Red Hat has purchased Amentra, an IT consulting firm with open-source expertise, to sell its JBoss Java infrastructure to enterprises as the basis for SOAs (service-oriented architectures).

Amentra, a privately held systems integrator that specializes in SOA and business process management, will continue business as usual as an independent company owned by Red Hat. The specific financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Amentra's 140 employees will continue to work out of their current offices in Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Tampa, Florida; and Richmond, Virginia.

Amentra is a certified JBoss systems integrator that has a solid reputation among enterprises; ExxonMobil, Pfizer, and Merck are among its clients. The company also has been recognized for its expertise in providing open-source and SOA services by research firm Gartner.

Red Hat said it's tapped Amentra to support what it calls its "Enterprise Acceleration" initiative, which is aimed at providing the JBoss open-source middleware in the enterprise for SOA and BPM deployments. When the plan -- which includes sales and marketing support and new JBoss technology testing centers -- was unveiled last month, Red Hat Middleware Business Vice President Craig Muzilla said Red Hat hopes that JBoss will play a major role in 50 percent of all enterprise software infrastructure deployments by 2015.

Red Hat purchased JBoss in April 2006 and, like its Linux OS, now has two versions of the software -- a community ".org" version that is free for everyone to use and an enterprise version that has fees and maintenance tied to it. The company is hoping to use JBoss as a springboard to become successful beyond its enterprise Linux business and quiet critics who claim the company can't make a multi-product portfolio work.

You just rolled out Microsoft Windows Vista companywide only to find your help desk flooded with calls. Or you spent hours with the mobile sales group going over the basics of laptop and wireless security only to discover team members still opening rogue e-mail attachments and stumbling over password protocols.

Sound familiar? The problem could be in your training.

It's all too natural for IT to cast blame on end-users when new or upgraded systems hit snafus, but rather than pointing fingers, IT should instead consider its own role in training miscues, experts advise.

While IT's relationship with end-user training has always been ambivalent, the pressure is on to get users comfortable and productive on new tech systems, thanks to a corporate emphasis on information security, compliance, and return on investment to justify costly hardware and software rollouts.

In that light, a good training program can count as a competitive advantage, but management isn't always sold on the business benefits of effective tech training. "Companies don't yet fully value training," says David S. Murphy, founder and membership director of nonprofit International Association of Information Technology Trainers (ITrain) and a professor of English and computer science at the University of Phoenix and Howard Community College in Columbia, Md. "I've yet to come across a commercial company that embraces training as a requisite value-added service as opposed to an optional value-added service."

Worried that your IT training falls into that latter category? We talked to IT managers, in-house and third-party trainers, industry advocates, and academics to uncover the top five mistakes technology professionals make when training end-users.

None of these mess-ups are fatal, we're happy to report. With an open mind and some targeted adjustments, IT managers and trainers can achieve greater success with their end-users and a little peace of mind for themselves.

Mistake No. 1: You didn't plan for training upfront. IT budgets have been under close scrutiny for years, and the dollars earmarked for training have been among the hardest hit, according to Murphy. As a result, many companies don't factor end-user training into the total cost of their systems' rollouts and are left scrambling for funding and resources at the tail end of the deployment.

Consensus in the industry dictates that a good training program should account for 10 to 13 percent of the total spend, yet most companies underestimate the cost and the resources that requires, according to Pat Begley, vice president of learning solutions at RWD Technologies, a Baltimore-based professional services company that does end-user training.

"Many times, organizations feel they have the bandwidth within the IT team to do the training, but they don't realize how tied up those people are going to be with the blueprinting of the system," she explains. "Then they get caught short with little time left" for training.

Unisys learned that lesson the hard way several years back during a companywide rollout of Windows XP and Microsoft Office 2003. At the time, the company didn't have a prerollout training program for the software in place.

As a result, Unisys University, a companywide training group, partnered with IT to deal with training issues after the fact, when the software landed on people's desktops. "There was a flurry of calls about 'how do you do this?'" recalls Weston Morris, chief architect with Unisys' strategic programs office for Microsoft products. "It was an expensive proposition."

This time around, Unisys is taking a proactive approach to end-user training. It is preparing to roll out Windows Vista to more than 30,000 users starting this April and continuing through 2009. Unisys University and IT are again co-handling the Vista training, Morris says, but this time, training will begin before the software hits the desktops.

Among the initiatives is a collaborative effort with Unisys' early adopter community to identify common trouble spots and create customized training exercises that will address those concerns.

Unisys is also putting a program in place that requires users to complete the training on Vista and get certified before they're upgraded to the new operating system. "We want make sure [users] have a basic understanding of the technology so they're not going to be calling the help desk with silly questions they should be able to handle if they took the training," Morris explains.

One area that companies frequently overlook when it comes to upfront planning is future requirements for training after the initial deployment, Morris says.

After a period of time on the new software or hardware platform, users typically advance to more sophisticated functions, but training typically doesn't cover those capabilities. As a result, users are left to muddle through on their own.

In addition, without proper training on more sophisticated new features, users often don't graduate to new functionality, and companies in turn lose out on some of the business benefits for which they purchased new systems in the first place, notes ITrain's Murphy.

Another concern: Most organizations have changing staffing situations and fluid business processes. With all that change, it's often not clear who's responsible for updating training curricula and materials to reflect the current computing environment, notes RWD's Begley. "Someone needs to take ownership of training materials to make sure the incoming people don't get static and outdated information," says Begley, who makes the case that individual business units -- not IT -- should take ownership of that role.

Mistake No. 2: You're out of tune with your audience. Let's face it: For training of any sort to be effective, it's not enough for the instructor to have mastery of the material. The trainer also needs to be able to connect with the audience and present information in an interactive and engaging manner. Problem is, IT professionals aren't famous for their stellar communication and soft management skills.

"Just because someone is an expert in a subject matter and their passion is technology, that doesn't make [that person] a good trainer," Murphy says. "We tend to put subject-matter experts in training positions, and that's the worst. We should be putting people with expertise in education and adult learning into those positions."

Trainers with strong communication and interpersonal skills are best able to get a read on their audience and tailor their instruction accordingly. IT professionals, on the other hand, may be so comfortable with their subject matter that they run the risk of presenting the material in too detailed and technical a way, or conversely, of oversimplifying it.

"Lots of times, IT won't tell people what they need to know, or they give people a long, technical explanation that is not relevant to them or meaningful, and then they've lost the audience," says Mary Kelley, president of Intelligo, a Denver-based firm that provides end-user training and support for ERP systems.

Indeed, one of the biggest mistakes IT professionals make when conducting training is not adequately assessing the needs of their audience. "We don't take the time before we design a training program to interview both the people who will be trained and their supervisors or managers," Murphy explains.

Interviewing employees before creating a training curriculum is critical, he maintains, because that's the only way for trainers to get a true sense of the skill level of the user group. Bringing supervisors into the interview process is equally critical because they have a broad perspective on what's worked before and what hasn't for their direct reports. In addition, supervisors often have specific goals in mind for the training, Murphy says.

Mistake No. 3: You didn't follow standards training models. Training a user community on a major business system like ERP or on a new operating system like Windows Vista involves a lot more than showing employees how to navigate a new desktop or run a specific report. Major system upgrades mean major upheaval to the way users work, and technology training should help users embrace those changes.

"Users need to feel comfortable with change -- they need to know what's happening and how it affects their role," a concept the training community refers to as "organizational readiness," says Begley. "IT doesn't typically consider organizational readiness as part of the training. What they typically look at is building competency."

In a similar vein, professional training companies like RWD stress the importance of formal learning models -- that is, best practices for teaching different kinds of learners -- as critical to a training program's success.

Organizational readiness and learning models are outside the scope of what most would consider general IT acumen. But according to Begley and other training professionals, for a major training program to be a success, it needs to be based on some formal approach.

RWD's learning methodology, for example, encompasses a preparation component that tells users what to expect and explains the specifics of how business processes will change, a run-through of what the new transactions will look like, a "try-it" phase where users can test-drive the system prior to going live, and a support stage where help is accessible on an ongoing basis. IT's skills are focused on the run-through stage of training, but not the other areas, Begley says, and that can lead to ineffective training, she maintains.

