eWEEK EDITORS

Microsoft Corp. has gone public with a tentative date for its third service pack for Windows XP. And that date—the latter half of 2007—is considerably later than many company watchers were expecting. Microsoft has published the due date for Windows XP SP3 (Service Pack 3) on its Windows Lifecycle Web site. While Microsoft characterized the […]

I liked Scott McNealys column on how companies dont consider the barriers to exit from a technology when they consider entering it (Guest Column, “Technologys Barriers to Exit,” Jan. 2). He correctly said that “technology has the shelf life of a banana,” lightheartedly suggesting that this be called McNealys Law. Actually, it should merely be […]

The move toward service-oriented architectures has spawned a host of companies competing for developer mind share. Thought leaders from two such companies, Tom Erickson, CEO at Systinet Corp., in Burlington, Mass., and Gordon Van Huizen, strategic technology adviser and chief technology officer at Sonic Software Corp., in Bedford, Mass., recently shared their views on SOA […]

Cleaning Up Toxic IT Equipment As eWEEK Labs warned readers a year and a half ago, there are both costs and technical obstacles impeding the reduction of hazardous substances in IT equipment. The European mandate to do so is bearing down with its July 1 deadline, however, and California and other states are imposing their […]

Anti-virus vendor McAfee last week announced the sudden departure of its president, Gene Hodges. Hodges, an 11-year McAfee veteran who was responsible for the companys technology development, strategy and execution worldwide, has resigned to take the reins at access control vendor Websense. McAfee did not identify a replacement for Hodges. In a brief statement, company […]

The Microsoft Office Live beta is expected to go live any day now. Office Live is not a hosted version of Microsoft Office. Instead, it is a set of software services Microsoft Corp. is developing as extensions to its shrink-wrapped Office product. Microsoft introduced the Office Live concept in November, at the same time as […]

As Oracle Corp. grapples with its patch quality and speed, some in the security community have compared it unfavorably to Microsoft Corp. Oracle security execs say this is an apples-to-oranges comparison, given the vast differences between patching the complex server software Oracle produces and the client technologies that makes up much of Microsofts security focus. […]

In the beginning, there was .Net. Next up is NXT. NXT is the name of Microsofts latest independent-software-vendor- targeted initiative. Via NXT, Microsoft is hoping to attract and incent ISVs with more than $5 million in revenue “who are ready to migrate or cross-platform to a Microsoft operating system or database,” according to the Microsoft […]

Smartvue Offers Basic Surveillance With its Smartvue S2 IP Video surveillance system, Smartvue has combined a good video camera with a well-designed management interface and appliance to create a simple IP video surveillance solution. The S2 IP is a little expensive—the S2 IP Camera lists for $1,999 and the S2 80GB DVM (digital video manager) […]

A Trojan horse program is churning out bogus Google ads promoting products Google eschews—gambling, cheap Viagra, girlie photos and adult dating. The ads, being targeted at small publishers, are identical to Google AdSense ads except that referral graphic buttons are being converted to text, apparently due to a bug in the Trojan, according to the […]

Microsoft Corp. didnt show off many new Windows Vista bells and whistles at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. But company officials did drop hints about some of the new Windows Live add-on services in the pipeline. Windows Live is the brand name for the growing family of services, many of […]

Microsoft Corp. said last week that it plans to release a fix for a critical and previously unknown security vulnerability in a Windows component used to render Windows Meta File graphics files. The Redmond, Wash., software maker is rushing to test a patch for a so-called zero-day hole after learning of it on Dec. 27 […]