apps keep updating at a rapid pace.

In the meantime, check out my video above if you'd like to see the apps in action. From my perspective, right now Navigon MobileNavigator is the best choice available, but this game is far from over.

Nearly four months after deadly ethnic riots in China's Muslim region led authorities to shut off the Internet there, local residents are still barred from sending text messages and getting online. The rioting between Uighurs, a mostly Muslim minority group native to Xinjiang, and Chinese Han, the country's ethnic majority, also led China to block various social networking Web sites nationwide. The clampdown on telecommunication in China's western Xinjiang province, where rioting claimed nearly 200 lives in early July, has hurt local businesses and cut residents off from many nongovernment sources of news and other information.

Twitter, similar Chinese services and Facebook all remain inaccessible in the country. Observers have cited a series of sensitive anniversaries this year as a reason for the blockages, but those dates, including China's 60th anniversary of communist rule on Oct. 1, have passed. "The unfortunate truth is that the Chinese government can impose and sustain this kind of Internet service disruption ... for as long as it feels it's necessary," said Phelim Kine, a researcher in Hong Kong for New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The government is impervious to concerns from the business sector and certainly those of ordinary citizens." Some companies have been allowed to communicate via a regional network in Xinjiang, said the marketing manager for one local company when reached by phone. China has blamed communication on such Web sites for helping lead to the riots, which were sparked by an ethnic brawl in far-away southern China. The manager predicted that regular Internet access could return in around one month. "It's relatively calm on the streets of Xinjiang now," he said. The owner of another online store, which sells dried fruits, nuts and other snacks, said she did not know of any regional network in Xinjiang. The manager's company, which sells make-up and other cosmetic products online, is one of many that have had to relocate staff outside of Xinjiang to continue operations, he said.

Most of the store owner's staff remain in neighboring Gansu province, she said. China has given little sign of when it will lift the Internet restrictions but said it will gradually do so as Xinjiang stabilizes.

A Beijing court has ruled that Microsoft violated a Chinese company's intellectual property rights in a case over fonts used in past Windows operating systems, state media said Tuesday. Microsoft plans to appeal the case, a company representative said in a statement. The Beijing Number One Intermediate People's Court this week ordered Microsoft to stop selling versions of Windows that use the Chinese fonts, state broadcaster CCTV said.

The ruling comes as Barack Obama visits China for his first time as U.S. president. A U.S. business association this week appealed to Obama for further efforts to protect intellectual property rights in China, where pirated copies of DVDs and computer software including Windows are widely sold on streets and in bazaars. The visit has brought renewed focus on tensions over piracy and the trade of high-tech products between the countries. Microsoft originally licensed Zhongyi's intellectual property more than a decade ago for use in the Chinese version of Windows 95, according to Zhongyi. Microsoft agrees with the court that the key in the two cases is a dispute over the scope of licensing agreements, the Microsoft representative said. Zhongyi argues that agreement applied only to Windows 95, but that Microsoft continued to use the intellectual property from Windows 98 to Windows XP. The court reportedly also ruled that Microsoft's use of a Chinese input system from Zhongyi did not violate any licensing agreements.

But it disagrees with the ruling on the coverage of the agreements, which it believes also include its use of the fonts, the representative said. Pirated versions of Windows 7 were on sale in one Beijing bazaar weeks before the software officially went on sale last month. Windows XP is the most widely used OS in Chinese offices and homes, but countless users run pirated copies. Microsoft offers Windows 7 in China for a lower price than in developed markets, and often labels its software "legal" to differentiate it from the pirated versions common in the country. Windows 7 Home Premium costs 699 yuan (US$103) in China, compared to $199.99 in the U.S.

Microsoft's ZuneHD, set to go on sale Tuesday, will not feature an open application store like its competitor the iPod Touch. Those capabilities will determine whether the ZuneHD sells well - and whether Microsoft decides to keep selling its own music player, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. It will come with some unique features, though, like an HD radio tuner, and with software that has been well-received by users. After observers noticed a Marketplace folder during earlier demos of the ZuneHD, many had hoped the new device would feature an open application store like the one accessible from the iPhone and the iPod Touch.

But the Zune Marketplace will be a closed store, meaning third-party developers won't be able to easily build applications for it. Marketplace is the name of the open app store that will be available on Windows Mobile 6.5 phones, to be released in early October. The new device will include the same casual games that came with earlier Zunes, plus a few other applications like an MSN weather application and a calculator, said Brian Seitz, group marketing manager for Zune. Zune customers will be able to download the applications they like for free. In November, Twitter and Facebook applications will become available, as well as a "Project Gotham" racing game, he added.

Seitz said the timing wasn't right to include the Windows Mobile Marketplace application, which isn't due out until next month, with the ZuneHD, but he also said it's not certain that a similar open Marketplace will come to the Zune in the future. "Down the line, if there's an opportunity for us to snap into what they're doing from a mobile application perspective, I'm sure it's something we'll look at," he said. He acknowledged that people are likely to criticize the decision. "I'm not saying we won't get dinged for that because I know we will," he said. However, Microsoft may decide it makes more sense to limit the applications in the Zune market and offer them all free, he said. That's for good reason, Rosoff said. "When you look at it as a head-to-head comparison with the iPod Touch, people will see it as a shortcoming," he said. It will feature the "smart DJ," which allows the user to pick an artist and then automatically creates a playlist of similar songs.

Microsoft will also debut new Zune software on Tuesday that customers use on their PCs to manage their music. Microsoft will also start offering people who subscribe to Zune Pass a way to access the Zune music collection from a browser. A Zune Pass subscription lets users stream any song from the entire Zune catalog and download 10 songs each month. That means subscribers will be able to listen to music from the entire catalog from any PC, including one at work, rather than only from a PC running the Zune software. Microsoft also revealed a few more details about a Zune feature that will start showing up in Xbox Live later this year.

That's part of a strategy to move the Zune software experience into other products from Microsoft, Seitz said. "Going forward, we hope more people think of a 'holistic Zune business,' as opposed to how many of these things we sell," he said, pointing to the Zune hardware. Xbox users will be able to buy or rent movies from a new Zune store that will be featured in Xbox Live. The most important upcoming product that will include Zune software will be Windows Mobile phones, Rosoff said. "The Zune interface will show up in Windows Mobile," he said. Rosoff suspects that Microsoft will eventually get out of the MP3 player market altogether. "We'll just see the Zune as a consumer component of Windows Mobile," he said. "This is sort of the last [Zune], if it doesn't sell." Even Zune hardware elements, like the touch screen and the form factor of the device, will likely make it into Windows Mobile phones, he said.