Standardization in training materials is another area where IT often falls short. Users need multiple reference points for learning a system, notes Intelligo's Kelley, be it step-by-step instructions, quick reference cards or Web-based training. That material should be delivered and maintained in a standardized way.

"Lots of times, there's high turnover among the people who do initial training for the 'go-live' stage," Kelley explains. If the original trainers have left and standardized training materials aren't available, "after a while, things get passed along as tribal knowledge, which over time decreases the ability of people to work in the system," Kelley warns.

Mistake No. 4: You're training out of business context. IT is quite comfortable with instruction on the particulars of how to use a particular CRM package or how to securely configure a laptop or wireless network, but the training often stops there. What's missing is teaching users how to use that new business system to augment traditional work patterns. To do so, IT trainers need an understanding of how a particular business function like marketing or procurement works, knowledge they don't always have.

"The purpose of end-user training is to help a company be more productive in making money," explains ITrain's Murphy. "That means the trainer has to understand the business and organizational functions, and that's where very confident technicians often miss the boat. They're focused on the details of their equipment rather than the whole purpose of having that equipment for a department to run more effectively."

Menno Aartsen, a former technology executive, learned the importance of business context years ago when he trained an early generation of users on laptops at three divisions within Verizon. The IT training team made a point to emphasize how mobility could change users' work patterns -- a key point given that many rank-and-file employees at the time thought of laptops as simply desktop-replacement machines.

So rather than simply instructing users on how to use docking stations or what to do with USB memory devices, the training team demonstrated how the mobility afforded by the new laptops could help workers log on remotely at night to get ahead or catch up on paperwork during their commute, new practices at the time.

"Rather than just rolling out laptops to executives or important managers so they could carry around data, we looked at a broad spectrum of users and positioned mobility as a tool that could enable new kinds of work," Aartsen says. Almost at once, a vast majority of the newly empowered workforce was willing to stay connected on the weekends and during other off-hours, he recalls.

Mistake No. 5: You forgot to forge business partnerships. Given that so much of what constitutes good training goes beyond the purview of IT, it's critical that the IT department reaches out. Human resource departments and dedicated in-house training groups like Unisys University are obvious candidates for partnerships that can help IT bring the requisite business context and formal learning methodologies to its curriculum.

Reaching into the user community is another good option. IT might do a phased rollout to "super users" first and leverage their feedback and expertise to tailor training for the remaining users. This super group is also the same community that tends to rely heavily on Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogging and wikis, all of which can play an important role in technology training, experts say.

Whatever the system being rolled out, the message for IT is clear: It's not just users who have a lot to learn about technology -- you've got some work to do to make training a core IT discipline.

Beth Stackpole last wrote for Computerworld about future IT workers.

Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) is notifying about 10,000 individuals that their personal information may have been compromised as the result of a computer intrusion that was discovered in February.

About 6,600 of them are being offered one year's worth of free credit monitoring services because their Social Security numbers were also compromised in the incident.

In a note posted on its Web site late Wednesday afternoon, the school said that the intrusion involved a server that contained information on individuals who had sought admission to the school for the Fall 2007 academic year as well as on those who had applied for student housing.

In addition to the Social Security numbers, the compromised server contained personal data such as each applicant's name, date of birth, address, e-mail address, phone numbers, test scores, and school records.

The university GSAS Web site described the hack as having been carried out by an outsider who apparently had compromised the system in a "way that data on the server could have been viewed or copied."

The hacked system was taken down from Feb. 17 until Feb. 21 while the breach was investigated. An initial investigation did not reveal the full extent of the hack, the statement said: "As the investigation continued, it became apparent that some sensitive applicant data, including Social Security numbers, could potentially have been accessed."

The Harvard Crimson campus newspaper quoted university CIO Daniel Moriarty as saying that the university was still unsure whether the information contained in the hacked server had actually been accessed or illegally disseminated in the incident.

"We've basically decided to proceed as a conservative measure with notifying the individuals who have been impacted and lining up the [identity theft] services for those individuals," the paper quoted Moriarty as saying.

Margot Gill, administrative dean of the GSAS apologized for the incident in the prepared statement. Gill said that steps are being taken to prevent similar incidents in the future, but did not elaborate.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Outsourcing, grid computing, and hacker professionalism are trends that cannot be stopped, and the sum total of those factors will have a dramatic effect on the way businesses attempt to protect their IT system in the future, researchers and analysts agree.

The intersection of groundbreaking new IT architecture and previously unparalleled levels of professionalism among writers of malware attacks will result in an increasingly challenging electronic business environment, according to speakers at the ongoing Source Boston 2008 conference.

And while such estimations are sometimes characterized as fearmongering set in motion by an IT security industry dependent on the presence of new attacks to keep its coffers full, the assembled experts appeared to suggest as many answers as they proposed potential problems that need to be solved.

Each technological step forward should present its own array of security challenges and create new opportunities that force companies to continue to reassess their defenses, the presenters said.

Even mature IT trends such as outsourcing are having a significant impact on the changing manner in which businesses address security today.

"The reality is that we will be outsourcing some security functions," said Rich Mogull, an industry analyst with Securosis. "Organizations need to both take advantage [of outsourcing] where it makes sense and integrate outsourced security opportunities. At the same time, companies can't transfer all of their risk by handing off responsibilities to someone else; just because someone is handling your credit card information, customers won't let you off the hook if something goes wrong."

Companies will increasingly apply a mix of on-premise IT defenses and "in the cloud" security services to maximize their ability to thwart attacks and to adjust their protection to account for other outsourced operations, the analyst said.

"Companies will have a mix of outsourcing and in-sourcing," said Mogull. "For security, especially for things like firewall management, outsourcing absolutely makes sense. You'll also have companies outsourcing workstation systems management, and eventually they will outsource anti-virus management as well."

And just as attackers have leveraged the potential of grid computing via botnet systems that some experts estimate to be as powerful as the world's largest supercomputers, the IT security industry must likewise tap into distributed processing power to better protect customers, the presenters said.

With the bad guys already getting deep into grid computing, it will be crucial to fight firepower with firepower, they said.

"Companies will be distributing security [capabilities] to help figure out ahead of time where anomalous things are occurring; technologies will take advantage of distributed [sensors], virtualization, and grid computing to garner data using the herd mentality," said Chris Hoff, chief architect of security innovation at Unisys. "When you think about infrastructure in 10 years, instead of thinking about where virtualization gets us in terms of consolidation, [think] about distributing [security] processes to pools of memory and computing power."

Based on those major trends and other new paradigms, including virtualization, SaaS (software as a service), and SOA, companies will also have to consider new ways to address the issue of maintaining less concrete perimeters for their networks and IT systems.

As evidence that major security vendors already understand this emerging shift, the experts highlighted the fact that more than 20 such companies immediately signed on to help support new systems-defense tools from virtualization market leader VMWare, even though the technology being pitched is still under development.

"The concept of re-perimeterization will involve taking the [existing] perimeter and making it stronger, condensing it in places, and adding all sorts of little internal perimeters," said Mogull. "It's not that the perimeter will disappear soon, but it will consolidate. Companies don't have a choice about this; with remote workers and virtualization, this is already happening today."

However, perhaps the biggest shift in IT security is one that is already transpiring around information protection, as companies shift their primary focus away from systems defense to safeguarding their valuable data.

Both experts are endorsing an approach they have labeled as the "info-centric lifecycle," through which companies will create mechanisms to secure data from the time it is created until the time it is destroyed, with different tools and policies involved for protecting information in every phase of its existence.

In another Source conference session, Yankee Group analyst Andrew Jaquith set forth the strategy he feels that anti-virus vendors must adopt to make their products more effective at stopping today's increasingly complex and customized malware attacks.

With malware authors already creating so many variants of their attacks, the result has been the equivalent of a denial-of-service assault leveled at anti-virus research labs, which can't possibly hope to write signatures fast enough to keep up with all the new threats, the expert said.

To help address the problem, the analyst contends that anti-virus providers need to move beyond the current defense model that emphasizes attack prevention and push their products and services further into attack detection and response.

So many threats are evading the traditional preventative approach used today that the transition must be made rapidly, with vendors moving to adopt their own in-the-cloud hosted anti-malware capabilities for identifying and reacting to attacks more quickly. More emphasis should also be placed on sharing information between anti-virus providers, the analyst said.

