News podcast: Network World 360
Microsoft Tuesday demonstrated for the first time its server application virtualization technology designed to enable on-demand deployment of applications. Also, a report issued by the by the Government Accountability Office this week claims that it is virtually impossible to measure the success of the Federal Communications Commission's E-Rate program because the agency has still not set concrete performance goals. (7:22)

Why yes, you can follow Network World on Twitter.

Locking out users gives attackers a tool for denial of service
Kabay: When I was a lad (OK, when I was a young systems engineer of 30 - which is 30 years ago), I was taught that if a user made several mistakes in entering her password, the system should lock her account until a system operator granted access again. The goal was to stop an attacker from guessing at a user’s password without limit.

Palm Pre teardown: $170 to build, $300 to Sprint
A virtual teardown of the highly-anticipated Pre smartphone by Palm Inc. carries a projected materials cost of US$170.02, according to iSuppli Corp.

This week's 25 most-read stories

1. It Takes a Village Idiot: The Jerks of Online Forums
2. Colossal spy airships with 15-story radars get $400M reality check
3. Evolution of Ethernet
4. 12 killer freebie SharePoint add-ons
5. Seven things to love, hate about Windows 7
6. Military enlists open source community
7. 10 tips for swine flu planning
8. How Bluetooth got as fast as Wi-Fi
9. Coolest robots of 2009
10. The downfall of Sun Microsystems

11. Apple iPhoneys: The 4G edition
12. Swine flu threat raises telework questions
13. Palm Pre vs. Apple iPhone: How they stack up
14. 57 Amazing Things You Didn't Know Your Tech Could Do!
15. The legal risks of ethical hacking
16. 7 burning security questions
17. The biggest losers in the Oracle, Sun deal
18. Some IT skills see pay hikes during downturn
19. Novell's SLES 11 is packed to the gills and keeps moving at a decent clip
20. What kind of data center can you build with $500 million?

21. Products of the Week
22. Top 10 technology skills
23. An unusual VoIP provider
24. Conficker.E to self-destruct on May 5th?
25. Microsoft targets Windows, Linux management

Today on Google Subnet
Assembling the Android Army: Can I get a loan?; VMware vs. Google in the cloud; Hulu continues to nip at YouTube's heels; Book deal puts Google in DOJ crosshairs; and Google Blogoscoped: Get more Gmail emoticons.

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Stimulus bill aims for 'national broadband plan' The U.S. economic stimulus package is law - all $787 billion of it - and of that, $7.2 billion has been set aside for improvements to the nation's broadband infrastructure. Let's take a closer look at what that means.

Readers weigh in on broadband stimulus A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the broadband portions of the recently passed U.S. economic stimulus bill, and it stirred a good deal of reaction from readers, who acknowledged the problems the bill is trying to ...

Broadband stimulus funding timeline set by government Members from several government agencies delivered on Tuesday a basic timeline for funding broadband stimulus projects, with the goal of getting all broadband stimulus money out the door by October 2010.

How Will the $7.2B Allotted for Broadband Stimulus Be Spent? In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, recently enacted by Congress, many details regarding the allocation of funds for high-tech projects remain blurry. Nevertheless, the nation's tech community appears to be encouraged by the US$7.2 billion provision for broadband in the near $789 billion economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama earlier this week. Many observers believe that the allocation is a clear first step toward establishing a nationwide broadband strategy.

Groups push for broadband stimulus The U.S. Congress should keep money for broadband deployment in a huge economic stimulus package, despite some calls to trim it out of the bill, representatives of three groups said Friday.

100% trade-in credit for Nortel products Cisco Subnet blogger Brad Reese takes note of Enterasys' offer to Nortel customers: 100% trade-in credit for Nortel products.

CCNP Lab Build – Product choices Wendell Odom explains why he'd consider one router or switch over another with the goal of building a CCNP lab. What would you buy with $750 to spend on gear, and a $50 cable budget.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

Nine things you don't know about Novell If you're a long-time NetWare user, you might think you know everything Novell-ish. But the company looks a lot different these days than it used to, now that it is focused on Linux, and is claiming customers who never ...

Novell's SLES 11 is packed to the gills and keeps moving at a decent clip In our Clear Choice test of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11, we found it to be packed with useful management tools, to have virtualization threaded though many of its processes, and to perform at rates ...