A committee of Taiwanese lawmakers rejected requests for funding by Taiwanese memory chip companies on Wednesday and asked the executive branch to stop promoting the DRAM revitalization plan. That committee reviews applications before they are passed to the legislative body for a vote. The economics committee of the Taiwan legislature rejected requests by Powerchip Semiconductor and the government-led Taiwan Memory Company (TMC), a legislative aide confirmed. Lawmakers in the group believe the worst of the global economic crisis has passed and that DRAM makers should be able to fend for themselves considering the rebound in DRAM prices this year, the aide said.

The legislature usually follows committee recommendations when voting. The executive branch can work with lawmakers on a more palatable plan, but convincing the economics committee is vital. The rejection throws a wrench into the government's plan to restructure Taiwan's DRAM industry. The plan was the result of a crisis among DRAM makers caused by excessive debt and an inability to raise new funds amid the global recession. In March, Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs unveiled a plan to build TMC as a means for industry consolidation and DRAM technology development.

Taiwanese DRAM makers built too many new factories during good times, leading to a glut of DRAM chips and a collapse in global DRAM prices. The Taiwan government first stepped in to ask banks on the island to give companies more time to repay loans and extensions were granted until Dec. 31. A government report argued the amount of money DRAM makers on the island owed Taiwanese banks could cause problems if not repaid. Most Taiwanese DRAM makers have not posted a net profit since the middle of 2007 due to the chip downturn.

Adobe has agreed to buy Web analytics company Omniture for US$1.8 billion in cash, the companies said Tuesday. On a conference call Thursday, executives wouldn't say if there was a bidding war with other companies to buy Omniture. The price San Jose, California-based Adobe is paying for the company, which is $21.50 per share, is at a 45 percent premium over Omniture's average closing price for the last 30 trading days, Adobe said.

Adobe, known for multimedia design, Web-development and document-creation software such as Flash, Dreamweaver and Acrobat, said the purchase will help the company add Web analytics and optimization capabilities directly to those products. He said a recent Forrester study found that 73 percent of companies doing business on the Web had some kind of analytics technology in place. "It's a ubiquitous technology that is in high demand at companies that are placing any parts of their business online," he said. This kind of ability to measure what kinds of media, Web applications or Web pages are popular with users is becoming essential as more and more business is being done on the Web, particularly in the area of online advertising, said Forrester senior analyst John Lovett. For designers, developers and online marketers using its tools, this new capability will help them streamline how they create and deliver relevant content and applications, Adobe said. On a conference call Tuesday, Adobe CEO and President Shantanu Narayen said that the idea for a merger grew out of conversations with Omniture's CEO, Josh James, and with customers who wanted more out of the digital media they were creating using Adobe's products.

Advertisers, advertising agencies, publishers and online retailers can improve the experience of their end users and get more out of their digital media through the new analytical capability, the company said. For example, Narayen said people were using Flash to create online advertisements, but wanted a way to better understand click-through rates so they could see which ones were working. Similarly, Adobe, too, found it wanted more information from the ads and digital media it was putting up on its own site. They thought there might be a way for Adobe to build that into their products, and "a number actually wanted us to integrate with solutions like Omniture," he said. Omniture had been an Adobe partner for some time, and in conversations with James, Narayen said the two realized their companies had "the same vision" for how digital media and rich Internet applications could include Web analytics and optimization technology.

The deal creates a "big opportunity" to allow content creators to potentially measure the impact of everything they do, Lovett added. Forrester's Lovett said the deal will put Adobe a step ahead of other companies creating tools for developing digital content. "The combination of these two technologies makes sense - it's the creative meeting the measurement side of things," he said. Following the close of the deal, Omniture will become a new unit within Adobe, the company said. The companies expect the deal to close in the fourth quarter of Adobe's fiscal year, which ends Nov. 27. Omniture's CEO James will join Adobe as senior vice president in charge of that business unit, reporting to Adobe President and CEO Shantanu Narayen.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking at a report by a research scientist in China that shows how a well-placed attack against a small power subnetwork could trigger a cascading failure of the entire West Coast power grid. Wang and another colleague then investigated how a major outage in one subnetwork would affect adjacent subnetworks, according to an article in New Scientist . The aim of the research was to study potential weak spots on the West Coast grid, where an outage on one subnetwork would result in a cascading failure across the entire network. Jian-Wei Wang, a network analyst at China's Dalian University of Technology, used publicly available information to model how the West Coast power grid and its component subnetworks are connected.

A cascading failure occurs when an outage on one network results in an adjacent network becoming overloaded, triggering a similar set of failures across the entire network. Wang's research was expected to show that an outage in a heavily loaded network would result in smaller surrounding networks becoming overwhelmed and causing cascading blackouts. The massive blackouts in the Northeast in August 2003 , which affected close to 10 million, were the result of such a cascading failure. Instead, what the research showed was that under certain conditions, an attacker targeting a lightly loaded subnetwork would be able to cause far more of the grid to trip and fail, New Scientist reported quoting Wang. Wang did not reply to an e-mailed request for comment seeking details on the report.

The article does not describe Wang's research (paid subscription required) or any further details of the attack. Wang's report, which appears to have been largely overlooked until the publication of the New Scientist article last week, was completed last November and has been available online since March. The so-called "inherently fault current limiting" (IFCL) superconductor technology is part of the DHS' Resilient Electric Grid project. John Verrico, a spokesman for the DHS' science and technology directorate, said the DHS has not reviewed the research but is "very interested in the findings." In an e-mailed comment, Verrico said the DHS is working on a "self-limiting, high-temperature superconductor" technology that is designed to prevent power surges in one network from affecting surrounding networks. According to a DHS description, the technology is capable of carrying 10 times as much power as current copper wires of the same size, while also being able to automatically adapt to massive power surges and outages. The effort, which is funded by the DHS' science and technology directorate, involves teams from American Superconductor Corp., Southwire Co. and Consolidated Edison Co. The technology was successfully tested at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee earlier this year.

A single such IFCL cable will be capable of replacing 12 copper cable bundles. Pilot tests of the IFCL cable in New York are expected to start in 2010, Verrico said. In April, The Wall Street Journal , citing anonymous national security officials, reported that cyberspies from China, Russia and elsewhere had gained access to the U.S. electrical grid and had installed malware tools that could be used to shut down service. News about Wang's research comes at a time when there are considerable concerns about the security of the U.S. power grid. Though the access hasn't been used to disrupt service, the concern is that the malicious hackers could do so with relatively short notice during a time of crisis or war.

The letter lamented the apparent lack of awareness within the power sector of the cyber and noted how the horizontal nature of networked technology could allow attackers to take down multiple power sector assets at once, and from a distance. In a letter sent to industry stakeholders in April, Michael Assante , chief security officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corp., drew attention to the need for operators, suppliers and distributors in the power sector to properly identify and protect critical assets and associated critical cyber assets.

