Opera Software on Wednesday revealed a search engine that indexes structural information about Web pages so Web developers and standards bodies can see what technologies are being used to build Web sites and how they are being used.

The Metadata Analysis and Mining Application search engine -- "MAMA" for short -- is being tested by the company and should be released in an invitation-only beta by the end of the year, said Snorre Grimsby, vice president of quality assurance at Opera in Oslo, Norway.

MAMA grew out of tests Opera routinely does to make sure its own browser software products work well with existing Web pages that use the most commonly used Web site-creation technology, he said.

"We realized internally that we needed to be able to find lots of live sites out there that used certain technologies in certain combinations so we could test our browser on them," Grimsby said.

The resulting search engine crawls the Web, but instead of indexing the content of Web sites, as most search engines do, it discards the content and indexes the types of technologies being used on sites, such as CSS, HTML, XHTML, and the like, Grimsby said.

This information is helpful for Web developers, who can use MAMA to identify sites that are using certain kinds of technology and see how other developers have implemented it, he said.

"It's a known fact that Web developers borrow ideas from each other," Grimsby said. If developers are working with a Web application that needs, for example, a new menu system, MAMA can help them find sites that use the technology being considered to build the system to get ideas for their own implementation.

Developers also can use MAMA to see how well sites conform to current World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications for commonly used Web standards, such as CSS, HTML and others. The W3C oversees the creation and maintenance of specs for many of the most prevalent Web-site development technologies.

Grimsby said that in Opera's own use of MAMA, Opera found that the average Web page has 47 discrepancies in how the site renders W3C-maintained technologies and the W3C specifications themselves.

MAMA also can be useful for the W3C and other standards bodies to help them set priorities for developing specifications. For example, if a technology is used a certain way on the majority of Web sites, or not used very much at all, the W3C "can change the spec or take something out of the spec," Grimsby said.

During an interview Wednesday, Grimsby demonstrated MAMA in real time by using it to crawl an International Data Group Web page, http://www.idg.net/idgns, to find out what technologies the site used.

According to the search engine, the site is running on version 2.2.8 of the Apache Web Server on a Windows 32-bit hardware server, has 56 hyperlinks and uses XHTML (Extensible HTML) 1.0 and CSS, he said.

In the next eight weeks Opera expects to publish a series of articles on its developer Web site about its own internal use of MAMA, noting key findings, statistics and trends the search engine discovers, he said.

By the end of the year, the company will invite key people within standards bodies to test the search engine, with a goal of releasing it publicly to developers sometime in the first or second quarter of next year, Grimsby said.

If you know one thing about Linux users, it's probably this: They enjoy the challenge of installing their operating system of choice on pretty much anything with a transistor in it. It's only a matter of time before they get around to replacing all those electronic singing greeting cards to make the sound of penguin mating calls.

So the news that Linux has been ported to the iPhone and the iPod touch shouldn't exactly come as a shock; please hold your cries of heresy until the end. OpeniBoot, which brings the Linux 2.6 kernel to the iPhone platform was developed by members of the iPhone DevTeam, the same folks who have long been working on cracking the iPhone's firmware every time a new version comes out.

[ Special report: IT's guide to the iPhone ]

The capabilities of OpeniBoot are still incredibly limited--at present, there's no support for writing to the flash memory, using the touch screen, wireless networking, the cell phone, sound, or the accelerometer. So if you thought that you'd be ending up with a fully operational Linux iPhone--or even a partially operational phone--I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed for now.

There's also some talk that this may pave the way for installing Google's Android OS on the iPhone, though as someone who's been using a G1 for a few days now, that seems like overhauling a Porsche to run like a Hyundai. But then again, there's always somebody who wants to prove that it's possible. So knock yourself out, guys.

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Consumer electronics giants Apple, Dell, Motorola, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Samsung have been slow to get serious about climate change, and are notably lagging behind, according to the latest edition of the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics.

