Articles by Jack M. Germain

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....

Part 1 of this four-part series details the steps to acquire and install the beta edition of Windows 7. Part 2 takes a closer look at the OS's new features. Part 3 assesses the pros and cons of Windows 7 based on several weeks of experience using it. Part 4 considers whether or not Windows 7 has the marketing potential to excite consumers and enterprises into willingly embracing a new computing platform...

On Jan. 26, Lucid Imagination opened for business as the commercial entity for the Apache Lucene-Solr ecosystem. The new company hopes to unite both the Lucene and the open source developer communities under its wing by offering product support, training, consulting services and value-added software for enterprises using Lucene- and Solr-based search solutions...

Part 1 of this four-part series details the steps to acquire and install the beta edition of Windows 7. Part 2 takes a closer look at the OS's new features. Part 3 assesses the pros and cons of Windows 7 based on several weeks of experience using it. Microsoft released to the public last month a well-polished beta version of Windows 7. After three...

Home computer users and small-business entrepreneurs usually know enough about broadband Internet security to protect their data with a firewall. In most of these cases, a single firewall at a point of entry to the computers or network is sufficient Sometimes, though, using multiple firewalls is the smarter option. The bigger the business, the more...

Part 1 of this four-part series details the steps to acquire and install the beta edition of Windows 7. Part 2 takes a closer look at the OS's new features The comfort level of any computer operating system is usually determined by two factors. One is the user's preferences for the OS currently in use. The other is how quickly that user can adjust ...

The key to a successful business plan often hinges on who gets there first with a market-revitalizing product. Being first may not guarantee instant success, but it certainly makes those that follow behind play catch-up Marketcetera's Automated Trading Platform may prove to be just that key for Graham Miller, CEO and cofounder. Early last month, h...

The key to a successful business plan often hinges on who gets there first with a market-revitalizing product. Being first may not guarantee instant success, but it certainly makes those that follow behind play catch-up Marketcetera's Automated Trading Platform may prove to be just that key for Graham Miller, CEO and cofounder. Early last month, h...

California-based LeapFish launched a new style of search engine last month, offering users a multi-dimensional search aggregator that combines several features to provide more focused results. This one deserves a prominent spot in your browser bookmarks Similar to the Gogimon Search Channel, which launched last month as well, LeapFish has a look an...

In a broad strategy change, Microsoft released its much-awaited beta version of its next operating system (OS), Windows 7, the second week of January. The software giant eliminated the usual restrictions surrounding its OS betas by making it available to anyone who wants to call him or herself a beta tester. Perhaps the idea was to jump-start a stampede of interest away from the widely criticized Windows Vista OS, which has failed to convince some potential users to upgrade from its predecessor, Windows XP...