Logitech's only video products are commodity Web cams, but that will change when the company closes a deal to buy high-definition videoconferencing vendor LifeSize Communications. But if the purchase closes, it won't change the competitive landscape much, says Henry Dewing, an analyst with Forrester Research. You might not need telepresence for HD videoconferencing The acquisition, announced Tuesday, will put Logitech in competition with Cisco, HP, Polycom and Tandberg, among others - a high-powered group Logitech has never faced while selling its array of mice, keyboards, speakers, earphones, game controllers and other PC peripherals. Logitech plans to operate LifeSize as a separate business unit that will continue to compete against the same group of players.

The company has a reseller deal with Siemens, which sells LifeSize gear as part of its OpenScape unified communications line. LifeSize video gear ranges from a desktop video client that supports HD up to a three-screen telepresence system that approximates a live meeting with remote participants seeming to sit across a conference table. Logitech says in a press release that it plans to pursue more such deals with other UC vendors. The Cisco-Tandberg deal is up in the air after Tandberg stockholders balked, hoping to increase the $3 billion offer. Logitech's interest took industry observers by surprise. "It seems odd because Logitech is so consumer oriented," Dewing says. "LifeSize has been more of a kit-focused videoconferencing vendor." The telepresence and HD video market has been in flux since Cisco announced its plan to buy Tandberg, which would broaden Cisco's offerings toward the low end of the line, but not so low as LifeSize, whose desktop client is compatible with third-party video cameras.

Cisco has given them until Nov. 18 to consider its offer. That offer may have prompted Logitech to go after LifeSize at a price its investors could not ignore. The Cisco-Tandberg deal may have influenced LifeSize's decision to accept Logitech's offer of $405 million, Dewing says. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is running on $80 million in venture funding, so the sale price is five times the investment.

Legislators are trying to encourage cooperation among universities and businesses to develop technology needed to carry out a strategic government effort to fight cyber attacks.  Find out what is going on in university network security in our Alpha dogg blog. The Cybersecurity Research and Development Amendments Act of 2009 was approved today by the House Committee on Science and Technology's Research and Science Education Subcommittee. A U.S. House subcommittee is recommending a bill that calls for a university-industry task force to coordinate joint cybersecurity research and development projects between business and academia. The legislation would set up a scholarship program that pays college bills for students who study in fields related to cybersecurity.

In return the students would agree to work as cybersecurity professionals within the federal government for a period equal to the number of years they received scholarships. They would also get summer internships in the federal government. If there aren't any jobs there, they would work for state or local governments in the same capacity or teach cybersecurity courses. The task force would devise a way to build and maintain the infrastructure needed to create, test and implement new secure networking and IT systems. Language in the bill calls for fewer quick-fix actions and more strategic cybersecurity plans. 'In a series of hearings before Congress in 2009 experts testified that the federal cybersecurity research and development portfolio was too focused on short-term, incremental research," the bill says, "and that it lacked the prioritization and coordination necessary to address the long-term challenge of ensuring a secure and reliable information technology and communications infrastructure." A government task force would have to come up with a strategic plan within one year to prioritize research and development projects in cybersecurity that involve private businesses. It would also provide detailed spending priorities for federal agencies to meet these goals.

The program would also shepherd innovations from the research phase to implementation as new technologies and applications. The goal is to improve the security, reliability, resilience and trustworthiness of the national digital infrastructure. The legislation would give the president 180 days to list government cybersecurity staffing needs and to figure out how to meet them taking into consideration pay, the hiring process and hiring flexibility. The program would go beyond researching technology threats to address "social and behavioral factors including human-computer interactions, usability, user motivations and organizational cultures."

Three data storage start-ups have landed more than $28 million in first-round funding from venture capitalists, a rare feat in an economy that has punished new vendors looking to obtain financing. 10 biggest network venture capital deals from Q2 The multi-million dollar financing rounds went to Avere Systems, a Pittsburgh-based network-attached storage (NAS)  company; GreenBytes, a de-duplication vendor in Ashaway, R.I.; and Sonian of Needham, Mass., maker of a cloud-based e-mail archiving and disaster-recovery service. Early stage vendors have suffered as much as anyone, because a lack of successful IPOs and acquisitions has forced investors to put resources into existing companies longer than expected, leaving little left over for true start-ups. Venture capitalists have dramatically reduced spending on computer networking companies in the past couple years. There seems to be good reason to lower investments in storage companies: Storage software revenue is down worldwide compared to last year and storage hardware revenue is down 18%. But Avere, GreenBytes and Sonian were able to secure Series A financing in funding rounds announced this week: $15 million went to Avere, $8 million went to GreenBytes and $5.6 million went to Sonian. "In the current economy, the bar on new investments is extremely high," says John Jarve, Menlo Ventures managing director, in the Avere announcement.

Avere was founded in January 2008 and is led by CEO Ronald Bianchini, a former senior vice president at NetApp and co-founder of Spinnaker Networks, a storage grid company acquired by NetApp. All three start-ups are focused on making storage use more efficient, a key concern for enterprises grappling with expanding data volumes. Avere calls its technology "Demand-Driven Storage" and says it will consist of NAS products that let customers "scale storage network performance independently of capacity," reducing costs and space and power requirements. GreenBytes, featured in Network World's Companies to Watch series last year, makes de-duplication storage appliances designed for both primary and secondary storage tiers. Avere, which received its funding from Menlo and Norwest Venture Partners, says it will release its technology in the fall of this year. The company, founded by CEO Robert Petrocelli in 2007, says its GB-X Series appliances allow "real-time, on-the-fly de-duplication of file blocks as they are stored, expanding the scope of applications into primary storage, as well as backup." GreenBytes' funding round was led by Battery Ventures.

The company offers a 99.99% data retention service-level agreement. Sonian, founded in 2007 by CTO Greg Arnette, built its hosted e-mail archive platform with a grid computing architecture designed to eliminate single points of failure. Sonian, which received funding from Prism VentureWorks and Summerhill Venture Partners, was named a "cool vendor" in archiving by Gartner this year. Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin

With quarterly IT sales results pouring in, vendors including IBM, Google, Advanced Micro Devices and Intel appear more confident than ever that the global recession's depressing effects on the tech market are lifting. IBM, the second-biggest IT company in the world behind Hewlett-Packard, reported better-than-expected third-quarter results Thursday. Major U.S. market indexes including the tech-heavy Nasdaq dipped Friday, however, as investors absorbed mixed macroeconomic news.