The continued adoption of a "herd" model among anti-virus systems that employs threat profiling on widely distributed end-point devices to gather information on new attacks, and central repositories of such data maintained by the vendors, will be another crucial element of future defense mechanisms, said Jaquith.

"Where we need to go from an industry perspective is to de-emphasize prevention, versus some of these other elements; vendors need to discover telemetry and [examine] applications running our machines and use that information to build better software, compared to the top-down, no-feedback model we have today," Jaquith said. "The current situation isn't working; malware defenses are not keeping pace and threat profiles are a lot different; the top-down model is a weak link."

The coming decade will bring even more advances in software and computing than the last 10 years, bringing new ways to watch television, to use telephones and to input information into computers, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates predicted Thursday.

Changes in software and computing over the next 10 years will be "very substantial" and will permeate all facets of life, Gates told a crowd of about 1,100 people during a Northern Virginia Technology Council breakfast in Washington, D.C. Computers and software have changed how people take photographs and purchase music, but other industries will be affected just as much in coming years, he said.

[ See related story about Bill Gates' comments on the need for more H-1B visas in order to drive innovation. ]

"There are great realms of activity that digital approach has not yet touched on," Gates said.

Among Gates' predictions for the coming decade:

-- Television will be married with the Internet, allowing for personalized news and commercials. People will watch more of their home movies on their TV screens, and TV sets and computers will be increasingly connected. Television will be an "utterly different thing," he said.

-- Telephone sets will increasingly be able to handle video, e-mail, and other digital media. Speech recognition will allow telephone users to ask for information such as nearby restaurants.

-- More and more software will be delivered as a service over the Internet, instead of residing on individual computers.

-- Computer users will have more options for inputting information beyond the mouse and keyboard. Speech and handwriting recognition software will gain in popularity. Computers will move off the desktop, with speech recognition and motion-sensing cameras allowing users to control screens embedded into desktops or whiteboards.

-- More schools will ditch textbooks for tablet PCs that hold dozens of books. New types of textbooks will increasingly contain video and other media.

-- Companies and government agencies will embrace three-dimensional computing, giving users new ways of interacting with virtual worlds. Students will increasingly use software to simulate experiments.

"In a broad sense, we can say that information workers ... are not yet empowered to collaborate in the way that they should," Gates said. "I think the opportunity is stronger than it's ever been."

Gates said he's "very optimistic" about the future of the tech industry, even with the current questions about the U.S. economy. "I don't think anything will stop the rapid advances," he said.

Gates also repeated his concerns about the number of H-1B and other immigrant worker visas available to U.S. companies. He testified before the U.S. Congress on the issue Wednesday.

On most technology, the U.S. portion of the world's innovation is "extremely high," Gates said, but the U.S. government needs to be aware that other countries are catching up. U.S. policymakers need to look at long-term implications of immigration policy, he said.

Some lawmakers and tech worker groups have questioned the need for more high-skill immigrant visas, saying many U.S. workers could fill those jobs.

ZapMedia on Wednesday sued Apple alleging the company's iTunes Store is using patented technologies for distributing digital media over the Internet.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the lawsuit claims infringement on a patent that was filed in 2000 and awarded to ZapMedia in 2006. The second patent was just awarded to ZapMedia on Tuesday.

Apple representatives were not immediately available for comment. Typically, Apple does not comment on pending litigation.

The patent covers a portal "media library database server application that manages access [to] a master library of media assets that can be accessed by users via one or more communication networks. A plurality of media player devices communicate with the portal to access media assets for use. Each media player device may comprise a processor that executes a database client application that manages media assets licensed for use by a user."

ZapMedia said it believes that Apple will continue to infringe on the patents. The lawsuit says that Apple knew about the patents, but continued to infringe "in a manner that is objectively reckless."

According to lawsuit filed with the court, ZapMedia is seeking monetary damages and a permanent injunction against Apple. ZapMedia also requested that any damages awarded be trebled if a jury finds the the infringement was willful.

Apple representatives were not immediately available for comment. Typically, Apple does not comment on pending litigation.

Macworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

AOL will buy Bebo, a social-networking site popular in the United Kingdom, for $850 million in cash, the companies said Thursday.

AOL, which is owned by Time Warner, said it sees opportunities to make money from advertising on Bebo, which has about 40 million unique users worldwide.

AOL is the latest of the major online players to grab a piece of the social networking pie. Microsoft is working with Facebook to deliver advertisements, and media giant News Corp. owns MySpace, the widest-used social networking site.

The acquisition comes as AOL has undertaken steps to revamp its business model from being an ISP to a media and content company. It has been speculated AOL would be sold by Time Warner, and the company has struggled to reinvent itself.

AOL said it will integrate its online advertising technology, called Platform A, with Bebo. Platform A cobbles together innovations from several other AOL acquisitions, including Tacoda and Third Screen Media, intended to fill out its ability to deliver Web-based and mobile ads.

In the United States, Bebo ranks third behind MySpace and Facebook, but is first in New Zealand and Ireland and is widely used in the United Kingdom, AOL said.

Bebo, a closely held company, does not make public its revenue figures, which makes it difficult to gauge its financial success.

AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco defended the acquisition price. "In terms of Bebo, we think it's an excellent asset at a great price. We have a proven track record of spotting value," he said during a conference call.

Time Warner executives were "incredibly" supportive when AOL asked to go ahead with the deal, Falco said.

Social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have been valued quite highly due to their wide user bases and potential for marketing and advertising. But the sites, which are free to join, are as of yet unproven money makers.

Bebo has looked to other ways to make money other than display advertisements. Bebo ran an online serial drama, "Kate Modern," and sold product placement slots to businesses. It has also let retailers such as Nike create themed marketing pages, which has proven to be a less intrusive way to attract interest from users.

One of the large looming questions is how social-networking sites will increase their revenue from advertising without frustrating users, who can always leave.

Facebook ran into trouble last year after a new advertising program, Beacon, caused a privacy outcry after users complained that it was too intrusive and stealthy in tracking their actions outside of the social-networking site. Facebook modified it twice to address the privacy concerns, some of which nonetheless persist.

AOL chief operating officer Ron Grant said the company plans to "supercharge" the monetization of the site. But Falco said AOL will be very careful about making changes that could reduce its user base.

Joanna Shields, Bebo's international president, said users only see one ad per page now. AOL plans to integrate its AIM and ICQ instant messaging applications into Bebo, Falco said.

The Office Open XML (OOXML) format may not have gotten ISO's final blessing as an open standard yet, but Microsoft is finalizing plans to release a software development kit for it anyway.

Microsoft plans to put out the final beta of the OOXML SDK next month, and release Version 1.0 in May, according to Doug Mahugh, a technical evangelist at Microsoft. The final SDK beta and related information will be available at openxmldeveloper.org, openxmlcommunity.org, and microsoft.com.

The SDK will enable developers to write applications that can open, read, and otherwise work with OOXML documents, or port existing applications that work with documents in older Microsoft formats over to OOXML, Mahugh said. Moreover, the SDK will "put Microsoft on the hook to keep your app in line with the OOXML standard" as it changes, he said.

For instance, if national members of ISO decide at the end of this month to approve the OOXML specification -- which has been changed substantially since its failure to pass last September -- those changes will be reflected in Version 1.0 of the SDK, Mahugh said. And Microsoft would continue to update the SDK to make sure that applications built with it remained compliant with an Open XML standard as changes were made in the future, he said.

Microsoft first released a Community Technology Preview of the SDK last June. It is targeted at developers of business intelligence, content management and other applications in the Office and SharePoint ecosystem.

Microsoft also offers an API for packaging OOXML for developers who need "more low-level control" over their code, Mahugh said.

Microsoft plans to release a CTP of an improved Version 2.0 of the SDK in July, with a final release "coming out during the Office 14 wave," the timing of which hasn't been announced yet, Mahugh said.

The V1 technical committee advising the U.S. representative to ISO voted last week in favor of OOXML's approval. That representative, a group called INCITS, had already voted for OOXML's approval last September.

