Sean Michael Kerner

Texas Instruments (TI) is positioning itself to be the winner of the ZigBee sweepstakes, thanks in part to the acquisition of Chipcon for $200 million. The acquisition comes as ZigBee celebrates its first anniversary as a ratified specification for enabling the wireless future. Oslo, Norway headquartered Chipcon AS is a semiconductor company that produces radio […]

Among the potential obstacles that face migrants to Sun Solaris is their ability to run Linux applications. Sun has long been working on ways to overcome that issue and has now launched a re-branded OpenSolaris effort called BrandZ to open the door for Linux applications to run on Solaris. Originally, the promise of running Linux […]

UPDATED: Just in time for the holidays, Symantec’s antivirus programs have been found to have a “highly critical” vulnerability for which there is currently no patch. The Symantec AntiVirus RAR Archive Decompression Buffer Overflow vulnerability could allow an attacker to gain control of a system. The vulnerability affects at least 39 different Symantec antivirus products, […]

Microsoft and Apple are about to write another chapter in their somewhat sordid history, to say the least. As of Dec. 31, Microsoft will terminate its support of Internet Explorer for the Macintosh. The split has been expected for sometime. In fact, IE for Mac has been on the proverbial software death row, since June […]

HP is taking a lead role in promoting and extending the open source OpenLDAP directory server into enterprise deployments. The company has extended its relationship with Symas, one of the lead commercial sponsors of OpenLDAP, and will now be supporting and integrating it for HP customers. The move elevates the status of OpenLDAP to become […]

No, Jingle is not a Christmas promotion from Google, though it does involve a “gift” from Google. Jingle is a newly published specification for doing voice over Jabber’s XMPP protocol, which the Google Talk IM client uses. Google Talk’s implementation of Jingle is now also available for download and third-party integration via the Google sponsored […]

UPDATED: Symantec now holds a patent for histogram-based malicious code detection. The newly patented technology offers the promise of accelerated IT security Risk-threat detection. According to the U.S Patent and Trade Office Abstract for patent number 6,971,019, the patent is for a virus-detection system that uses a histogram to detect the presence of a computer […]

Bragging rights in the SSL certification market are still a subject of dispute. GeoTrust said this week that it is growing faster than anyone else. And then VeriSign said it is the undisputed leader in the SSL certificate market. Regardless of who is the leader or is growing faster, both firms are growing their SSL […]

More mobile users means more strain on networks and IT resources that few are properly prepared to deal with. The Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and Avaya conducted surveys of enterprise executives to reach these conclusions. The BPM Forum study, entitled “The Remote Revolution: Uptime Issues, Implications & Imperatives in the Mobile Workforce,” found that […]

Sun is enhancing its Java System Portal Server with a new release to make it easier to build collaborative content and communities. Wikis, blogs and RSS feeds are all supported by the new Java System Portal Server 7, which is part of Sun’s freely available Java Enterprise System. The Java Enterprise system became “free” at […]

UPDATED: Mobile software solutions provider Visto has filed suit against Microsoft alleging that its Windows Mobile 5.0 infringes on three Visto-awarded patents. Visto is seeking unspecified financial damages and an injunction against Microsoft to prohibit continued use of Visto’s patents. The suit against Microsoft comes just one day after Visto signed an agreement with RIM […]

Hot on the heels of IBM breaking the $1 billion dollar mark in quarterly revenues related to Linux, Big Blue is rewarding Red Hat and Novell by promoting them to IBM’s Strategic Alliance program, IBM’s highest partner level. The new partner status puts Novell and Red Hat in IBM’s top ten list of global partners […]