Sean Michael Kerner

Microsoft’s MSN launched a blogging tool that ties in with its home media technology plays. Called MSN Spaces, the beta is part of an update to MSN’s suite of communication services. The free, hosted MSN Spaces service is Microsoft’s first consumer foray into providing a blogging platform. Spaces will enable MSN members to maintain a […]

The market for anti-spyware tools will hit $305 million by 2008, according to new research from IDC. The firm also revealed that it estimates 67 percent of consumer PCs are infected with some form of spyware. In 2003, IDC reported the market for anti-spyware tools to be only $12 million. That number is forecast to […]

In a surprise move, Microsoft has released an out-of-cycle patch for the recently exposed IFRAME vulnerability that affects non-Windows XP SP2 users. Microsoft itself rated the vulnerability “critical” and is recommending that all affected customers (which is everyone that isn’t running XP SP2) should install the patch immediately. Just last week Microsoft denied that it […]

Open source object-oriented programming language Python hit a new milestone Tuesday with the official release of Python 2.4. The latest version of the scripting language includes a list of bug fixes and feature improvements. Principal among them is the speed of the language itself. According to the release notes, developers recoded a number of Python […]

It’s not rare when a flaw disables Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), but it is rare when the same flaw affects the alternatives. That’s the unfortunate case with a new bug that targets the Mozilla Browser, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Apple Safari. It causes them to crash and could potentially form the basis of an exploit […]

A wave of upgrades and the anticipation of future broadband requirements is responsible for the increasing health of the Ethernet switch market. Redwood City, Calif.-based Dell’Oro Group reported that Ethernet switch sales gained 24 percent during the third quarter this year over the previous year for a total of $3.5 billion in sales. It is […]

Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) has lost Pamela Jones (PJ) of Groklaw fame over the so-called FUD factor. OSRM, which was formed in 2003 with the goal to support the growth of free and open source software, confirmed that Jones had resigned her position as litigation risk research director for the group. The development comes […]

Keeping contacts synced between PCs and cell phones is about to get a whole lot easier. Plaxo, a contact management tool that integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express announced two new services that will unwire its contact synchronization service and extend its e-commerce reach. Plaxo Mobile Access allows for WAP-enabled mobile devices to directly […]

A chilling turn in the war against viruses appeared over the weekend. It looks like viruses are now being spread unsuspectingly through Web sites via compromised ad servers. The SANS Institute Internet Storm Center on Saturday reported that a ‘high profile UK website’ was among those that had been hit. On Sunday, The Register confirmed […]

A new worm is wriggling around the Internet. This time it’s the latest variant of Sober, which first appeared in October of 2003. The body of the malicious e-mail also has a myriad of possible content ranging from, “Your password was changed successfully!” to “Attachment: No Virus found” among others. Like other mass mailing worms […]

The U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) statistics on retail e-commerce released this morning illustrate it’s on the rise and actually outpacing total retail sales in at least one metric. On a non-adjusted year-over-year basis, the DoC reported that e-commerce sales grew by 21.2 percent over the same quarter last year. In the same period, total […]

Visual Basic Developers in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) are dragging their feet about Microsoft’s next-generation toolset, VB.net, compared to North America, a recent study found. The Evans Data Fall 2004 EMEA Development Survey found that almost half of all developers in the EMEA region of the world that once used a version of […]