INCITS will hold a vote on Friday to reaffirm the U.S.'s position, which requires a unanimous result as detailed in the relevant INCITS documentation (PDF format, see pages 31-32). If that fails, INCITS's executive committee will start a process of proposing and voting on resolutions in favor or against OOXML, a process which could take multiple days.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

iPhone software 2.0 was just unveiled last week and isn't scheduled to reach the public until June, but already a team of developers claims to have jailbroken the software.

Jailbreaking is a term used by the iPhone hacking community that refers to the process of unlocking the iPhone's firmware, allowing third-party applications to run on the device. This should not be confused with the process of unlocking the SIM card to allow the iPhone to run on other wireless carriers.

The iPhone Dev Team claims that they have succeeded in jailbreaking the new iPhone software, apparently after having the software for only one day.

This could have far reaching consequences for Apple. During the unveiling of the new software, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that if developers wanted to distribute their applications, they would need to go through the App Store, a new service launched by Apple.

The App Store gives Apple control over the sale and distribution of all iPhone software created by independent developers. It also gives Apple a 30 percent cut of all software sold through the store.

Jobs said their will be limitations on what Apple will allow to be published through the App Store. Apple executives specifically cited porn, privacy-breaching tools, bandwidth-hogging apps, and anything illegal as an example of the restrictions. The slide in Jobs' keynote presentation also listed "unforeseen," leaving open the possibility that Apple could redefine what's acceptable in an iPhone app at a later date.

However, with a jailbroken phone, it is conceivable that developers will find a way around the App Store and allow users to install whatever applications they want.

Two-and-a-half years after eBay bought Skype, the online auction giant has moved away from trying to create new, merged capabilities through the acquisition and is letting Skype be what it is.

"There's less focus at eBay today on finding the place where eBay and Skype intersect on the Web and mash up to create a new ... communication paradigm for eBay, and more focus on Skype growing its business and eBay growing its business," said Jonathan Christensen, Skype's general manager of audio and video, at the Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) in Mountain View, California.

The deal in October 2005 disrupted the pioneering VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software company for a while, Christensen said.

"In some ways, we stalled," he said. "There's almost always a period of integration (when) a lot of weird things are tried, and some work and some don't, and there's defocus." Along with that, there has been a management shake-up at Skype, he added. Founder Niklas Zennstrom resigned last October. Josh Silverman, CEO of eBay's Shopping.com unit, became CEO of Skype last month.

Today, however, the relationship between eBay and Skype is going "very well," Christensen said. "The projects that I'm leading on my team ... for the next two years, three years ... are groundbreaking," he said. He declined to give details of what's coming up, but in a speech at the conference, he recounted the history of Internet voice and said the next frontier is the mobile arena.

The approximately $2.6 billion acquisition of Skype raised eyebrows among observers who didn't see a good fit between the two companies. It was not until June 2006 that eBay launched a limited trial of Skype buttons in its marketplace. The buttons let eBay buyers and sellers launch Skype and talk or text-message before making a purchase. Beginning last October, they became available for sales of all categories of products.

Last year eBay took an impairment charge related to the Skype deal and said it was disappointed in Skype's performance in the short term regarding user activity and monetization. eBay said it still believed Skype was a very valuable asset and was interested in the potential of services such as the SkypeFind business listing feature and SkypePrime advice service.

Skype now has 276 million regular users and is profitable, Christensen said.

"That sense of innovation and hard work and startup-ness is very much alive at the company," Christensen said.

Acer unveiled a line of multimedia-optimized laptops in New York on Wednesday at its splashy, first-ever U.S. press conference, where it also announced the close of its acquisition of Dutch computer-maker Packard Bell.

Acer unveiled the Aspire 8920 and 6920 series of notebooks, with a new design the company is calling Aspire Gemstone "blue." The laptops, which come in both 18.4-inch and 16-inch versions, include a Blu-Ray disc drive, full HD LCD screens, and support for the Dolby Pro Logic 2.0 surround-sound audio system.

Speaking at the press event on Wednesday, Senior Corporate Vice President Jim Wong said the new design is aimed at bringing a "true multimedia innovation" to the notebook form factor. The new notebooks are based on Intel Core 2 Duo processors and run either Windows Vista Ultimate or the Windows Vista Home Premium OS because of the multimedia functionality those OSes can deliver. However, Wong said Acer would consider running a different OS -- presumably Linux -- on machines that don't require rich multimedia capability.

The New York event, which featured white-clad models carrying the notebooks and an open bar, was a U.S. coming-out party of sorts for the Taiwanese computer-maker. Acer is eager to woo U.S. consumers now that it is offering not only its own notebooks here, but also eMachine computers from Packard Bell and PCs from U.S. computer-maker Gateway, the acquisition of which Acer revealed last August.

In his first official press appearance in the U.S., Acer President Gianfranco Lanci clarified Acer's branding strategy going forward, saying products from all three companies will remain in the market under their own names. "We didn't buy a company to kill the brand," he said.

Lanci said Acer plans to keep all three brands in the U.S. and Europe, although Gateway computers -- including the eMachines brand -- will be sold in "some countries only." In Asia and the U.S., the Acer and Gateway brands will be most prominent, including the Gateway eMachines brand in the U.S. Lanci said Acer is basing its brand distribution on how well the different products sell in each geographic area.

Having all three brands also will diversify Acer's market penetration across its three main geographical regions, broadening its reach in the U.S. while reducing the amount of business that comes from Europe, he added.

For the most part, Acer will keep the design of each of the three brands consistent with their current design. The new Aspire Gemstone "blue" design unveiled on Wednesday, for instance, will only be used for Acer notebooks.

More information about the new notebooks and the Aspire Gemstone "blue" design can be found on Acer's Web site.

Microsoft patched the latest version of Office for Mac Tuesday to fix more than two dozen problems, including a security snafu revealed just days after the suite launched in mid-January.

Some users, however, have reported problems getting their machines to "see" the update.

Dubbed Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1, the update patches three vulnerabilities in Excel, the suite's spreadsheet application, that were noted yesterday when Microsoft rolled out its usual monthly security fixes. But the update also addresses a slew of other bugs and quirks, including several that went public almost immediately after Office 2008 debuted Jan. 15.

"This update fixes an issue that could give a local user who does not have administrator permissions access [to] Office 2008 program files," said the accompanying advisory posted to the Microsoft support site.

Two months ago, Joel Bruner, a Chicago-based Mac consultant, noticed the permissions glitch and posted information about it to his blog. Microsoft acknowledged the problem, then later in January told users how to work around it.

Microsoft also claimed that 12.0.1 includes numerous performance, stability, and reliability improvements -- it called out 24 items in a bullet list -- in all four of the applications that make up the suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Entourage.

The applications, notably PowerPoint, should open faster, said Microsoft, an answer to users who have complained about the programs' lackadaisical launch speeds. Also improved, said Microsoft, is Entourage's synchronization with other applications and with Exchange servers.

But on Microsoft's Office support forums, some users complained that they were having a tough time getting the update installed. For several users, the Microsoft-built Office updating tool -- which was itself updated only recently -- wouldn't show them 12.0.1.

"I've run it manually, and it shows no needed updates," said a user labeled as "Zerocool" in a message Tuesday. Several others chimed in with identical experiences. Those users turned instead to the stand-alone installer, which weighed in at 114MB, to apply the update.

Others, however, reported that they were unable to apply the update no matter what they tried. Still more beefed that sync issues continue to exist.

One user put it bluntly. "I was chugging along on Office v.X for years with no problems," said someone identified as Ernie. "I wish I had never updated to Office 2008. It has NOT been worth the hassle. I'm now seriously thinking of just ditching MS Office and using the built-in Apple apps [ Apple's iWork '08 suite is not 'built-in,' but costs $79 -- Ed. ] because this is not worth the time and irritation.

The Office 2008 for Mac 12.0.1 update can be downloaded from Microsoft's Mac-specific Web site.

Digital information is being created at a faster pace than previously thought, and for the first time, the amount of digital information created each year has exceeded the world's available storage space, according to a new IDC report.

"This is our first time ... where we couldn't store all the information we create even if we wanted to," states the EMC-sponsored report, titled "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe."

The amount of information created, captured and replicated in 2007 was 281 exabytes (or 281 billion GB), 10 percent more than IDC previously believed -- and more than the 264 exabytes of available storage on hard drives, tapes, CDs, DVDs, and memory. (Compare storage products.) IDC revised its estimate upward after realizing it had underestimated shipments of cameras and digital TVs as well as the amount of information replication.