Though revenue dropped 7 percent from a year earlier to US$23.6 billion, it rose 1 percent sequentially from the second quarter and bested the $23.4 billion consensus forecast of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. The company reported its third-quarter net earnings rose to $3.2 billion from $2.8 billion a year earlier. IBM's diverse portfolio of services and its global footprint helped it weather the economic storm this year. More important - in terms of signs of recovery - is that Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge, in a conference call, forecast a return to revenue growth in the fourth quarter. IBM shares slipped by $5.80 to $122.18 in midday trading Friday, however, as investors questioned the extent to which foreign exchange rates factor into the revenue figures.

Revenue increases are often seen as the real signal of growth for any company, since earnings can be boosted by cost cuts. Google, also reporting results Thursday, said revenue for the quarter ending in September jumped 7 percent to $5.94 billion - the Internet ad giant's fastest sales growth rate so far this year. Google, which generates more than 90 percent of its revenue from search-related advertising, is widely seen as a barometer for Internet commerce. It said net earnings were $1.64 billion, a 27 percent jump from last year and on a per-share basis, higher than analyst expectations. "The worst of the recession is clearly behind us," proclaimed CEO Eric Schmidt in a company statement. Google shares bucked the downward market trend Friday, hitting a 52-week high for the company at $554.75 in midday trading.

Analysts have for several months forecast a return to growth for the hardware sector. On the hardware components front, AMD said Thursday that revenue fell in the third quarter, but that it expects sales in the last three months of the year to rise "modestly." Revenue in the quarter dropped 21.3 percent to $1.4 billion from a year ago, but beat the $1.26 billion expected by analysts. IDC said Wednesday that global PC shipments in the third quarter did in fact rise 2.3 percent from the same quarter a year earlier, to 78.1 million units - the first quarter this year in which PC shipments increased compared to 2008. Gartner also said this week that PC shipments rose during the quarter. Rising PC sales are boosting the fortunes of chip companies. Though Gartner's estimate of a 0.5 percent year-over-year growth was smaller than IDC's, its figure for total shipments was higher, at 80.3 million units. "These are good results especially given that PC shipments for the third quarter of 2009 are being compared to a very strong third quarter from 2008," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner, in the report. Intel on Tuesday reported strong quarterly results and forecasts that beat industry expectations.

Intel forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $10.1 billion "plus or minus $400 million," while analysts had been expecting $9.5 billion. "The timing of Windows 7 is favorable for the industry due to expected economic improvements and an overdue hardware replacement cycle," Gartner's Kitagawa noted. Intel's revenue of $9.39 billion was up by $1.4 billion compared to the prior quarter, though it was lower than the $10.2 billion in the third quarter last year. Not all vendors are upbeat, however. Though Nokia now expects global, industrywide mobile-device sales to fall by only 7 percent this year - compared to its prior forecast of 10 percent - CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo injected a note of caution in an otherwise upbeat earnings week. "Let's be clear, uncertainty in end-consumer demand remains," said Kallasvuo on a conference call. Nokia on Thursday reported a third-quarter loss of €559 million (US$833 million) mainly due to charges related to its Nokia Siemens networking infrastructure business, which has been losing market share.

That uncertainty spooked investors Friday, as markets tumbled. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slumped by 67.9 points to hit 9997.35 in midafternoon trading, while the Nasdaq Composite dipped 13.08 to 2160.21. IT companies have been riding a wave of optimism recently. Though most tech leaders were upbeat this week, news about financial and consumer companies - including disappointing earnings results from Bank of America and General Electric - spooked investors. Shares of Nasdaq computer companies are as a group up by 38.25 percent from a year ago, when the U.S. financial sector was crumbling. Whether this trend continues will depend to a large degree on quarterly results from other tech leaders such as Microsoft, BMC, Yahoo and AT&T in the next few weeks.

Nasdaq telecom shares are up 32.74 percent from a year ago.

The man described by federal authorities as the mastermind of the massive data thefts at TJX Companies Inc., Heartland Payment Systems and other retailers today pleaded guilty to charges in a 19-count indictment that include conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. That case was being prosecuted separately in New York but was merged with the case in Boston under a plea agreement negotiated with prosecutors a few days ago. Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to a data theft at Dave & Buster's restaurant chain. Gonzalez is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 8 by U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris in Boston.

Under the plea agreement, Gonzalez will serve between 15 and 25 years for both cases and will be fined as much as $250,000 for each of the charges. He faces a maximum of 25 years in prison for the charges in Boston and 20 years for the case in New York. Gonzalez will also forfeit more than $2.7 million in cash as well as multiple pieces of real estate and personal property, including a condominium in Miami, a BMW and several Rolex watches that he is alleged to have acquired through his ill-gotten gains. Gonzalez was arrested in Miami in 2008 along with 10 other individuals on charges relating to the thefts at TJX, Dave & Busters, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Forever 21 and DSW. In August, federal authorities in New Jersey indicted Gonzalez on charges involving breaches at Heartland Payment Systems, Hannaford, 7-Eleven Inc. and two other unnamed retailers. About $1 million of the money being forfeited was recovered from a container buried in Gonzalez' back yard, according to a statement released today by the U.S. Department of Justice. Prosecutors alleged that Gonzalez, along with two unnamed Russian conspirators, stole more than 130 million credit and debit cards from the five retailers.

It is not clear if Gonzalez was the leader of a worldwide criminal gang or merely acting at the behest of powerful crime gangs based in Russia and East Europe. Today's plea brings to an end, for the moment, to the career of a hacker who federal authorities say has been the mastermind of the biggest data thefts in U.S. history. But his actions, which his lawyer has claimed stemmed from a computer addiction , have caused millions of dollars in losses to his victims. In addition, some of the companies that were Gonzalez's victims have had to pay fines to Visa and the other card brands for being noncompliant with the credit card industry's Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and to spend more money to revamp their security controls. TJX has publicly estimated that costs to the company from the data breach will touch $200 million . Heartland has already spent or set aside more than $12 million and is facing numerous lawsuits from affected institutions.

Aardvark has taken a different tack with search. And now the people behind Aardvark are bringing that same approach to the iPhone and iPod touch. The online service figures it's sometimes more productive to ask a question of an actual person-usually someone from within your social network-rather than brave the vagaries of a search engine and its sometimes irrelevant answers.