Many companies still show little engagement with the issue, which is a disappointment, according to Greenpeace International Climate & Energy campaigner Mel Francis.

[ For more on technology and the environment, see Ted Samson's Sustainable IT blog | Stay ahead of advances in technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]

"They are basically lagging behind on what we need for a good climate package. They haven't demonstrated any real commitment to cutting their own CO2 emissions, or to lobbying politicians to get a good deal post-Kyoto," said Francis.

"They assume that growth in their business also must therefore mean growth in their CO2 emissions. At Greenpeace we think that's not necessarily true," said Francis.

Greenpeace would like to see a lot more action going forward. "We are simply asking them to become climate leaders. They need to put their words into action and follow through on the claims they're making," said Francis.

Still, there are a few exceptions: Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Philips and Sharp support the level of cuts in greenhouse gases that science requires, according to Greenpeace.

In its latest Guide to Greener Electronics, Greenpeace gives Philips marks for committing to making absolute reductions in its own greenhouse gas emissions from the product manufacture and supply chain, which HP has done as well.

Both Philips and HP have also committed to making cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from their own operations. Nokia has done the same, said Francis.

Its overall ranking -- which takes into account company policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change -- is topped by Nokia (Greenpeace likes its take-back program and use of renewable energy), followed by Sony Ericsson and Toshiba.

Philips and HP are in the bottom half of the list: good energy policies aren't enough, and both companies must improve how they handle e-waste, said Greenpeace.

Motorola, Toshiba and Sharp made the biggest moves up the chart, while the companies falling down the ranking are the PC brands Acer, Dell, HP -- and Apple, although it still gets a thumbs-up for improving its score, by better reporting on the carbon footprint of its products.

Apple's new iPods are also are now free of both PVC and brominated flame retardants, according to Greenpeace.

In general, the PC manufacturers need to improve the handling of e-waste.

Dell and Acer also need to reduce their use of toxic chemicals, said Greenpeace. Dell loses points for withdrawing from its commitment to eliminate all PVC plastic and brominated flame retardants by the end of 2009.

The use of toxic chemicals has in the past been a focus area for Greenpeace, but here there has been some positive movement. Consumer electronics companies have been allies to Greenpeace as it has tried to reduce the use of toxic materials and get legislation passed, according to Francis.

Nintendo remains in last place in the ranking, although it is taking small steps to remove or monitor the presence of some potentially toxic additives in the plastics it uses, Greenpeace said.

JetBrains released TeamCity 4.0, a continuous integration server and distributed build management tool featuring enhanced build capabilities, this week.?

Version 4.0 offers build chains support for breaking down a single build procedure into several parts that can be run on different build agents using the same sets of sources.?

Other improvements in version 4.0 include the ability to redo a particular build from a particular control revision, known as a history build, and improved authentication mechanics.

With version 4.0, statistics are offered for an entire project. Extensibility is enabled via a Java API, the company said. A tests reordering capability determines which tests are likely to fail and performs those first during the next project build.

TeamCity 4.0 automates routines and streamlines the software development process. Team communication is improved, and teams can implement agile methodology, JetBrains said. The product integrates with multiple IDEs.

Eclipse integration is highlighted as is integration with ClearCase, with Eclipse backing bringing IntelliJ Idea IDE capabilities to Eclipse users.

"Since its creation, TeamCity has been a key element in our own development process," said JetBrains CEO Sergey Dmitriev, in a statement released by the company. "The production TeamCity server at JetBrains is currently having over 50 build configurations in a build grid with more than 50 build agents, with literally every project and every developer using it on a daily basis

Version 4.0 also has an improved search engine and user interface improvements, JetBrains said. TeamCity automates more than 600 Java code inspections.

TeamCity 4.0 is available free to individual developers and small-to-medium-size teams. The free edition is restricted to 20 build configurations and three build agents.

TV network CBS has become the latest big name to have it Web site used to host malware, a security company has reported.