The 2007 total is well above that of 2006, when 161 exabytes of digital information was created or replicated.

We're not actually running out of storage space, IDC notes, because a lot of digital information doesn't need to be stored, such as radio and TV broadcasts consumers listen to and watch but don't record, voice call packets that aren't needed when a call is over, and surveillance video that isn't saved.

But the gap between available storage and digital information will only grow, making it that much harder for vendors and enterprises to efficiently store information that is needed.

In 2011 there will be nearly 1,800 exabytes of information created, twice the amount of available storage, IDC predicts. One long-term experiment planned for the soon-to-open Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland by itself will create an amazing 300 exabytes of data per year, IDC states.

EMC's president of content management, Mark Lewis, doesn't think we'll ever hit the point where the world's available storage is exceeded by the amount of information we need to store. "With the price points of storage continuing to decline, I don't think we're ever going to create some kind of storage shortage," he says.

Enterprises and their employees create about a third of new data, but enterprises are ultimately responsible for maintaining the security, privacy, and reliability of 85 percent of all data, according to IDC.

Information growth is placing greater importance on retaining data in lower-cost, environmentally sound ways with lower-performance drives, archiving, and powering down storage devices containing rarely accessed data, Lewis says.

About 70 percent of new information is created when individuals take actions, such as snapping pictures, making VoIP calls, uploading content to YouTube, and sending e-mails. But more than half of the information related to individuals isn't directly created by them. Rather, the bulk of this digital content is a person's "digital shadow," information about individual human beings sitting in cyberspace. Digital surveillance photos, Web search histories, banking and medical records, and general backup data all contribute to your digital shadow.

To measure your own digital footprint, click here for a calculation tool provided by EMC and IDC. The Web site also has a running tally of information created and replicated so far this year -- nearly 81 exabytes as of Wednesday afternoon.

Here's a quick look from IDC at how a few businesses and industries contribute to growing data volumes:

* Wal-Mart refreshes its customer databases hourly, adding a billion new rows of data each hour to a data warehouse that already holds 600 terabytes. * The oil and gas industry is developing a "digital oilfield" to monitor exploration activity. Chevron's system accumulates 2 terabytes of new data each day. * The utility industry may develop an "intelligent grid" with millions of sensors in the distribution system and power meters. * Manufacturing companies are rapidly deploying digital surveillance cameras and RFID tracking. * YouTube's 100 million users create nearly as much digital information as all medical imaging operations.

Jim Zemlin is the executive director of the Linux Foundation. Formerly executive director of the Free Standards Group, Zemlin also has served as vice president of marketing for Covalent Technologies, providing products and services for the Apache Web server. Zemlin has also been a keynote speaker at industry and financial conferences including Gartner's Open Source Conference and Linux World. Zemlin met with InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill this week to talk about Linux topics ranging from overtures to Microsoft to the progress of Linux on the desktop.

InfoWorld: What's the role of the Linux Foundation?

Zemlin: We obviously are the home of [Linux founder] Linus Torvalds. We sort of focus on three main areas in terms of the platform. The first area is to promote Linux as a technology solution, and that's across embedded, mobile, server, desktop computing. We respond to competitive marketing on behalf of the platform, so when competitors are out spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about open source or if there is a general lack of understanding of open-source licensing practices or governance practices, our organization plays a role educating [the] industry and end-users on those issues. We protect the platform by allowing people like Linus Torvalds to work as fellows at the foundation so that they can be neutral actors in a mass collaboration project like Linux. We manage the Linux trademark. We have a legal defense fund for the platform. We work with the USPTO (Patent and Trademark Office) on patent quality issues. And we do that work to improve the quality of software patents and protect the platform. And then finally, we work on the standardizing the Linux platform.

InfoWorld: What kind of legal protection does Linux require? And has anything ever come of the Microsoft protest that there's Linux code that they patented or something to that effect?

Zemlin: What they were talking about were patents that Microsoft holds in a range of areas. They didn't actually disclose what those were, but in general felt that they overlapped with other technology. No, nothing ever became of it because everybody holds patents on everything out there lately in software.?

InfoWorld: You have a legal defense fund. Should people have legal concerns about using Linux?

Zemlin: Just like any other major software platform, there'll be patent trolls or opportunists who try to harm the platform. The SCO Group was a good example of that. In fact, the legal defense fund was created to assist in defense of the platform in the SCO lawsuit. And so that's a good example.?

InfoWorld: What became of that?

Zemlin: SCO lost the lawsuit, it was found that there were no copyright infringements that were there in the Linux platform, and it was proven that Novell indeed owned the copyright to the software that SCO alleged was theirs. And SCO was de-listed from Nasdaq and is now in bankruptcy proceedings.

InfoWorld: Is there anything happening as far as using the GNU General Public license version 3 for Linux, or is that just not happening?

Zemlin: It's not happening today. In the future there may be, but I think it's unlikely at this point. Linus, who is fairly influential in the license decision, has publicly stated that he's not interested in GPL3 at this time.

InfoWorld: Linux has established itself on the server. What progress is being made with Linux on the desktop?

Zemlin: It's an interesting year for Linux on the desktop. We are starting to see some of the major levers of platform adoption for desktop computing be pulled more dramatically this year than they ever have. If you think about what makes a desktop platform successful, the fact that Windows comes pre-installed on most computers when they're purchased on the marketplace obviously [is a] big advantage. And you're starting to see companies do the same with Linux. You're starting to see companies like Asus and their Eee PC. It's a small subnotebook that costs, I think, less than $400. It comes pre-installed with the Linux platform, and it really enables them to target a whole new demographic that they've never been able to effectively sell into before, you know, in Asia, women over 30, or people who could never afford a $600 to $1,000 PC. And you're seeing those offerings now being replicated from Everex with their CloudBook product. Lenovo is now shipping Linux on its X series line of products. You're starting to see for the first time...? Dell announced last year that they are shipping pre-installed Ubuntu Linux specifically, on their notebooks.

So you're starting to see OEMs pre-ship Linux for the first time, which is interesting, but if you look kind of underneath that, the more interesting picture is -- why are they doing that? What is compelling them? Is it because Linux is more functional than it's ever been? The answer there is yes, it is more functional. But that functionality combined with the economics of the situation, where if you think about the bill of materials for a PC, [if] you've got Microsoft in there, I think the OEM [cost] is somewhere between $50 to $75 to license Windows. On a $300-400 PC you're talking 30-40 percent of the price of the computer, which is a significant amount of money. So not only is it one of the largest components of the actual PC, but it's the highest margin component, right? If you look at the stock market, you can see Microsoft has about a 30 percent net profit. You've got Intel making like 15 percent profit margins. Then you've got Dell at like 5 percent. And so when companies like Dell or Asus or Lenovo or all these companies look at those profit margins, they say, "Why wouldn't I just create my own operating system and ship it with the device? I'm therefore higher up the food chain with a higher margin product on a lower priced PC that I can use to penetrate larger markets."

InfoWorld: But Windows is still on 98, 99 percent of PC desktops anyway, so do you think that number or that percentage will decrease?

Zemlin: Yes. Yes, I think it will actually.

InfoWorld: What's the penetration of Linux on handhelds?

Zemlin: Pretty high. I'll have to get you a specific market size number. It's in the tens of millions sold.

InfoWorld: We keep hearing about how, except for the United States and maybe a few other places, most Internet access is going be done on handheld devices.

Zemlin: Yes. Let me walk you through what's going on with Linux in that market. Similar economics [are] interestingly in effect there. [With] Motorola, for example, the Razr product is a Linux-based device. Now people don't know that because it's branded Motorola and it has a user interface, it doesn't say Linux all over it. What you're seeing in the Linux in mobile world is the emergence of several Linux-based platforms. Google has a platform called Android. That's a Linux-based platform, and they're building an SDK around that and working with handset manufacturers and telecommunications carriers to get that platform adopted in the market. There's a second group called the LiMo Foundation, [which] is an organization largely made up of handset manufacturers like Samsung, LG, Motorola, and others who are creating a mobile Linux reference platform for their devices. There's an organization called OpenMoko, which is creating a completely open-source phone.