Aardvark Mobile actually arrived in the App Store nearly a week ago. Aardvark Mobile tackles the same problem as the Aardvark Web site-dealing with subjective searches where two people might type in the same keywords but be searching for two completely different things. "Search engines by design struggle with these types of queries," Aardvark CEO Max Ventilla said. But developer Vark.com waited until Tuesday to take the wraps off the mobile version of its social question-and-answer service. What Aardvark does is tap into your social networks and contacts on Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and elsewhere to track down answers to questions that might otherwise flummox a search engine-things like "Where's a good place to eat in this neighborhood?" or "Where should I stay when I visit London?" With Aadvark's Web service, you'd send a message through your IM client to Aardvark; the service then figures out who in your network (and in their extended network) might be able to answer the question and asks them on your behalf. The majority of questions are answered in less than five minutes. Ventilla says that 90 percent of the questions asked via Aardvark get answered.

The iPhone version of Aardvark works much the same way. The service pings people for an answer, and sends you a push notification when there's a reply. Instead of an IM, you type a message directly into the app, tag it with the appropriate categories, and send it off to Aardvark. In previewing the app, I asked a question about affordable hotels in Central London-two responses came back within about three minutes from other Aardvark users. If you shake your mobile device when you're on the Answer tab, Aardvark Mobile looks up any unanswered questions that you may be able to provide a response for (while also producing a very alarming aardvark-like noise). "We think Aardvark is particularly well-suited to mobile, and especially the iPhone given how rich that platform is to develop for," Ventilla said.

In addition to push notifications, Aardvark Mobile also taps into the iPhone's built-in location features to automatically detect your location-a feature that can help when you're asking about local hotspots. You don't have to already be using Aardvark's online service to take advantage of the mobile app. Aardvark Mobile requires the iPhone OS 3.0. The free Aardvark Mobile app lets you set up a profile on your iPhone or iPod touch; Facebook Connect integration helps you instantly build up a network of friends who are also using the service.

Some industry observers still like to kick dents in the mainframe saying it's not the corporate platform of the future but the Big Iron seemingly takes the licks and keeps on ticking. Only IBM mainframe users were included in the survey population, IDC noted. Case in point: According to a study out today of 300 end users by researchers at IDC nearly one-half of said they plan to increase annual spending on mainframe hardware and software over the next five years. Network World Extra: How to really bury a mainframe Many mainframe users reported that they can plan another wave of investments in the System z platform over the next 2–5 years, citing the system's high availability, reliability, and security for mission-critical applications as major drivers, IDC stated. "Customers continue to collect dividends on their System z investments, which makes future investments much more palatable, even in difficult economic times," said Tim Grieser, program vice president, Enterprise System Management Software in a release.

IBM has engaged in some price cutting to make some of these processors more palatable though. The study says IBM's strategy of building specialty processors for the mainframe, such as the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) System z Integrated Information Processor (zIIP) for ERP and CRM transactions and z Application Assist Processor (zAAP) processors for Java and XML transactions are key to ongoing success of the platform. According to a Network World article IBM has cut in half prices for some specialty Linux processors. Another source said the price changed from $90,000 to $47,500 for IFLs running on the System z Business Class mainframe. IBM acknowledged "new pricing" for the IFL processors, but did not offer specific numbers.

And IBM's mainframes haven't been immune to the economic downturn. Still all is by no means rosy in mainframeland. This summer IBM reported that System z mainframe server revenue decreased 39% year-over-year in the second quarter, while overall company revenue declined 13%. IDC however says the mainframe will benefit down the road from these new processors which will require additional mainframe-related database and storage facilities to handle new workloads. Another recent study raised an ever-increasing issue – retiring mainframers. However, while today individuals still train to become commercial pilots, the number of IT professionals going into the mainframe arena is fast disappearing. One study by system vendor Shoden found that 96% of respondents working for financial businesses said that they are concerned to some degree that with cloud computing and SaaS they will not be able to retain the necessary skills to operate and maintain legacy environments such as IBM mainframe or AS/400. The study said in the manufacturing sector, 88% of IT decision makers admitting to being concerned, while across all the markets polled, the average comes in at a staggering 83%. The retail, distribution and transport sectors come in just a little lower at 80%. The study went on to state that mainframe technology is as old as the Boeing 747 and, like the iconic aircraft, it is still the default workhorse for many of its original adopters.

A similar study funded by CA found that Financial Services organizations are leading the drive to tackle the shortage of mainframe skills in Europe where 60% of financial service firms use the mainframe for administering their critical data. In the CA study it found 57% of financial services organizations said an easy-to-use Web-enabled GUI would help close the skills gap.

Looks like Apple's taking some of the criticisms of its App Store to heart. Broken down into a handful of different categories like Apps for Cooks and Apps for Music, the collections consist of apps related to a specific topic. On Tuesday, the company unveiled a new section of its Web site, Apps for Everything. There are currently 12 different collections, each featuring between eight and 24 applications along with tips for using the built-in features of your iPhone.

The section also features lists of the top ten paid and free lists for the Travel category in the App Store. You might be traveling, for example, in which case Apple recommends apps like Frommer's travel guides or Currency for dealing with conversion rates and suggests tips such as using the Maps app to bookmark locations and remembering to turn off data roaming to save money. With more than 85,000 applications in the App Store, one common complaint is that it's gotten harder and harder to find quality apps. We don't yet know whether Apple will be adding more categories to its Web site in the future, or changing the composition of its existing collections. Apple's Staff Picks section (also available via the iPhone section of its Web site) is well known to draw attention to particular applications and these new Apps for Everything collections seems to be an extension of that.

Of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Apple's new venture resembles-uncannily, some might say-our own App Guide essentials collections to which we regularly add new content assembled by the Macworld editorial staff. But at least we can all agree that it needs to be easier for consumers to find the best apps. [via The Loop]

IBM has launched LotusLive iNotes, an on-demand e-mail, calendaring and contact management system meant to compete with the likes of Gmail and Microsoft Exchange, the company said Friday. IBM is aiming the software at large enterprises that want to migrate an on-premise e-mail system to SaaS (software as a service), particularly for users who aren't tied to a desk, such as retail workers. Pricing starts at US$3 per user per month, undercutting Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 per user per year.

It is also hoping to win business from smaller companies interested in on-demand software but with concerns about security and service outages, such as those suffered by Gmail in recent months. While alluding to Google's service outages, Poulley acknowledged that no company can guarantee 100 percent uptime for on-demand applications. LotusLive iNotes is based on technology IBM purchased from the Hong Kong company Outblaze. "What we brought to Outblaze and to the marketplace is what you'd expect from IBM in terms of security, reliability and privacy," said Sean Poulley, vice president of online collaboration. But IBM has a long-standing track record of running "the world's mission-critical systems," he said. Overall, the main point of interest in IBM's announcement is price, said Gartner analyst Matt Cain. "Outblaze always sold low-cost mailboxes and that's what this is," he said. "Google's long been in it, Microsoft's long been in it.