It appears that Russian malware distributors were able to launch another iFrame attack on a subdomain of the cbs.com site so that it was serving remote malware to any visitors. A user's vulnerability to the malware attack launched by the site hack would depend on a number of factors, including the type of security used on a PC, the operating system, and possibly the browser version.

[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

"This saga confirms our many previous warnings that obfuscated code posing a serious threat to Internet users' PCs," said Finjan CTO, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, who has devoted a fair amount of time in recent months to finding these hacks.

"Our Threats Reports have continued to identify the increasing use of code obfuscation as a means of bypassing traditional signature-based solutions in order to propagate malware," Ben-Itzak continued, taking a pop at the anti-virus products against which his company in part competes.

"It also highlights the fact that no web portal, no matter how high ranking, can be totally secure against a system hack and consequent infection of its visitors. Web users need to exercise caution at all times," he said.

Finjan has it had informed CBS of the issue, but that the Russian exploit server had in any case been taken offline, neutering the attack for the time being.

iFrame and SQL injection attacks on big-name Web sites have been one of the fashionable attacks of 2008, embarrassing a string of household names.

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As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, the task of upgrading the security of federal computer systems continues to be a work in progress.

Several cybersecurity initiatives launched during the Bush administration are still years away from being completed. Others are closer to completion but don't do enough by themselves to defend networks and systems against increasingly sophisticated attacks, according to IT security analysts.

[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

And, they said, resolving the security issues will require Obama to focus on more than just finishing the ongoing initiatives.

For starters, he needs to end the policy of tying federal cybersecurity efforts so closely to the post-9/11 war on terror, said Gartner analyst John Pescatore. "The terrorist attacks sent the Bush administration in the wrong direction" on cybersecurity, Pescatore said, adding that more immediate threats to federal systems have been overlooked.

Progress has been made, claimed Karen Evans, administrator of e-government and IT at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Evans said several security initiatives launched over the past few years are already making, or will soon make, a difference.

At the top of her list is a 2004 mandate by President Bush that required federal agencies to issue new smart-card identity credentials to all employees and contractors. But even that program hasn't been fully implemented. Agencies were supposed to finish issuing the new ID cards in late October, but most will need at least two more years to do so.

Other projects that Evans pointed to include a recent upgrade of federal networks to the more secure IPv6 protocol and the Trusted Internet Connections program, under which agencies are working to reduce their external network connections.

Evans also cited the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) project, which is aimed at cutting costs and boosting security by requiring agencies to employ standard security settings on all Windows PCs.

Earlier this year, President Bush also put in motion a highly classified, multiagency program called the Cyber Initiative, with a goal of bolstering the nation's ability to detect and respond to cyberthreats against critical infrastructure targets.

Tom Kellerman, vice president of security awareness at Core Security Technologies in Boston, said the Cyber Initiative marked an "awakening" in Washington about the need for stronger cybersecurity efforts.

But Kellerman, who is a member of a commission that's developing cybersecurity recommendations for Obama, said much remains to be done. "The existing administration has only just begun to pay attention to cybersecurity" as a national security issue, he said.

Many of the ongoing initiatives are helping to improve security in bits and pieces, Pescatore said. But, he added, they were the result of "random edicts" from the OMB, not broad cybersecurity objectives.

Increasingly, new funding has been moving toward surveillance and monitoring initiatives related to fighting terrorism. While such efforts are needed, Pescatore said, they do little to protect federal agencies from cybercriminals.

Franklin Reeder, an independent consultant and former chief of information policy at the OMB, said the most important step for Obama is to use the government's purchasing clout to compel IT vendors to build more security capabilities into products. The FDCC program has shown that such an approach can be successful, Reeder said.

More spending is needed on security training, he added. He also thinks the feds must change how they work with the private sector on security. Existing programs, Reeder contended, "have just been convened by the government for the government."

This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld's print edition. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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