Novell SLED 11 feels a lot like Window 7, MacOS Novell released SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (SLED 11) at the same time it rolled out SLES 11.

LaCie introduces Data/Share for SD and microSD cards LaCie has introduced the LaCie Data/Share, a USB device for quickly and efficiently accessing data from SD and microSD memory cards.

CA upgrades ARCserve, XOsoft with virtualization capability CA this week made its yearly update to ARCserve Backup and XOsoft software, which includes more attention to virtualized environments.

GE develops optical disc material to hold 500GB of data GE Global Research, the technology development arm of the General Electric Co. said Monday it has made a breakthrough in holographic optical disc storage, saying its researchers have developed material that can support ...

Less expensive, faster flash array served up by Texas Memory Systems Texas Memory Systems has added a less expensive, faster and smaller form-factor flash storage array to its line of solid-state products.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Cool slideshows:

Coolest robots of 2009
CCS Robotics builds autonomous robot bases that can be adapted to a variety of uses. The company ships a variety of products including SpeciMinder, a robot that delivers specimens within a hospital so nurses don't have to. The RoboCourier is a 'healthcare transporter' designed to makes deliveries within a lab environment.

It Takes a Village Idiot: The Jerks of Online Forums
Discussion forums are magnets for some of the jerkiest people on the 'Interwebs'. We profile a dozen of the most common and annoying forum jerks--from 'The Antagonist' to 'The Conspiracy Theorist'.

RSA's Innovation Sandbox
RSA sponsored its first Innovation Sandbox award in which 10 finalist companies as voted by visitors to the RSA Web site demonstrated their wares then presented them to a panel of judges, who chose the winner based on their market impact, technological significance, quality of their management teams and quality and professionalism of their presentations.

Latest Twisted Pair podcast:

On the trail of the Craigslist Killer
Jason and guest-host Denise Dubie talk about the big Oracle-Sun news, VMWare's vow to overhaul the data center, which IT skills might actually get you a raise and the high-tech tools used to track down Boston's Craigslist Killer. (35:31)

Latest from The video library:

VMWare launched vSphere
VMware says vSphere is the first virtualization system that can handle any class of enterprise workload. It's the fourth generation of the company's virtualization platform, but CEO Paul Maritz called this one a breakthrough.

Honda demos motion-assistance devices
A team of engineers from Honda’s research division showed off a piece of the future in New York Wednesday, unveiling for the first time outside of Japan two motion assistance devices.

Notebook replaces trackpad with LCD panel
Sharp will sell a notebook in late May that includes an embedded optical sensor instead of a traditional trackpad.

Cool stuff your tech can do:

57 Amazing Things You Didn't Know Your Tech Could Do!
Do you often wish that the tech you own or use had superpowers, or that you could transform ordinary gear into something really great--possibly for free? With our amazing instructions, you can!
14 Great Things iPhones and BlackBerrys Can Do
Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Search: 19 Cool Tips
6 Crazy Tricks for Digital Cameras and Photos
3 Tips for iTunes, iPods, Other Digital Music Players
TiVo, Wii, and Xbox 360 Controllers: 8 Clever Tricks

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

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Revving up telework, Obama style
OPM director John Berry today announced a five-part plan to increase participation in longstanding but poorly adopted federal telework programs.

Communications In A Crisis: Are We Ready?
Nickasch: The discussion of telecommuting and telework options always drifts to the forefront when topics of wide-scale disaster, potential pandemics, or any other far-reaching crisis arise. The mass media frequently identifies the use of telecommuting and telework solutions to support the 24/7 business climate that the world is accustomed to.

Signs of IT spending recovery emerge in surveys
IT buyers say they plan to increase their investments in technology before the end of 2009, recent survey results show, as a noteworthy number of high-tech decision makers revealed they expect in the next six months to put more budget dollars into IT.

Watchdogs smack FCC over E-Rate
A new report issued by the Government Accountability Office says it is virtually impossible to measure the success of the Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate program...

Microsoft melding view of local, cloud-based virtual machines
Microsoft Tuesday said it is working on a cloud federation feature for Virtual Machine Manager that will give users an integrated view of physical and virtual...

PGP complaint forces ElcomSoft to change booth decor
It isn't the best marketing proposition to sell encryption products next door to a fellow exhibitor who promises they can crack them.

Microsoft Management Summit news roundup: virtualization, cloud & Linux
It's been a busy day at the Microsoft Management Summit with multiple stories coming about around virtualization, cloud computing and Linux.