IBM will also have an opportunity to win customers from Microsoft who aren't ready to migrate to the upcoming Exchange 2010 release, given the headaches and investments involved, Poulley said. Now IBM's in it." However, that's not to say IBM's brand on the software isn't of some value, Cain added. ."From an enterprise perspective, you'd rather buy e-mail from IBM than a company called Outblaze." It's unlikely that IBM's pricing strategy will cause competitors to lower fees for their offerings, according to Cain. For one thing, Microsoft already has a $2 per month Exchange Online option called "Deskless Worker," Cain noted.

ProMOS Technologies may soon sign a deal to work on DRAM manufacturing technology with Taiwan Memory Company (TMC), the government-sponsored entity designed to take over debt-ridden DRAM makers in Taiwan. "We have reached a mutual understanding to start working with them," ProMOS vice president Ben Tseng said by phone on Monday. ProMOS has been manufacturing DRAM in Taiwan since 1996 and was the first company on the island to run a factory making chips on 12-inch wafers. The cooperation will begin with research and development work, but Tseng says ProMOS is hopeful it will turn into a manufacturing partnership as well. "It only makes sense," he said. "Once the R&D is done, then you do the manufacturing on the same site." TMC could not immediately be reached for comment.

TMC is a brand-new company designed by the government to bail out its heavily indebted DRAM makers. DRAM prices have rallied over the past several months, recently hitting profitable levels for most DRAM companies. Taiwan's five big DRAM makers ran into financial trouble amid the global recession and after suffering two years of losses caused by a massive chip glut. Before ProMOS and TMC can enter an agreement, TMC needs to finalize its funding plans. The company slashed production as the DRAM downturn bit, and is currently producing chips on fewer than half of its production lines.

The Taiwan government has discussed investing NT$30 billion (US$925.9 million) in the new company, while TMC chairman John Hsuan has said private investors will also be invited to put money into TMC. ProMOS needs money to move forward. It has used up most of its cash paying off debt. The coming launch of Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 7, has stirred demand for new PCs and they need DRAM chips inside. New funds from TMC would help ProMOS reopen closed factories just as DRAM prices are hitting profitable levels. Tseng said his company must also soon decide whether to invite workers back full time after keeping some on unpaid leave for months due to the global recession. Once the company ends the unpaid leave, however, it will have to start paying full salaries again.

Under Taiwanese labor law, companies putting workers on unpaid leave must do so for fixed periods of months at a time, but ProMOS may need them back quickly to ramp up factory lines if it signs a deal with TMC soon.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will move to create formal net neutrality rules prohibiting Internet providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content and applications, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Monday. It is vital that we safeguard the free and open Internet." The notice of proposed rulemaking will look not only into net neutrality rules on traditional wired broadband networks, but also explore whether to impose new rules on broadband networks offered by mobile phone carriers, the FCC said. Genachowski announced a notice of proposed rulemaking, a process to formalize a set of broadband policy principles that the FCC has embraced since August 2005. In addition to the four policy principles, Genachowski called for two additional principles to be included in a formal set of net neutrality rules. "The Internet is an extraordinary platform for innovation, job creation, investment, and opportunity," Genachowski said in a speech before the Brookings Institution. "It has unleashed the potential of entrepreneurs and enabled the launch and growth of small businesses across America.

Genachowski said he wants all six principles to apply to all platforms that access the Internet. The FCC has enforced the existing broadband policy principles on a case-by-case basis, but it has never made formal net neutrality rules. Mobile broadband services offered by carriers such as Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile have not been subject to the FCC's net neutrality principles. Broadband provider Comcast filed a lawsuit challenging the FCC's authority to enforce the principles after the agency ruled last August that Comcast had to stop slowing peer-to-peer traffic in the name of network management. Comcast argued that the FCC needs to create a rule or get authority from the U.S. Congress to enforce net neutrality. The Comcast lawsuit was filed late last year, and a ruling is pending.

In addition to Genachowski's new rulemaking, a bill pending in the U.S. Congress would give the FCC that authority. But Genachowski said there have been examples in recent years of broadband providers blocking or slowing applications, including peer-to-peer software and VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service. Several broadband providers have opposed formal net neutrality rules, saying they could hamper provider efforts to roll out new services and manage their networks, and to protect against attacks and bandwidth hogs. There has been one example of a broadband provider blocking political content, he noted. "Notwithstanding its unparalleled record of success, today the free and open Internet faces emerging and substantial challenges," he said. "The rise of serious challenges to the free and open Internet puts us at a crossroads. Or we could take steps to preserve Internet openness, helping ensure a future of opportunity, innovation, and a vibrant marketplace of ideas." A Comcast spokeswoman said the company would comment soon. We could see the Internet's doors shut to entrepreneurs, the spirit of innovation stifled, a full and free flow of information compromised.

Representatives of AT&T, Verizon Wireless and CTIA, a trade group representing mobile carriers, weren't immediately available for comment. In addition, Genachowski proposed two new principles. There are four existing broadband principles that would be formalized: - Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice. - Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement. - Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network. - Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers. The first would prevent Internet access providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications, while allowing for reasonable network management. Genachowski will seek to launch a notice of proposed rulemaking during the FCC's October meeting. The second principle would ensure that Internet access providers are transparent about the network management practices they implement.

The notice will ask the public and interested companies for feedback on the proposed rules and their application, such as how to determine whether network management practices are reasonable, what information broadband providers should disclose about their network management practices and how the rules apply to differing platforms, including mobile Internet access services, the FCC said.

Scammers tricked the New York Times' Digital Advertising department into placing a malicious ad for fake antivirus software on the NYTimes.com Web site over the weekend, the company confirmed Monday. According to the Times, the scammers initially claimed to be Internet phone provider Vonage, and had placed what appeared to be legitimate Vonage ads on the Web site. The newspaper had warned of the scam advertisement Sunday, after receiving about 100 e-mails from concerned readers.

However, sometime over the weekend, they switched these ads for aggressive pop-up advertisements that tried to trick victims into thinking that their computers were infected. When the complaints started pouring in, the Times first suspected that the ad had been unauthorized, and pulled third-party advertisements from the site. The point of the scam was to sell worried computer users a product called Personal Antivirus, a fake "scareware" product that bombards victims with popup ads until they either hand over their credit card information or somehow manage to remove the program. But on Monday spokeswoman Diane McNulty confirmed that the ad had been submitted directly to the company's online ad department. "The culprit masqueraded as a national advertiser and provided seemingly legitimate product advertising for a week," she said via email. "Over the weekend, the ad being served up was switched so that an intrusive message, claiming to be a virus warning from the reader's computer, appeared. " Technology executive Troy Davis was hit with the ad after he clicked on a Times story about Dubai on Saturday night. This gave the criminals a way to include embedded Web pages in their copy that could be hosted on a completely different server, outside of the control of the Times. After his antivirus software warned him not to visit the article, he performed an analysis of the site and discovered that the Times was allowing advertisers to embed an HTML element known as an iframe into their advertisements.

