Sean Michael Kerner

How sweet it is. Or, well, perhaps candy isn’t the most immediate association Web surfers have with their browser. So decided Mozilla, renaming its new “Tab Candy” feature “Firefox Panorama” in its formal rollout with the beta 4 version of Firefox 4. But by any name, the new feature aims to give users additional tools […]

While there’s been plenty of talk about the benefits that enterprises can realize in cost savings and flexibility by moving their infrastructure to the cloud, security concerns have proved just as dogged in causing some IT managers to think twice about cloud computing. But Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) says that with the proper safeguards, enterprises can […]

From the ‘Famous Physicist‘ files: The first alpha of Red Hat’s Fedora 14 Linux is now avail, and it sure has a very long list of new features.  There are improvements to security, performance and virtualization as well as some interesting new analysis technology. “Given that Fedora 14 is named after one of the giants […]

From the “It’s Not Over Until Ellison Sings‘ files: The openSolaris Governing Board (OGB) has resigned, leaving the former Sun (now Oracle) open source operating system without a community board for governance. Does this mean that openSolaris is dead? Not quite. The key problem (in my view) is that Oracle has been unresponsive to the […]

From the ‘Web Privacy‘ files: Privacy Mode (aka Porn Mode) is a browser feature in most modern web browsers that aims to ‘hide’ your activities from others users on the same system. Personally, I’ve always wondered when people use Privacy Mode, and now Mozilla has a study out with the answer. Via their Test Pilot […]

For some, the notion of Microsoft backing an open source effort is nothing less than incredible. But believe it: It was just under a year ago that Microsoft created the open source CodePlex Foundation, aimed at broadening and building upon the efforts of the company’s own Codeplex.com site, which has already proven successful in hosting […]

Collecting and analyzing log files from across the network can be a real pain, especially considering the wide variety of sources and formats. That’s where LogLogic aims to come in. Version 5 of its eponymous offering is designed to help IT admins get better control of the log data being generated by systems, more so […]

Christmas Day 2007 was a long time ago. But that’s when the first 1.9 development release of Ruby appeared. Now, nearly three years later, Ruby is out with version 1.9.2, described as the first “production-ready 1.9 implementation.” The release comes as the related Rails gears up for its 3.0 release, and the new features will […]

Google’s Chrome browser continues its rapid-fire string of updates aimed at closing the door on vulnerabilities that are increasingly identified by a number of third-party security researchers. The new Chrome 5.0.375.127 stable channel release is but the latest example, with eleven potentials security flaws getting shut down thanks in large part to the efforts of […]

A security vulnerability has been hidden within the Linux kernel for close to seven years, and even though Linux kernel developers and the open source OS’s major distros have known about the flaw since at least June, several distros still remain vulnerable — potentially putting their users at risk, considering the severity of the vulnerability, […]

What would a hardware kingpin want with a purveyor of security software? A partnership, analysts might imagine, but certainly not a full acquisition. Yet that’s exactly what chip leader Intel has done with its $7.7 all-cash purchase of McAfee. CEO Paul Ottelini explains that the purchase reflects the view that security will be implemented most […]

Google this week is souping up its App Engine, the search giant’s cloud-based application-delivery service. With version 1.3.6, Google has included a set of improvements that aim to streamline the provisioning work that is a necessary component of cloud-based apps. Specifically, Google has improved support for multitenancy in the new version of the App Engine, […]