A green nod for Cisco
Cisco lands in the ninth spot on the Environmental Protection Agency's list of the 50 greenest U.S. companies.

Interop off to a good start
Cisco Subnet blogger Larry Chaffins says that based on the number of vendors contacting him for meetings/briefings at Interop, this year's attendance should be pretty much on par with last's show.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or
66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

The challenges of virtualization The recent IT Roadmap conference in Chicago began with Jim and two other analysts on stage being asked questions by John Gallant. Given the current economic conditions, the question and answer session focused on cost savings. One of the questions posed to Jim was, "Should IT organizations be looking to implement virtualization as a means of saving money?" Jim's answer was yes, but only if they realize the impact that virtualization has on the WAN, on management, and on application delivery. The next few newsletters will explain exactly what that impact is.

The impact of server virtualization In the last newsletter, we began discussing some of the challenges associated with server virtualization. In this newsletter, we will continue that discussion by talking about some of the specific WAN challenges that are associated with server virtualization.

The impact of virtualization on networks and applications Over the last few years, there has been a lot of discussion in the trade press about virtualization. While some of these discussions make it appear as if virtualization is a new topic, it is not. We have had virtualized WANs since the advent of X.25, roughly 30 years ago and we have had virtualized LANs for almost 15 years. So virtualization is not new, but that doesn't mean that we can ignore it. With that in mind, this WAN newsletter will begin the discussion of the impact of virtualization on networks and applications.

Cisco, NetQoS move a step closer to integrated network optimization, management Last time, we pointed out that network organizations have the opportunity to both show business value and do good things for the careers of network professionals by demonstrating how they ensure that the company’s key business applications exhibit acceptable performance. We also pointed out that ensuring acceptable application performance is difficult as it requires the tight integration of planning, optimization, management and control. Regrettably, most application delivery solutions do not provide a rich set of well integrated planning, optimization and management functionality. In fact, some WAN optimizations products can cause existing planning and management functionality to break. Today, we’ll discuss some of the problems with the current application delivery solutions and detail how NetQoS and Cisco have worked together to solve at least some of the problems.

What makes a WAN optimization controller? Choosing a vendor can be the most challenging part of a WAN optimization project, given the wide range of vendors, features and technology options available today. Enterprises in the market for WAN optimization ...

Applications have a need for WAN speed Vendors are loading their gear with new features, but the core need for WAN speed should still guide WOC buying decisions. Application performance management and WAN acceleration are hard problems to solve and are part ...

100% trade-in credit for Nortel products Cisco Subnet blogger Brad Reese takes note of Enterasys' offer to Nortel customers: 100% trade-in credit for Nortel products.

CCNP Lab Build – Product choices Wendell Odom explains why he'd consider one router or switch over another with the goal of building a CCNP lab. What would you buy with $750 to spend on gear, and a $50 cable budget.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

Microsoft melding view of local, cloud-based virtual machines Microsoft Tuesday said it is working on a cloud federation feature for Virtual Machine Manager that will give users an integrated view of physical and virtual resources from a single point regardless if they are running internally or on a hosted network.

Microsoft targets Windows, Linux management Microsoft Tuesday opened its annual management confab saying it would ship the next version of Operations Manager by the end of June and laying out its efforts to manage datacenters and virtualized environments.

Microsoft plans to cut another $1 billion in costs Microsoft Subnet reports that Microsft has advised Wall Street that its 2009 operating expenses are expected to come in at $26.7 billion to $26.9 billion, which is as much as $1 billion less than previous guidance, notes a story in Barrons.

Linux out, Windows in at Electoral Commission The NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) will leave Linux for Windows Server when it develops its new vote counting and reporting application, which is slated to cost A$1.4 million over the next two years.

Obama names Microsoft's Mundie, Google's Schmidt to technology council The president today released the names of about two dozen people who will comprise his Technology Advisory Council. Among them are Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft and Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO of Google (and a member of Apple's board).

EDS to sell Microsoft online services On Monday, Microsoft began offering its hosted services to companies in 18 countries outside of the U.S. and said that EDS would help sell the services.

Windows 7's virtual 'XP mode' could mean support nightmares Microsoft's decision to give some Windows 7 users a tool to run Windows XP applications in a virtual machine may have been necessary to convince people to upgrade, but it could create support nightmares, analysts said ...