Apparently the scammers waited until the weekend, when it would be hardest for IT staff to respond, before switching the ad by inserting new JavaScript code into that iframe. It was, of course, all just a fake. That code redirected Davis's browser to the Web site that served a pop-up ad designed to look like a Windows system scan that had found security problems on his system.

Microsoft has cofounded and is providing the funding for a new foundation aimed at bringing open-source and proprietary software companies together to participate side by side in open-source projects.

According to its Web site, the new CodePlex Foundation "will complement existing open source foundations and organizations, providing a forum in which best practices and shared understanding can be established by a broad group of participants, both software companies and open source communities."

CodePlex has for some time been the name of the site on which Microsoft hosts open-source projects.

The group is a nonprofit whose interim president will be Sam Ramji, who's currently senior director of platform strategy at Microsoft, in charge of the company's open-source endeavors. It's not clear if the move means Ramji is leaving his duties at Microsoft. The new foundation plans to hold a press conference on Thursday afternoon to provide more details about its formation.

A board of directors supporting Ramji is comprised mainly of Microsoft employees, including Bill Staples, Stephanie Boesch and Britt Johnson. The only non-Microsoft employees on the board are longtime open-source guru Miguel de Icaza of Novell and Shaun Walker, cofounder of DotNetNuke.

Ramji and the board will search for a permanent executive director of the foundation, which now only has a deputy director, Mark Stone, formerly of O'Reilly and VA Linux (now SourceForge), according to the Web site.

Microsoft historically has had a thorny relationship with the open-source community, but in the past couple of years Ramji's Platform Strategy Group has been trying to work more closely with open-source companies.

At the same time, however, Microsoft has continued to pose a litigation threat to open-source companies over patents it claims to hold for technologies incorporated in open-source software, including Linux. Microsoft has consistently and quietly been striking patent deals with Linux distributors. Some of the deals call for the companies to pay Microsoft to license patented technologies.

One case did go to court earlier this year, when Microsoft brought a patent suit against GPS device maker TomTom over patents included in the Linux implementation TomTom uses in its devices. TomTom eventually paid Microsoft out of court to settle the case, which Microsoft claimed was a patent case and not an attack against Linux.

The IT jobs market turned around in July with the United States gaining 7,400 IT-related jobs just one month after losing that many.

Department of Labor statistics show the U.S. economy on the whole lost 247,000 jobs in July, but IT-related employment categories showed a collective gain for the month after posting five straight months of losses.

Since February, IT job numbers declined between 3,000 and 11,000 per month, including losses of 7,600 jobs in June. The net gain of 7,400 IT jobs in July is "very encouraging news [and] maybe the turning point we have all been anticipating," says David Foote, co-founder, CEO and chief research officer of Foote Partners, a research group that tracks IT salary and skills. 

5 ways to get affordable certification skills

There are five employment segments tracked by the Department of Labor related to IT. Among these, computer systems design and related services gained 7,900 jobs in July after seven months of losses totaling 17,500 jobs, Foote reports in a press release. Another 900 jobs were gained in the management/technical consulting services segment.

Slight job losses were reported in the other three IT segments, namely computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing; communications equipment; and data processing, hosting and related services.

It's not yet clear if the IT turnaround can be sustained throughout the rest of the year. But with the U.S. economy shedding jobs at a slower pace and IT jobs increasing, Foote expressed optimism.

"There has been a vibrancy in the job market throughout this recession driven by employers search for IT workers with the right skills and experience for the job," Foote said. "If anything, I expect this to intensify in the next several months."

Microsoft Monday made an historic move by submitting device drivers to the Linux kernel under a GPLv2 license. Microsoft has had a checkered past with both Linux and its open source GPL licensing structure, so the move was a jaw dropper. Here is a look at some of the milestones since Microsoft internal memos leaked in 1998 that attacked the open source Linux operating system as it began to pick up steam as an alternative to Windows.

Microsoft stuns Linux worldA watershed event for MicrosoftMicrosoft's Linux submission raises virtualization questionsLinux driver chief went looking for Microsoft  Microsoft Linux move puts pressure on VMware

1998

Internal Microsoft "Halloween memos" attacking Linux leak out.

2001

May - Craig Mundie, Microsoft senior vice president, says the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it. 

June - CEO Steve Ballmer one-ups Mundie, calling Linux a "cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."

2002

May - Then-Microsoft chairman Bill Gates equates the GPL to anti-capitalism at a Government Leaders' Conference in Seattle.

2003

Microsoft begins its Get the Facts campaign extolling virtues of Windows over Linux. The campaign is disbanded in 2007.

2004

November - Ballmer says Windows provides better intellectual property indemnification than its open source rivals.  

2005

September - An oblivious recruiter sends vocal open source advocate Eric Raymond an e-mail pitch seeking his interest in a position at Microsoft

2006

March - Microsoft opens Port 25, which is billed as an open source community at Microsoft

June - Microsoft begins hosting Codeplex, a Web storage site for developers.  

November - Microsoft and Novell enter business and technology partnership to provide integration between Linux and Windows, including a joint interoperability lab in Cambridge, Mass. 

2007

May - Microsoft claims Linux and open source violates 235 of its patents. 

2008

July - Microsoft makes $100,000 investment in Apache Foundation to become one of only three Platinum sponsors of the Apache Foundation (Yahoo and Google are the others).  

July - Microsoft makes first code contribution to PHP, a patch to ADOdb, a data access layer for PHP. 

2009

July - Microsoft submits device driver source code for inclusion in the Linux kernel under a GPLv2 license. 

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Microsoft will begin pushing Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) to enterprises next month, the company announced this week.

The decision to turn on IE8 updates will set businesses scrambling to either test the new browser or block the update, which replaces older editions such as IE6 and IE7 that many companies now require.

Microsoft will flip the switch for IE8 delivery via Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) on Aug. 25, said Eric Hebenstreit, a lead program manager on the IE team. WSUS is Microsoft's most popular tool for deploying patches within businesses.

The IE8 upgrade will be made available as an "Update rollup," said Hebenstreit in a post to the IE blog on Monday.

That means systems running Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 or Server 2008 will automatically grab IE8, assuming the organization configured WSUS to auto-approve "Update rollup" packages.

Hebenstreit said that companies that don't want IE8 should turn off auto-approve for "Update rollup" packages in WSUS prior to Aug. 25, then on the next sync, decline the IE8 update. They can later re-enable auto-approve.