So what you're seeing there [are] several organizations creating a Linux-based smartphone and trying to provide a development platform for those devices. The reason that they're choosing Linux is the same reason that PC world is starting to choose Linux. If you're a Motorola or an LG, would you rather, per device basis when you're selling tens of millions of devices, license Windows Mobile or the Symbian platform from Nokia, or would you rather have Linux, which is collaboratively designed, which supports every major architecture?

InfoWorld: So are Microsoft's days as the dominant provider of desktop and server and maybe even handheld operating systems numbered?

Zemlin: Monopolies don't last forever, so I mean, I think they've got a long way to go. It's just natural over time that people aren't going to allow a single company to dominate the market. But the more important thing that Microsoft I think is grappling with now, and you saw that recently they've opened up their protocols and they're trying to be a more open company, is they realize that there's been a fundamental shift in how companies create innovative products and compete in the marketplace. And companies are doing that through open and mass collaboration. They look at companies like Google, Facebook, organizations like Wikipedia. They look at the Human Genome Project and Linux, and all of these things that are crossing normal R&D boundaries -- you go hire the best people, we keep them inside, we closely guard our intellectual property -- [are] being turned inside out. And Microsoft is having a hard time competing in that world.

InfoWorld: That's why you think Microsoft did that announcement a few weeks ago where they opened up the documentation?

Zemlin: I think they did it to placate regulators, and I think they did it because half the company realizes that the world is going toward that model and that they need to do that to complete.

InfoWorld: Wouldn't the emergence of Linux kind of say that maybe Microsoft never really was a monopoly, that there was always room for somebody else to compete in there and that's what Linux is now doing?

Zemlin: It obviously was a desktop monopoly for a period of time. It was never a pure monopoly on the server.?

InfoWorld: Apparently, Microsoft is going to get together with the Eclipse Foundation next week. Are there any accommodations between or collaborations between Microsoft and the Linux Foundation?

Zemlin: Not at this time, but we'd love to do it.

InfoWorld: What would you like to see?

Zemlin: We'd like to have a place where developers can come and work on making Linux more effectively interoperate with Microsoft products. And we'd like to do that in the open-source way that's not tied to any specific marketing agreement, that's not tied to any specific contract, that is an open process that can be participated in by anyone in the community.

InfoWorld: What's the interoperability problem now?

Zemlin: I mean I think there's always room for improvement around areas like the Samba Project, which is file-sharing; networking around virtual machines, and the management of those across different platforms.

InfoWorld: Have you approached Microsoft about any of this?

Zemlin: No, not formally. I mean I think that they know that the offer is out there.

InfoWorld: At the MIX08 show last week, one of the topics was the Moonlight, which is about Microsoft's accommodating Linux with the [Novell-built] Moonlight version of the Silverlight client. Don't you think that Microsoft is recognizing and accommodating Linux at least to that small degree?

Zemlin: I think they're trying to be competitive, because certainly if you look at Adobe's AIR platform and the development tools, they are for sure on Linux. Obviously, Microsoft recognizes that these type of cross-platform new media development tools and runtime environments are critical.

InfoWorld: How far can the free software movement go?

Zemlin: The world is moving toward a place where mass collaboration is sort of essential to be competitive. Single companies can't think of every good idea. [With] Linux, for example, the work that's done in enabling real-time support in the Linux kernel for mission-critical financial systems on Wall Street, that same technology goes into benefit the mobile world. Power management technology for an extended battery life in Linux in the mobile [space] goes into the server world, reducing the cost of the energy footprint of the data center. So this stuff is extremely sophisticated, and when you talk about free software and how far "free" can go, I think that misses part of the conversation of how far this mass collaboration can go, which I think is the more important precedent to the second part, which is -- how do you monetize it. Right? And so what's clear to me is that Linux, as an example, and other similar -- whether it's Wikipedia or Facebook or Google or any of the other typical examples of incredible work that's done in this mass collaboration model -- are easily monetized. Red Hat has proven that certainly in the open-source world, that they can offer service and support and training.

InfoWorld: I don't think their revenues are approaching anything close to say, Microsoft or Oracle.

Zemlin: Obviously not because they're an open platform that competes at providing customer value and doesn't have the luxury of high-margin monopoly numbers. But is that for the bad of mankind? I think not. Yes, the days of high-margin, vendor lock-in monopoly practices in the software business, yes, those are gone, and they're permanently gone.

InfoWorld: Is Linux on par with, say, Solaris or maybe some of the older mainframe systems, and even Windows Server in areas like virtualization and security and things of that nature?

Zemlin: Linux is ahead of them in many cases. There are three to four virtualization solutions on the Linux platform. In fact, the Linux platform in general has done a poor job communicating how effective virtualization technology is on that platform. I think that you'll see companies like VMware support a lot of virtual machines that run on Linux. You know, the Xen platform that's being offered by both Red Hat and Novell is incredibly compelling. You're seeing management tools on the Linux platform that are very similar to mainframe technology. You look at IBM's z10 mainframe, that's a Linux-based mainframe platform.

InfoWorld: What about the security?

Zemlin: So IBM, I mean, check out the z10. This thing is equivalent to 1,500 x86 boxes, and it takes 75 percent less space and 75 percent less power. And they've done a terrific job with a lot of the actually more mature mainframe technology that they've had in providing security across different virtualized instances, within that being able to manage those effectively.

InfoWorld: With the virtualization and security enhancements for Linux, are they owned by a particular vendor, or are they out in the open for anybody to get?

Zemlin: That's the best part -- the GPL requires that technology to be out there in the open. And the reason that that's been official, where companies can make money off of that, is they're innovating at a higher level. They're benefiting from the work that others are doing around making virtualization more secure in the Linux platform and then innovating on the management of that.?

InfoWorld: What innovations are being eyed for upcoming versions of the Linux kernel, and when might we see those?

Zemlin: Well, I probably am not the best guy to go down the roadmap of the Linux kernel. Jonathan Corbet, who works with us and publishes something called The Linux Weather Forecast, would probably be the best person to talk about that. But I think you'll see improvements to the file system, you'll see improvements in power management, in virtualization technology coming out pretty regularly.

InfoWorld: What type of improvements?

Zemlin: More efficient power utilization, more efficient use of system resources. It matters in the context of -- does my battery last longer? Am I using less power in the data center? Do I have a file system that scales effectively? These are all things that are coming out and being improved. Is there a way for me to get performance information out of the kernel in an effective way so that I can monitor the platform? And those are all being improved continuously in the kernel itself.

InfoWorld: Can Solaris compete with Linux?

Zemlin: I think [with] Solaris, had [Sun] open-sourced the platform maybe eight years ago, it would have been a very effective competitor to Linux. But I think at this point, the competition around Solaris is creating a similar development community to the Linux development community, which has thousands of developers working for hundreds of major corporations around the world. And I think that they're extremely late to that camp. That type of effort requires a platform that people have confidence in, will be here for years to come. I mean, if I'm a developer and I want to bet my career on being a Solaris guy, I want to make sure I'm making the right bet. And I think people see the handwriting on the wall, they see the massive amount of industry support for Linux across the widest variety of computing, and they make a choice. And that choice is increasingly Linux.

InfoWorld: Is there anything else you wanted to bring up?

Zemlin: One of the things I wanted to talk to you about today, just to give you context for what's going on in Linux, is the concept of the community is starting to become extremely sophisticated in Linux. And I think it's interesting to watch how many of the developers of the platform are full-time paid commercial developers who participate in a community process as both an individual and as an employee of an organization. How organizations like the foundation are playing a role within that development process to provide legal means, for example, for a kernel developer to get access to proprietary specifications through an NDA program where we sign an NDA with a developer and then coordinate with companies to get the development community access to specifications before those products go to market. Just the sophistication and the means to collaborate, [with] the tools available. The number of new countries that are participating in that. Meetings that are being coordinated throughout the world in order to enhance the development process of the platform. What you're really seeing is an acceleration of this collaboration that will have huge, huge rewards reaped from it over time.

InfoWorld: What type of rewards?