Running Windows 7 on a netbook Microsoft made headlines recently when The Wall Street Journal reported that the company planned to equip netbooks with the Starter edition of Windows 7, a semi-crippled version that only lets users run up to three ...

Microsoft Vine, Web Sandbox and other nifty beta apps Microsoft Subnet review's Microsoft's attempt to do Twitter one better, with a beta app called Vine, available for Seattle users at the moment.

Microsoft releases Office 2007 SP2 Microsoft today released Office 2007 Service Pack 2, Microsoft Subnet reports. When Microsoft announced the roadmap for Office 2007 SP2 in May, 2008, it promised that the suite would include support for several new document types.

Microsoft Surprises With XPM In Windows 7 To Help Sway Users From XP This week’s release of Windows 7 RC1 to the MSDN community, and next week to the general public, represents another significant milestone towards a market release of Windows 7, says Microsoft Subnet blogger Mitchell Ashley.

Windows 7 Beta Exam comes and goes Randy Muller, in his All about Microsoft Certifications blog, noted how quickly the Configuring Windows 7 beta exam open and closed...in one day. That speaks volumes about the excitement that Windows 7 is generating.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

Coyote Point helps MoveOn speed Web traffic Political organization MoveOn.org started in 1998 when a couple of concerned citizens wanted to see the country "move on" from talk of former President Clinton's personal affairs to more pertinent political issues. At its inception, the organization didn't have to worry too much about overloading Web servers, but with about 2.7 million members now communicating via e-mail and the Web, performance has become a hot-button issue.

Best practices for speeding WAN application delivery The message is sinking in: Adding bandwidth isn't a cure-all for application performance problems. Aberdeen Group found in a new report that more companies are looking to WAN optimization and application delivery solutions - instead of simply adding bandwidth to alleviate their application performance woes.

Swine flu threat raises telework questions The possibility of a widespread swine flu outbreak is prompting companies to think about business continuity and how options such as telework may become a necessity.

How Bluetooth got as fast as Wi-Fi Bluetooth last week stopped being chained to the low-power, low-throughput radio that has been both its strength and its weakness. New code lets Bluetooth applications now run over 802.11g wireless connections in the 2.4GHz, with a throughput jump to 20M to 24Mbps, from 1M to 3Mbps.

100% trade-in credit for Nortel products Cisco Subnet blogger Brad Reese takes note of Enterasys' offer to Nortel customers: 100% trade-in credit for Nortel products.

12 killer freebie SharePoint add-ons Microsoft Subnet blogger Ron Barrett was surprised, but happy, to find 12 add-on tools for SharePoint that are free.

Is the Internet ready for a pandemic? As the dreaded word "pandemic" tops this week's headlines about the swine flu virus spreading around the globe, many businesses are dusting off emergency plans for employees to work from home and schools are poised to send students home. If this turns out to be a full-fledged pandemic, not only will people fall ill, the Internet will too.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

Group proposes cloud management standard DMTF creates new group dubbed the Open Cloud Standards Incubator, which will be dedicated to addressing the need for open management standards for cloud computing.

Cloud computing security: Who knew? Bradner: Security has not been much of a consideration in cloud computing - but that may be about to change.

Cloud Standards: Trickier than Nailing Jell-O to a Wall Just try creating a definition of cloud computing that's broad enough to encompass all its permutations and narrow enough to provide technical guidance on how to get one cloud talking to another.

Security promises in the cloud A survey released this week at RSA is troubling in that it says businesses using cloud services are concerned about security, but don't verify what providers do to meet the security promises they make.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

News podcast: Network World 360
The possibility of a widespread swine flu outbreak is prompting companies to think about business continuity and how options such as telework may become a necessity. Also, Microsoft Tuesday opened its annual management confab saying it would ship the next version of Operations Manager by the end of June and laying out its efforts to manage data centers and virtualized environments. (7:28)

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UPDATE: Trend Micro acquiring Third Brigade as part of data-center security strategy
Trend Micro Wednesday announced it’s acquiring Third Brigade, an Ottawa, Ontario provider of host-based intrusion-prevention and firewall software, for an undisclosed price.

Nortel looking to exit LG venture: report
Nortel is reportedly looking to sell off its stake in a joint venture with Korean telecom company LG in an effort to raise cash.

Start-up Axxana ties disaster recovery gear to EMC software
Storage start-up Axxana has made its disaster recovery black box generally available and integrated the system with EMC's RecoverPoint software.