Earlier this year, Microsoft said that it would start serving IE8 to WSUS users in July; Hebenstreit did not give a reason for the month-long delay.

Microsoft released IE8 in March, but waited a month before pushing the new browser to end-users via Windows Update (WU), the primary update service for consumers and smaller businesses. Before that, it had released a toolkit to block the new browser from reaching machines through WU; the toolkit, however, does not block IE8 upgrades pushed by WSUS or Systems Management Server (SMS), another Microsoft patch manager.

The toolkit, which is still available from Microsoft, will stymie IE8 deployment indefinitely. According to Web metrics firm Net Applications, IE8 accounted for 7.6% of all browsers used in May, the most recent month for which data is available. Although Net Applications typically issues new browser market share numbers the first of each month, it has delayed June's data pending a review for what it said was " significant variations in browser and operating system statistics."

In other upgrade news from Microsoft, the company said yesterday that it had released the remaining 31 language-specific versions of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) to Windows Update.

Microsoft posted Vista SP2 for download in May, and after a delay, began pushing the English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish editions to users via Windows Update on May 26.

Windows 7 will ship without Internet Explorer in Europe, in an effort by Microsoft to offer the product on time and without running afoul of competitive regulations in Europe, the company said.

Microsoft on Thursday confirmed a Cnet story quoting from a memo that the software giant sent this week to PC makers.

The move stems from a complaint that Web browser developer Opera filed with the European Commission last year saying that Microsoft gets an unfair advantage by tying IE with Windows. Mozilla has joined Opera in the suit. By shipping Windows 7 without the browser, Microsoft may avoid potential requirements to delay shipment or other sanctions.

"We're committed to launching Windows 7 on time in Europe, so we need to address the legal realities in Europe, including the risk of large fines," Dave Heiner, deputy general counsel at Microsoft, wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

PC makers and distributors will be able to add any browser to the Windows 7 machines and Microsoft said it plans to make it easy for them to do so.

While the company believes that most people will buy Windows 7 as part of a new computer, some will surely buy the software in order to upgrade an existing machine. "They will be able to add the browser of their choice via CD distribution, FTP installation, retail distribution or other means," a Microsoft spokesman said.

In addition, Microsoft plans to ship the Windows 7 Internet Pack, a free DVD that will include Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7 and Windows Live Essentials. The DVD will be available via retail, FTP and other channels, the spokesman said.

Even though Microsoft says it will make it easy for PC makers and users to get IE, a version of Windows minus IE is a good opening for competitors to try to persuade PC makers to put their browsers on computers. Google, for example, could use this as an opportunity to try to get its Chrome browser to a substantially larger user base, especially in Europe where Google's search share is even bigger than it is in the U.S., said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

"If they can spend however many billion or million to get every PC in Europe to go out with Chrome as the exclusive browser, suddenly people will use Chrome a lot more," he said.

Microsoft warned that this move does not necessarily spell the end of the Commission's investigation. "Our decision to only offer IE separately from Windows 7 in Europe cannot, of course, preclude the possibility of alternative approaches emerging through Commission processes," Heiner wrote.

During commission proceedings, other alternatives have come up, such as requiring a screen in Windows 7 that would let users choose from a variety of browsers. "Important details of these approaches would need to be worked out in coordination with the Commission, since they would have a significant impact on computer manufacturers and Web browser vendors, whose interests may differ. Given the complexity and competing interests, we don't believe it would be best for us to adopt such an approach unilaterally," he wrote.

Such a requirement would indeed by burdensome for Microsoft, Rosoff said. "It would force Microsoft to enter into a lot of negotiations to make sure these browsers were supported correctly and would complicate support for Microsoft and the OEMs," he said. "They figured they would take the hit and unbundle it entirely and if people want it, they know how to get it."

The EC's browser case follows a landmark antitrust ruling against Microsoft in 2004, resulting in fines of more than US$1 billion. Part of that case dealt with the bundling, or tying, of Media Player to the Windows OS.

(Elizabeth Montalbano in New York contributed to this report.)

Early reviewers have dubbed the Palm Pre a strong competitor to the iPhone, with some notable problems, including short battery life and too few applications to run on the device.

But the Pre also takes competition to another level, since it allows users to synchronize the Pre with Apple Inc.'s iTunes, so that the Pre acts as if it were an iPhone or iPod. It's a feature Palm Inc. intentionally built in, and was defended by the mobile phone maker as an "easy and elegant way" for users to get access to music, photos and video content they own.

The ability to sync a Pre with music, photos and videos on iTunes was noted today by two reviewers, David Pogue at the New York Times and Walter Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal. "Apple's lawyers must be having conniptions," Pogue wrote.

"The Pre team, headed by a former top engineer at Apple, figured out how to make iTunes think a Pre is an iPhone or iPod, and the software acts accordingly," Mossberg wrote. " Apple can alter iTunes to block this."

Apple won't say whether its lawyers are having conniptions or whether it will block the Pre's access to iTunes. A spokesman said today that the company would not comment.

"I bet there will be some legal maneuvering by Apple over this," said Jack Gold an analyst at J. Gold Associates. "Apple protects everything."

When asked about the issue today, Palm referred to comments made last week at the All Things Digital conference by Jon Rubinstein, Palm's executive chairman. "We designed Palm media sync to be an easy and elegant way for you to take the content you own and put it on Pre," he said.

In a little-noticed statement that accompanied his comments, Palm said that media sync is a feature of the Pre's WebOS that "synchronizes seamlessly with iTunes, giving you a simple and easy way to transfer DRM-free music, photos and videos to your Palm Pre."

The ability to sync a Pre with iTunes caught the attention of a few bloggers, with one calling what Palm has done a " hack."

That blogger, Charlie Sorrel for Gadget Lab, predicted Palm's move will backfire when Apple decides to switch off the capability, angering Palm customers. "Nice work, Palm. Way to bring yourselves back from the brink," Sorrel wrote.

A blogger at the All Things Digital conference also took note of how Rubinstein dodged questions from Mossberg over how Apple might feel about the sync capability. /p>

Aside from the iTunes sync capability in Palm, which could be interpreted as good for some users, Gold said the biggest issue facing the Pre might be its need for fast wireless speeds to support various applications.

"How good Sprint holds up will be important," Gold said. "Remember, the early iPhone users were not too pleased with AT&T on network speeds."

The Times' Pogue took note of Sprint's slow network coverage while using the Pre from where he lives.

"It will be a matter of where you live," Gold added. "It's all the about the network."

Many reviewers also raised questions over Palm's ability to quickly add more applications. Gold said it will be critical for Palm, since having good applications that are easy to purchase wirelessly could help generate more revenue. "They need the revenues," Gold said.