Zemlin: Better technology, better price performance, a cross-pollination of ideas through different technology segments that previously had not communicated with each other. And all of the examples I gave are like -- I've got to have fast boot time and good power utilization on a mobile phone. Well, it turns out that data centers need the same thing because the cost of power and cooling are higher than the cost of the machines. Right? And so that cross-pollination of ideas, that acceleration of the platform is an incredibly compelling and interesting thing about the Linux platform that's just, to me, is creating this big snowball effect that we're just starting to see the very beginning of which right now.

End-user adoption is often cited as a key stumbling block in ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM implementations. But Microsoft is asserting that improvements in its Dynamics line of software will have users swooning with passion, not seething with frustration.

"About two years ago, I started making the claim within Dynamics not to just be the best in the industry, but really make something people love," said Jakob Nielsen, principal user experience manager for Dynamics, at the company's Convergence conference in Orlando, Florida, on Wednesday.

The problem, as Nielsen noted, is that "when it comes to emotional connections with business software, it's not so positive most of the time. 'Hate' is probably the word used more often."

While users traditionally want their software to be usable and useful, Microsoft's research also considered a third factor: The seemingly elusive "desirability."

The Dynamics user experience team worked with students at the IT University of Copenhagen on "desirability studies" and to formulate a methodology it is calling "Feel IT."

Microsoft has been using visual design research techniques on groups of users, according to Nielsen. "We really needed some method where we could get people ... to express their emotions when they used the product," he said.

The process allows individuals to express their reactions after using Dynamics by choosing from an array of photographs: A man holding his head and screaming, teddy bears, a woman yawning. Microsoft believes much insight can be inferred from users' choices.

"Emotions are different for different people," Nielsen said. "That's really what drives us and interests us."

To that end, Microsoft has created more than 30 "role centers" for Dynamics AX 2009, due out later this year. These are views of the application tailored for a wide variety of user types.

Microsoft's desirability research echoes work by figures like Don Norman, creator of the "emotional design" concept.

One beta user of AX 2009 said there is substance behind Microsoft's hype.

"We think they really got it right on this one. Things really came together, and we've got a lot of happy people," said John Elmer, vice president of information systems at Rodgers and Hammerstein.

The multiple-division company has complex business processes, as it represents an array of artists and productions, according to Elmer.

The role centers and tooling in the software make it easier for users to find relevant information and also shifts the load off IT, he added.

"We don't get requests for SQL queries to be pulled back for custom sets of data. People can do their own data mining. It's much faster, it's much more efficient," he said.

However, despite the wide range of role templates Microsoft has developed, customizations are still a reality, according to Elmer.

"People want more. We're early enough on that we're able to work with the out-of-the-box templates, but I fully expect within six weeks we'll be slammed with requests for [modifications]," he said. "Some of the stuff we've built on the front end is very specific to our installation. The out-of-the-box templates didn't include some of those tables and fields, so we added them."

AMD said on Wednesday it has started shipping triple-core Phenom processors, bringing desktops with the chip closer to release.

The triple-core processors are shipping in volume to PC makers only right now, AMD officials said. It declined further comment on chip availability and specifications.

Many major vendors, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have hinted at including the Phenom triple-core processors in desktops.

Dell has listed plans to use the chip in its OptiPlex 740 business desktop systems, with 1.5MB of L2 cache and 2MB of shared L3 cache, in an online brochure. Dell will ship the triple-core OptiPlex in the second quarter, a company spokeswoman said, declining further comment.

Hewlett-Packard has also listed a desktop on its Bulgarian-language Web site with AMD's Phenom Triple-Core 8600B processor that runs at 2.3GHz, with 1.5MB of L2 cache. HP officials were not available for comment.

Mesh Computer, a PC vendor in the U.K., has already started offering two desktops with the triple-core Phenom. The company is including an AMD Phenom 8400 Triple-Core processor, which runs at 2.1GHz, in the Matrix XXX Plus desktop. It is using AMD's Phenom 8600 Triple-Core, which runs at 2.3GHz, in the Matrix XXX Pro desktop.

AMD last year added the triple-core processor to its chip lineup and said it would be available in the first quarter of 2008. It is positioning the chip as a better choice than dual-core chips with the third core providing additional processing power to carry out computing tasks like antivirus scanning.

Ping Identity added to its tools for supporting single sign-on to online services Tuesday by acquiring appliance-based technology from Sxip Identity for integrating hosted applications and corporate directories.

Ping, which develops Ping Federate, bought Sxip's Access product portfolio, which includes Access Enterprise Edition, Access Workgroup Edition, and Sxip Audit. (Compare identity management products.)

The Access appliance, which itself can run as a hosted service (Workgroup Edition) or within corporate firewalls, lets users integrate their corporate directories with applications running in the cloud.

When a user is added to the corporate directory, Access detects the change and provisions the user for the service. It also works in reverse; when the user is deleted from the directory, Access deprovisions the user.

Sxip uses something it calls "delegated authentication," which essentially relies on the corporate network to provide credentials and be the authoritative source for user access control.

Salesforce.com and Google were Sxip's two largest customers, using the Access appliance to secure their CRM and Apps applications, respectively.

There is some overlap in the product lines of the two companies in that Ping Federate has a Salesforce.com adapter for providing users with single sign-on using their corporate log-on credentials. But Ping had not developed major provisioning and deprovisioning capabilities in its platform.

"Sxip had done some good work on provisioning; deprovisioning we had not gotten to, so that will accelerate [our efforts]," said Andre Durand, CEO of Ping. "Sxip's hosted model, its feature set, and its appliance form factor will also help accelerate our learning on those three things."

Durand said Ping is working out a roadmap for its product portfolio, but he added that it is now apparent where Ping stands.

"It is crystal clear that when it comes to enterprise adoption of single sign-on and provisioning/deprovisioning of services, we are it," he said.

The goal is to help users build a platform for identity federation, which lets companies share user authentication across security boundaries, including their own corporate divisions or those of partners.

Like Ping Federate, Sxip Access supports the use of tokens based on SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language).

Experts say the model is advantageous for companies because they can provide credentials in the form of a SAML token, which means a user's true corporate authentication/authorization credentials never move outside the firewall.

In the acquisition, Ping gets all the intellectual property, existing customer support agreements, and employees around the Access product.

Ping plans to open a Vancouver office to house the former Access development team.

Ping has nearly 200 enterprise customers and staff across the United States and Europe. The Sxip acquisition brings approximately 25 additional customers.

Microsoft continues to step up its virtualization push, with the acquisition of desktop virtualization management software developer Kidaro.

Without disclosing a purchase price or when the deal is expected to close, Microsoft said it plans to acquire Kidaro and integrate its technology into the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance.

Kidaro offers management technology aimed at making it easier for enterprises to deploy, use, and manage virtual PCs. The platform comprises several components, including a client that handles encryption and firewall security and integrates the virtual machine applications into the end-user computer. The management server assigns configurations and security policies for users and compiles information about clients for monitoring and auditing.

Microsoft expects that the software will help accelerate migration to Windows Vista because it can minimize compatibility issues between applications and the OS. In addition, the software makes the use of virtualization less noticeable to end-users, which should also speed adoption, Microsoft said.

Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance is a package of technologies that enterprises can use to help manage desktops. It includes Application Virtualization, Asset Inventory Service, Advanced Group Policy Management, Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset, and System Center Desktop Error Monitoring. Microsoft Software Assurance customers will need to subscribe to an add-on service to access the Kidaro capabilities.

Kidaro has offices in California, New York, and Israel. In a blog post, Microsoft said Kidaro's three founders will join the company and that it will keep Kidaro's research and development group in Israel.

Microsoft is working to catch up in the virtualization space. The Kidaro acquisition follows one that Microsoft made earlier this year of Calista Technologies, the developer of graphics technology for people accessing a Windows desktop remotely from a server.

Microsoft also recently changed course and began allowing users to run Windows Vista Home Basic and Home Premium in a virtualized environment. That change allowed Mac users to run Vista along with the Mac OS without having to buy a more expensive version of Windows.

The software giant is also working on virtualization technology for Windows Server 2008. The Hyper-V technology was released in beta late last year, when Microsoft said it would be publicly released within 180 days of the availability of the server. Windows Server 2008 was launched two weeks ago.

The United States is driving away the world's best engineers and computer scientists by putting limits on H-1B visas and other immigrant worker programs, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday.