People Try Twitter One Month, Then Fly
It's good to know I am not alone: Many other people use Twitter a few times and can't think of a good reason to come back. With all the hype about Twitter's 140-character version of living, I'd gotten the impression that I'm the only one on Twitter who doesn't get why Twitter matters.

What kind of data center can you build with $500 million?
So, if the government gave your company $500 million to spend on building a new data center what would you buy and how would you build it? Well, the Social Security Administration is about to find out.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

IPV conferencing: Bandwidth and quality Continuing our discussion about IP Video (IPV) as a carrier's managed VPN feature, we heard back from Neil Davies, Chief Scientist at Predictable Network Solutions. His company is a consultancy that provides tools and technology to help service provides better manage their networks.

Masergy's global IPV service When we asked for reader replies about any carrier that offers IP Video (IPV) as an option with their IP-VPN, we heard from Masergy confirming that they offer global IPV service over Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs. In a follow-up interview we spoke with Tony Hurtado, VP Global Marketing and PR; and Scott Brothers, Director Product Management at Masergy.

Issues with carrier-based IPV Many thanks to the readers who replied to our newsletter last week about IP Video (IPV) offered as a managed service within a carrier's IP-VPN portfolio. Today, we'll look at one reader's observations on some thorny issues about carrier-based IPV, and a Hong Kong provider we heard from that has recently introduced a managed IPV.

IPV over an IP-VPN Following our recent newsletter focus on IP Video, we heard from one of our readers with some excellent questions about IPV over an IP-VPN. He asked, "What would you say were the challenges inherent in adding video to an IP VPN that is already set up for data and voice? Some ISPs offer VoIP convergence with data over an IP VPN but not many offer video too. I would have thought that many industries would welcome the addition of video conferencing over their VPN as a way of saving time and money going to meetings. Is there a reason why this is not being offered as an add-on service?"

Cisco IOS Dial-Peers: VoIP Dial Peer Configurations Cisco Subnet blogger Dennis Hartmann runs through the dial-peer options of dial-peer 100.

Cisco 7900 Series Phones: EoS and EoL Announcements By Dennis Hartmann discusses EoS and EoL information related to Cisco phones. He seems to have more questions than answers and is need of readers' help.

Unity 8.0 is almost over the horizon Cisco Subnet blogger Avner Izhar points out some interesting features in Unity 8.0, which is scheduled for a field trial in June.

Cisco IOS dial peers Cisco Subnet blogger Dennis Hartmann gives an overview of VoIP dial peers in this latest installment on IOS dial peers.

Smart SIP softphone links Macs to Microsoft OCS Microsoft Subnet shows off a demo of the X-Lite softphone that connects your Mac to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

57 Amazing Things You Didn't Know Your Tech Could Do!
Do you often wish that the tech you own or use had superpowers, or that you could transform ordinary gear into something really great--possibly for free? With our amazing instructions, you can!
14 Great Things iPhones and BlackBerrys Can Do
Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Search: 19 Cool Tips
6 Crazy Tricks for Digital Cameras and Photos
3 Tips for iTunes, iPods, Other Digital Music Players
TiVo, Wii, and Xbox 360 Controllers: 8 Clever Tricks

The new ground zero in Internet warfare
When it comes to critical national infrastructure, the highly distributed and ultra-interconnected U.S. power grid is, hands down, the most vulnerable to cyberattack. On this one point, many cybersecurity experts seem to agree.

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Senator questions White House control over cybersecurity
The ranking member of the Senate's Homeland Security Committee, Susan Collins, (R-Maine), Tuesday raised questions about recent calls for a direct White House role in coordinating national cybersecurity affairs.

Verizon pursues illegal autodialers
Verizon Wireless said Tuesday it has settled a lawsuit against two companies that used autodialing to call its wireless customers to pitch extended auto warranties. It also announced a separate lawsuit to stop three other companies from similar acts.

Benioff calls for 'the end of maintenance'
Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is well-known for brash pronouncements and on Tuesday delivered his latest, calling for "the end" of traditional software maintenance fees.

New zero-day exploit targets Adobe Reader
Adobe Systems Inc. Tuesday confirmed that it's investigating reports that its popular PDF viewing software, Adobe Reader, contains a critical vulnerability.

