Articles by Jack M. Germain

Panda Security on Wednesday released a cloud-based antivirus solution in beta Panda Cloud Antivirus is based on a new protection model thatutilizes a thin-client agent and server architecture to process andblock malware. The product provides full protection from viruses,spyware and rootkits for free, according to the company, and does so with 50 pe...

Microsoft has begun a limited private beta test of an emergencysocial networking service that provides subscribers with aTwitter-like messaging system to track family, friends or specialgroups Microsoft Vine is a downloadable application that collects newsreports related to a specific area when disasters strike -- hurricanes,earthquakes pandemics, ...

The concept of five nines availability has its roots inserver deployment. That standard demands that the IT department orthe service provider hired by an enterprise deliver access toapplications and data 99.999 percent of the time Even with today's migration to cloud storage and SaaS (Software as aService) product delivery, much can happen to exten...

Moving a company into cloud computing changes a lot more than just where the servers happen to be located. For instance, tech support might move out the door as well In some cases, tech support workers may still have their desks, but they will nolonger be their company's go-to guys when a problem develops. Instead,they will have to talk to their ow...

The Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee hasreopened hearings on possible privacy and security risks posed byusing LimeWire and similar peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications The committee on Monday sent letters to Mark Gorton, chairman of TheLime Group, which owns LimeWire; U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; and Jon...

The older bits of the world's accumulated knowledge, bound together in volumes of printedbooks and magazines, are slowly disappearing. Out-of-print renditionsoften disappear forever. Libraries with limited shelf space oftenreplace seldom-used titles with newer tomes. A far smaller portion ofprinted matter makes it to page-scanning processes for preservationin digital form...

The global economy is changing. For many consumers, the credit card crunch is crumbling their ability to buy things online. In many countries outside the U.S., consumers do not have credit cards but rely instead on smart cards to swipe transactions directly through their banks.

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a publicbeta version of Microsoft Exchange 2010 This next version of Microsoft's email server will ship later thisyear, Microsoft said.

Is software truly open source if you pay for additional features? Youranswer may depend on whether you side with the purists or the, ah,not-so-pure A recent trend entering the debate involves the marketing of so-calledopen core software. This morphed business model is not what manyopen source supporters consider "pure" open source. However, open co...

A Wall Street Journal report that foreign hackers have repeatedly penetrated the U.S. power grid computer network has delivered a loud wake-up call Cyber-spies fromcountries including China and Russia have breached the electricalinfrastructure's computer network and left software tools behind thatwould have allowed them to control or destroy infras...

Does cloud computing cause a dilemma for application developers? Does it present problems that devs would not face in building software for earth-bound applications? Developers face common problems regardless of where their program's data isstored. However, the cloud environment presents a set of drawbacks that cloudapplication developers sometime...

Open source healthcare IT solutions are just beginning to become acceptable alternatives toproprietary software systems. As is happening in other fields, opensource medical projects are getting noticed as cost-savingalternatives to proprietary vendors The battle for supremacy between the two marketing strategies may gainnational political attention...

Virtualization is a hot topic in today's demanding "get-more-for-less"business environment. Consolidating numerous computer systems so theyrun efficiently on fewer servers is a standard operating procedure formany IT departments. However, virtualizing entire server banks is notthe only way to achieve more efficient deployment of computingresources ...

Virtualization is an essential component for any IT outfit looking torun an efficient, manageable, waste-not-want-not shop. It's not justa tool for large call centers with big server farms. Evensmall- to medium-sized businesses with growing computer demands canbenefit from virtualization Why? Virtualization reduces costs by lowering hardware needs ...

Google opened a new channel onTuesday to distribute its latest beta release of the Chrome browser.The company also began on Tuesday a blog devoted exclusively to theChrome browser Google launched Chrome as a beta in September of 2008; a final-release 1.0 version come out in December. By last month, it had grabbed 1.12 percentof the market behind In...

Messing around with the hard drive's structure is high on my list of the most unpleasant things to do with a computer. However, my basic do-it-myself credo is to never pay a computer shop guy to do what I can handle myself. My corollary to that philosophy is to never pay for software you can get for free With hard drive partitioning, the issue is l...

The Linux Foundation (LF) has inked a deal that fosterscollaboration with SourceForge and acquires ownershipof Linux.com. The move is intended to create a long-lasting community destination forLinux users and developers, officials from the organizations said....

Many large enterprises still run critical applications on legacy Linux and Unix platforms. Much like the fabled Energizer Bunny, these old computing OSes keep going and going and going. Some of these are not even in production any more Upgrading these systems is no simple matter, partly because the organizations using them cannot simply turn off se...

After a year in development and testing, Google last month added an offline mail client to provide local access to mail folders when there is no Internet connection Gmail Offline is still experimental and limited to synchronizing a maximum of 10,000 messages. It does not yet provide offline access to other Google features such as Calendar and Docum...

The ongoing economic meltdown has presented a unique strategic opportunity to vendors of open source software. Slashed budgets and riffed staffs are forcing enterprise users of proprietary software business solutions to rethink the suitability of open source replacement products....