Gates repeated his past calls for more H-1B visas, the controversial program used by technology and other companies to hire foreign workers for up to six years. More than half of the students in computer science programs at top U.S. universities are from other countries, but a limit on H-1Bs means many of those students can't stay in the United States after they graduate, Gates told the House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee.

"We provide the world's best universities ... and the students are not allowed to stay and work in the country," Gates said. "The fact is, [other countries'] smartest people want to come here, and that's a huge advantage to us, and in a sense, we're turning them away."

Gates' comments on immigrant worker programs and improving science and engineering education at U.S. high schools reflected his long-standing positions. Gates talked about the same issues before a Senate committee a year ago. Congress has set a limit of 85,000 H-1Bs each year, including 20,000 set aside for students with advanced degrees, and in recent years, those slots have been filled within days of the application period opening.

Many lawmakers agreed with Gates on H-1Bs and other issues, but some raised concerns about raising the H-1B limit. One recent study said 150,000 computer programmers in the United States have lost their jobs since 2000, said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican.

"My view ... is there are people available," Rohrabacher said. "You just want to hire the top people from India and China."

Gates said Rohrabacher's numbers were based on a flawed study. Many large tech firms can't find enough qualified workers, he said.

Rohrabacher asked if H-1B workers were driving down U.S. wages or replacing "B and C students" from the United States. Gates said no, citing a study released Monday by the pro-immigration think tank the National Foundation for American Policy, saying that for every H-1B position applied for, companies create an additional five jobs.

"The top people are going to be [paid] higher," Gates said. "It's just a question of what country they're working in."

Rep. Laura Richardson, a California Democrat, challenged Microsoft and other tech companies to fund scholarships for science and engineering students with the money they use to recruit workers and apply for visas.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides scholarships for 14,000 minority students, Gates noted. But more scholarships won't solve the problem of a lack of U.S. science and engineering students, he said.

"Scholarships can be helpful, but I'm not sure that alone would drive the shift we need," Gates said.

Gates called on Congress to increase the H-1B cap. He also asked lawmakers to extend the 12-month period foreign students can stay in the United States after they graduate without obtaining a new visa. He asked Congress to allow immigrant workers to more easily become permanent U.S. residents, and he called on Congress to do away with country caps on the green-card employment visa program, which has a total cap of 140,000 workers per year.

Gates also encouraged lawmakers to focus on improving high school education in the United States, to pump more funding into government research, and to approve a permanent research and development tax credit.

"I believe this country stands at a crossroads," he said. "Economic progress depends more than ever on innovation. If we do not implement policies like those I have outlined today, the center of progress will shift to other nations that are more committed to the pursuit of technical excellence."

Back in October 2007, Taipei-based Asustek Computer proved that less can be more with its two-pound, $400 Eee PC. Since then, other subnotebooks have followed (or are soon to follow) in the Eee's wake. However, only the Everex CloudBook has dared to take the Eee head-on, matching its weight, screen, and keyboard size as well as its reliance on the Linux operating system, open source applications, and a $400 price tag.

The excitement around the CloudBook's public unveiling at CES two months ago has deflated -- hurt by, among other things, a delayed release; originally due to ship in January, it finally became available in mid-February.

When I first reviewed the Asus Eee, I was rather critical of its shortcomings, including the difficult keyboard, small display, and mediocre battery life. Time has since mellowed my feelings -- and I've learned to work around the system's limitations, which were dictated by the machine's small size and low cost. The question is: Can I similarly forgive the CloudBook's faults and limitations?

Stats The CloudBook comes equipped with a 1.2GHz Via C7-M processor and 512MB of DDR2, 533MHz SDRAM. Unlike the Eee, which uses solid-state memory, the CloudBook offers a 30GB hard drive. Like the Eee, it offers a seven-inch, 800-by-480 pixel display. Connections include an Ethernet port, a DVI port, two USB ports, audio line-out/line-in ports, and a four-in-one media card reader. There's also 802.11g/b Wi-Fi and a 300KB-pixel Webcam. It operates on a four-cell lithium-ion battery that is rated to offer 2.5 to 3 hours of use.

Design You know how some attractive people don't photograph well at all? That's the CloudBook's problem. None of the pictures I've seen (or taken myself), not even the stock photos put out by Everex Systems, do this seriously handsome machine justice.

The CloudBook uses the same dark black plastic shell as the Lenovo ThinkPad. But unlike the ThinkPad, whose splashes of color feel dated, the CloudBook goes the other way, achieving a snazzy black-on-black effect. The pure obsidian case makes the CloudBook's orange LCD indicator lights even more striking. I also preferred Everex's cute green-leaf logo. Asus, by contrast, looks like it stole its font from the 1982 movie "Tron."

The display is separated from the CloudBook's base by a one-inch gap. This allows you to do two cool things: hold the CloudBook securely with one hand as you type or mouse with the other, and flip the screen a total of 270 degrees (compared with the Eee's 75-degree range of motion). There are reports Everex is also working on ultraportables that will have a touchscreen. This one doesn't.

Bottom line Ebony beats ivory. Edge to the CloudBook.

Heft With its conventional brick-style power supply, the CloudBook weighs 2.75 pounds. By comparison, my ThinkPad T42 weighs nearly six pounds with charger. The Eee, however, tips my postal scale at just 2.25 pounds because of its smaller iPod-style charger.

Bottom line Both are petite, but edge to the Eee.

Video quality Both PCs feature seven-inch, 800-by-480 LCDs that are bright and sharp. Both displays suffer from the same detriment: Their small size makes navigating documents and Web pages, which are coded to be at least 1,024 by 768, a hassle.

I give the edge to the Eee for several reasons. While both machines allow you to tune their brightness through the Fn keys, the Eee pops up with a brightness meter and allows more fine control than the CloudBook. Second, I encountered fewer hiccups playing streaming or downloaded videos on the Eee than on the CloudBook. That's not surprising -- the Eee's solid-state drive is faster than regular hard drives, and the CloudBook's hard drive spins at just 4,200 rpm, slower than virtually all other desktop and notebook drives today.

Bottom line Edge to the Eee.

Storage One of the biggest differentiators between the two systems is the Eee's 4GB solid-state drive and the Eee's conventional 30GB hard drive. It's size versus speed. With an operating system and applications installed, you have less than 1GB of free space on the Eee but almost 25GB on the CloudBook. (Granted, both the Eee and CloudBook have four-in-one flash memory card readers that, along with the USB slots, augment users' storage.)

But while the Eee can boot up in just 25 seconds, the CloudBook takes more than three minutes, including the time to enter your username and password. The CloudBook does offer a hibernate mode that takes about a minute to wake up from. Or take file copying -- copying a 925MB file from an USB drive to the CloudBook took 95 seconds. Copying the same file to the Eee took 70 seconds, despite the Eee's slower USB ports.

Bottom line Depends on your needs, so it's even.

Keyboard Buyers need to accept compromises from these extra-small notebooks, and the keyboard is a major place where compromise is necessary. However, though the keyboards and keys are exactly the same size in both units, I was surprised to find myself less error-prone with the CloudBook. I think the CloudBook has greater key depth -- in other words, the keys push in more.

However, this was dragged down by the CloudBook's patchy implementation of the blue Fn keys. I already mentioned the kludginess of adjusting the screen brightness. Worse is adjusting the volume through Fn+F10 and F11. It worked on the speakers but failed to adjust the volume of the headphones.

Bottom line It's a draw.

Touch pad In my Eee review, I described its touchpad as being like the hero of a romantic comedy: sensitive and sturdy.

The CloudBook's touch pad doesn't lack those qualities, but at just a quarter the size of the Eee's touchpad -- and located at the top-right corner of the keyboard -- it's hard to use.

The CloudBook's jet-black exterior also has a tendency to camouflage the track pad and its two buttons -- which are awkwardly located at the top-left corner of the machine. This arrangement does let you use the CloudBook while standing, but it's ultimately less handy for use when sitting down.

Bottom line The CloudBook track pad is a victim to fashion. Big edge to the Eee.

Processor The CloudBook would seem to have a big edge as its Via C7-M chip set runs at 1.2GHz, or double the 600MHz of the Eee's Celeron chip (a still-unfixed BIOS prevents the Eee from attaining its 900GHz potential). Based on my experience opening applications, transferring files, and playing media files, t