Despite Obama's Web 2.0 efforts, e-user satisfaction slips
Despite the Obama administration's efforts to update government web sites, satisfaction with them has fallen for the first time in a year, a survey of 280,000 users of government Web sites found.

Identifying the source of corporate threats
The Verizon Business RISK team recently released its "2009 Data Breach Investigations Report," which gives a fresh look into the question of whether insiders or outsiders are the larger threat group. The report concludes that 74% of breaches result from external sources and "the predominance of total records lost was attributed to outsiders."

Cloud computing security: Who knew?
Bradner: Security has not been much of a consideration in cloud computing --but that may be about to change.

Cisco No. 4 of 20 most profitable techs
Cisco Subnet reports that Cisco is No. 4 in a listing of the 20 most profitable companies in high-tech, according to Fortune. The company trails only Microsoft, IBM and HP, and is ahead of Oracle, Intel, Apple, Dell and several others.

100% trade-in credit for Nortel products
Cisco Subnet blogger Brad Reese takes note of Enterasys' offer to Nortel customers: 100% trade-in credit for Nortel products.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

By Carolyn Duffy Marsan
The Defense Department is trying to take advantage of Web-based communities to speed up software development and reduce its costs. Read full story

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

Microsoft targets Windows, Linux management Microsoft Tuesday opened its annual management confab saying it would ship the next version of Operations Manager by the end of June and laying out its efforts to manage datacenters and virtualized environments.

Canonical optimizes Linux distribution for netbooks Canonical on Thursday released a Linux distribution optimized for netbooks with features to improve battery life and rapidly access programs.

Oracle-Sun deal renews calls for OpenOffice's independence Oracle's purchase of Sun last week is reviving calls for Sun's open-source OpenOffice.org suite to be spun out into an independent foundation.

Mozilla re-patches Firefox after regression bug pops up Mozilla Monday rushed out a new version of Firefox to fix a flaw it introduced with the 12-patch security update it shipped less than a week ago.

Sun ties identity software to Google Apps Premier, Amazon cloud platform Sun Wednesday tied its identity federation software to Google Apps and added its directory and Web application server to the cloud platform it is building for developers to build and test applications.

The Future Of Computing Will Be Good Enough The latest version of the Linux kernel includes an experimental driver module that tears apart the fabric of space-time. Keir Thomas tested this module, and in doing so managed to retrieve the following article, posted on PC World supersite in the year 2025.

Some IT skills see pay hikes during downturn Java, Linux, virtualization and business process skills among those seeing an increase in pay, according to Foote Partners research.

Top engineer gives vision for Chinese chips China will push low-energy models of its homegrown Godson microprocessor for PCs and mobile devices as it aims to expand use of the chips, though the global recession has hurt their deployment, the head engineer for the project said Wednesday.

Android to go beyond phones to a range of personal devices Android, the Linux-based operating system used in the G1 smartphone and others to come, is destined to be part of many other devices, including personal multimedia devices, mobile Internet devices, medical monitoring tools and home-entertainment controllers.

India, Sierra Leone place OLPC orders India has ordered 250,000 laptops from the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization, while a human rights organization will supply 5,000 OLPC machines to Sierra Leone.

Asked & Answered: How do I get Java on my cell? A reader asks how to install Java on a cell phone. Ron Nutter answers.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

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Cisco No. 4 of 20 most profitable techs Cisco is No. 4 in a listing of the 20 most profitable companies in high-tech, according to Fortune. The company trails only Microsoft, IBM and HP, and is ahead of Oracle, Intel, Apple, Dell and several others.

IBM to resell Brocade’s Foundry switches Brocade has extended an OEM relationship with IBM to include its recently acquired Foundry switches in a deal that appears to be in retaliation for Cisco’s recent entry into the blade server market.

IBM and Brocade make it official but downplay Cisco angle IBM and Brocade announced their expected OEM arrangement this week, in which IBM will private label and resell Brocade's Foundry switches. IBM's been reselling Brocade's SAN gear for a decade or more.

100% trade-in credit for Nortel products Cisco Subnet blogger Brad Reese takes note of Enterasys' offer to Nortel customers: 100% trade-in credit for Nortel products.

CCNP Lab Build – Product choices Wendell Odom explains why he'd consider one router or switch over another with the goal of building a CCNP lab. What would you buy with $750 to spend on gear, and a $50 cable budget.

