Articles by Jack M. Germain

E-mail and other forms of electronic communications have become pervasive andessential to business growth and operational productivity. This new dependency onmessaging has created a whole new spectrum of major risks, vulnerabilities andrequirements for companies of all sizes In Part 1 of this two-part interview, Postini's President and CEO Quentin ...

Nokia Siemens Networks has joined the Linux Foundation and will become active in efforts to developCarrier Grade Linux (CGL) 5.0 standards Nokia Siemens Networks will work with the Linux Foundation specifically on Linux-based technologies for use in user plane and control plane network elements, as well as embedded applications. This is expected to...

E-mail and other forms of electronic communications have become pervasive andessential to business growth and operational productivity. Today, with more than 170billion e-mails and 580 billion IMs exchanged daily, companies have seen a 334percent annual increase in bandwidth, processing and storage requirements in thelast year This new dependency o...

WiFi is not just for laptops anymore. All sorts of devices now connect to the Internet via WirelessFidelity technology. Smartphones -- think Apple's iPhone, among others -- mobile media players and even gaming machines often come with WiFi features to enhance usability At the same time, more and more hotspots are popping up in hotels, resorts, airp...

The continuing rise in popularity of Linux applications has become a boon to job opportunities for software programmers. However, the working culture of the open source industry is different from that of proprietary software developers Code writers looking for a job as Linux developers need a unique set of job skills and work ethics often not deman...

A Congressional hearing on Tuesday investigating inadvertent file sharing over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks unexpectedly put a spotlight on LimeWire Chairman Mark Gorton over the government and personal information that can be acquired over P2P networks without users' knowledge. Gorton's company makes the peer-to-peer software LimeWire. He is also CEO of the parent company, Lime Group...

Five years ago, the only engineering or computer science majors setting their sights on a career in writing software code for an open source company were the most hardcore of computer nerds. That was something done only by the true computer geeks, and it usually required an independent source of income. Experienced programmers knew the gravy train existed at proprietary companies, most of which avoided experimental operating systems that nobody in the business world would ever use...

Intel announced Tuesday the release of Threading Building Blocks 2.0 as both an open source and commercial product. The company also launched a Web site that establishes an open source project around this product Threading Building Blocks (TBB) is a C++ runtime library that abstracts the low-level threading details necessary for optimal multi-core...

Other than perhaps the medical and legal industries, no field relies on jargon more than computer technology. Take, for instance, the use of words borrowed from other lexicons -- terms such as "virus, "Trojan," "intrusion prevention system," "spyware" and "attack vector." You might hear these terms spoken by physicians, Greek history professors, go...

An offer made earlier this month to pay whistle blowers US$1 million for reporting companies using unlicensed software has met little or no public outcry, unlike lawsuits initiated by the music industry against illegal music downloaders The Business Software Alliance (BSA), a global organization representing leading software manufacturers, is inten...

Legal and medical professionals are often criticized for being way behind the times in terms of thetechnologies they use in their offices. It seems as though any doctor's or lawyer's office you enter hasreams of papers and mountains of file cabinets taking up space just waiting to be lost, stolen ordestroyed in a disaster Based on trends with softw...

London-based Openads, the developer of a free, open source adserver used by more than 20,000 publishers in 140 countries, announced on July 5 the appointment of James Bilefield as CEO Bilefield brings more than 15 years of entrepreneurial, management and media experience to Openads from his work at two top Internet companies, Skype and Yahoo. At Op...

Today's online shoppers may be more cautious than they were two years ago. Some are waiting up to 35 hours before completing a shopping cart transaction A study of consumers' Internet buying habits suggests that online merchants face stiffer competition and new hurdles in closing sales over the Web....

Information security firm OpenLogic on Wednesday began letting users download its Discovery application, a free software tool that scans Windows, Linux and Solaris machines for all installed open source software OpenLogic Discovery identifies more than 5,000 versions of the top 900 open source packages used by enterprises by marking open source fin...

PHP (hypertext preprocessor) developer Zend Technologies announced Monday the release of version 1.0 of Zend Framework, an open source application framework for PHP Zend Framework 1.0, pre-released in beta versions since last year, is the result of collaboration from230 contributors comprised of individual developers and company-sponsored committer...

Letting employees have unbridled access to free, consumer-level instant messaging applications running on their workplace computers is a security disaster waiting to happen Instant messaging applications are easy targets for hackers taking advantage of vulnerabilities. It is critical for businesses to pay attention to their employees' use of instan...

Looking for a franchise opportunity? The World Wide Web is overflowing with Internet-based businesses for sale An online search of the term "Internet franchising" will reveal dozens of Web sites promising both online business and franchise opportunities in a variety of Internet-based companies. The listings go on and on. They include the promise of...

Security firm Trend Micro has released TrendProtect, a free browser plug-in that alerts computer users to unsafe Web sites that contain unwanted content and hidden threats The free download is designed to help consumers and business Web surfers avoid an alarming number of Web sites infected with malware, said Trend Micro officials. The malware inst...

Consumer-grade instant messaging applications such as Yahoo Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Windows Live Messenger can become significant security holes when used by workers on corporate networks Instant messaging applications are easy targets for hackers taking advantage of vulnerabilities. It is critical for businesses to pay attention...

Untangle launched Tuesday an open source network gateway platform to stop spam, spyware and virus attacks for small and medium-sized businesses The Untangle Gateway Platform is based on technology that virtualizes the network stream. It is built around more than 30 best-of-breed, open source projects -- including SpamAssasin, ClamAV and Snort -- to...