Jeff Burt

The controversy surrounding Google€™s Street View initiative collecting personal data from unprotected private WiFi networks is not dying out, fueled by revelations that a company engineer told colleagues about the private information that was being gathered. A consumer advocacy group in the United States on May 2 filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request […]

The Open Compute Project, started by Facebook a year ago to create open-source standards for highly energy-efficient data centers and IT hardware, is racking up new members and unveiling a host of projects as the group€™s third conference gets underway in San Antonio, Texas. Hewlett-Packard and Quanta Computer reportedly are the latest vendors to join […]

Just as Dell officials were preparing to roll out the twelfth generation of their PowerEdge servers earlier this year, they were already talking with customers about what would be needed in the thirteenth-generation systems that will come out sometime in 2014. And as Dell customers now bring the new twelfth-generation tower, rack and blade PowerEdges […]

The Google engineer behind the software code used to collect wireless network data and personal information in connection with the company€™s Street View program has been identified as a software maker who has been with the search engine giant since 2003. The New York Times, quoting an anonymous former investigator for a state that was […]

The cyber-criminals running the notorious Mac Flashback malware were bringing in as much as $10,000 a day during the height of the botnet’s activity, according to security software vendor Symantec. The attackers behind the Flashback malware€”which at one point had infected as many as 700,000 Apple Macs worldwide€”essentially were stealing advertising revenue from Google by […]

Microsoft and three other companies are joining a consortium of vendors looking to greater business-to-business communication via telepresence and video collaboration technologies that can connect to any vendor technology and any network through any device. Microsoft, Kathea, ACT Conferencing and Tata Communications announced May 1 that they were joining the Open Visual Communications Consortium (OVCC), […]

The number of malicious and Web attacks continued to grow rapidly in 2011, with mobile platforms like Google€™s Android operating system increasingly becoming key targets of cyber-criminals, according to security software vendor Symantec. In their annual “Internet Security Threat Report,” released April 30, Symantec officials pointed out that the rise in malicious attacks€”an 81 percent […]

The worldwide semiconductor market, driven by demand for such devices as smartphones, tablets, PCs, e-readers and servers, grew more than 3.7 percent in 2011, and could see revenue increase of 6 to 7 percent in 2012, according to market research firm IDC. Revenues in the semiconductor space grew to $301 billion despite a rash of […]

Google officials in the past admitted that for several years, their Street View cars had collected personal data from WiFi networks, but have insisted that such actions were the work of a single rogue engineer. However, the full report on the Federal Communications Commission€™s investigation, released by Google over the weekend, found that the engineer […]

Intel executives, continuing their efforts to expand the company€™s reach beyond its core PC and server chip businesses, are turning their attention to LTE networks. The world€™s largest chip maker in a matter of hours April 27 disclosed that it was buying network-related patents from Aware€”which sells software and technology products to the telecommunications and […]

Gateway is joining the growing ranks of systems makers that use Advanced Micro Devices Opteron chip in some of their servers. At the VMworld 2006 show in Los Angeles Nov. 7, Gateway officials are announcing three new systems powered by AMDs dual-core processors and are claiming that they have plans to create an entire line […]

Google and the Federal Trade Commission look to be heading to a showdown in court. The FTC announced April 26 that it was hiring a prominent outside litigator to oversee its antitrust investigation of the search giant. And while the commission was careful to say that the hiring of former federal prosecutor Beth Wilkinson doesn€™t […]