IPv6 summit reaches pinnacle Cisco Subnet blogger Scott Hogg says there was plenty of helpful background information and protocol details on hand during the Rocky Mountain IPv6 Summit in Denver.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

How do you manage IP addresses? Typically pushed to the backburner, IP address management (IPAM) upgrades in enterprise IT departments might have gotten some attention last year, according to recent survey results.

Tools cure IP address management headaches IP address management tools aren't sexy, but they can certainly take the tedium out of the necessary and difficult task of tracking IP addresses and DNS names across an enterprise network.

How we tested IP address management tools The Proteus/Adonis, VitalQIP, and IPControl product have professional services included in their prices. We scheduled a time for a representative professional engineer to come to our lab and set up their product. Only one company was allowed at a time. With EasyIP, we set up a Windows Server 2003 machine with IIS and .Netv1.1 and then installed the EasyIP software. The next step was to populate the product’s database with the test data which we accomplished through the data import/export test.

Managing IP addresses with free tools Few people would argue the importance of IP addresses to network operations, but many don't make managing them a priority in their environment, especially in tough economic times.

IP address management projects not a priority for IT Corporate networks depend on IP to run smoothly, but that doesn't mean projects designed to streamline IP address management (IPAM) processes get top priority in most IT shops, survey results reveal.

Justifying the payoff of IP address management IP address management (IPAM) is one of those areas that continues to grow in importance as TCP/IP becomes the de-facto standard for corporate networks. It's also an area that is just recently starting to see an appropriate level of automation. A new paper by Infoblox, available here, examines this need for automated management in detail. According to Greg Lanier, Infoblox director of marketing communications: "It's kind of mind blowing that most people are still doing this on spreadsheets. You shouldn't be managing some of your most critical network assets with Excel."

Is the Internet Ready for a Pandemic? As the dreaded word "pandemic" tops this week's headlines about the swine flu virus spreading around the globe, many businesses are dusting off emergency plans for employees to work from home and schools are poised to send students home. If this turns out to be a full-fledged pandemic, not only will people fall ill, the Internet will too.

More Regarding H-1B Visas In her Microsoft Subnet blog Kerrie Meyler continues her writing about H1-B visas. She cites several interesting articles on the topic.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.

Editor's note: We will be changing how we send out Network World newsletters over the next few weeks. To ensure future delivery of your newsletters, please add nww_newsletters@newsletters.networkworld.com to your e-mail address book or 66.186.127.216 to your white-list file. Thank you.

Vendors face off in 11n 'challenge' When the wireless LAN controller architecture came into its own about half a decade ago, an exhausting, cutthroat features war ensued. Ding! It's now officially Round 2, with the industry this time in fisticuffs over Draft 2.0 802.11n system architectures and features.

Performance tiers and testing needed for 802.11n As noted last time, new types of potentially attractive, useful 802.11n products are set to emerge that the Wi-Fi Alliance is currently not equipped to test and certify.

802.11n complications are imminent As you likely know, the current fair-haired wireless LAN version, 802.11n, is multidimensional, making product comparisons challenging. Those comparisons are likely to soon get even thornier when 1x1, single-stream 802.11n products emerge for netbooks, smartphones and even laptops. At issue: the Wi-Fi Alliance currently lacks certification programs and categories to accommodate this new breed of 802.11n product.

802.11n gear 10 times faster than current Wi-Fi offerings Instead, Network World set up the largest public 802.11n test ever conducted. We invited all enterprise Wi-Fi vendors to supply not one but eight 802.11n access points, along with controllers if needed.

WLAN product blitz shows 802.11n getting more affordable, useable New 802.11n products are on tap from AirMagnet, D-Link, Enterasys, Meraki and Motorola's AirDefense unit

Tropos introduces 802.11n into its outdoor wireless mesh Tropos Networks has released a trio of new outdoor wireless mesh nodes, its first supporting the high-throughput 802.11n IEEE standard.

Asked & Answered: How do I get Java on my cell? A reader asks how to install Java on a cell phone. Ron Nutter answers.

April giveaways galore
Cisco Subnet and Microsoft Subnet are giving away training courses from Global Knowledge, valued at $2,995 and $3,495, and have copies of three hot books up for grabs: CCVP CIPT2 Quick Reference by Anthony Sequeira, Microsoft Voice Unified Communications by Joe Schurman and Microsoft Office 2007 On Demand by Steve Johnson. Deadline for entries April 30.

Network World on Twitter Get our tweets and stay plugged in to networking news.