It’s impressive to be able to give away 31.2 million free Gmail accounts, as Google has. It’s even more impressive to get customers to pay for 40 million mailboxes, as Zimbra’s reported to me today, representing a sharp spike from the 20 million paid mailboxes reported in early 2009.
Microsoft’s latest test build of Windows 7 comes loaded with an option to delete Internet Explorer 8’s executable file – making it unusable on the OS.
theodp writes “On Thursday, Barack Obama tapped Vivek Kundra for the post of Federal CIO, giving him responsibility for establishing and overseeing enterprise architecture across the federal government. So what might that look like? Well, little more than a month ago Kundra was slated to sing the praises of Google Apps to government officials in a webcast. A Kundra quote from the presentation slides: ‘Why should I spend millions on enterprise apps when I can do it [with Google] at one-tenth cost and ten times the speed? It’s a win-win for me.’ You can follow Kundra’s love affair with Google on YouTube, from his announcement of the Google-Washington DC partnership he brokered through a co-starring role with a Google attorney on a video pitching Google-enabled technology for the Obama Administration. Not surprisingly, some say Obama’s choice of a Google-party-goer who worships Google could cause big headaches for Microsoft.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
krou writes “The BBC is reporting that the Information Commissioner’s Office has shut down a company in the UK for a serious breach of the Data Protection Act. It claims that the company, The Consulting Association in Droitwich, Worcs, ran a secret system that it repeatedly denied existed for 15 years, selling workers’ confidential data, including union activities, to building firms, allowing potential employers to unlawfully vet job applicants. About 3,213 workers were in the database, and other information included data on personal relationships, political affiliations, and employment histories. More than 40 firms are believed to have used the service, paying a £3,000 annual fee, and each of them will be investigated, too.” The article says that The Consulting Association faces a £5,000 fine — after pulling in £1.8 million over 15 years with its illegal blacklist.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Bad Astronomer writes “The legislators in Illinois, always on the lookout for more places to find voters, have passed a resolution declaring Pluto is a planet. I’m not sure what else can be said here, except that — besides overstepping their jurisdiction just a wee bit — they make a couple of scientific howlers in the resolution itself.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Penguin_me writes “A UK school has quietly introduced new facial recognition systems for registering students in and out of school: ‘HIGH-TECH facial recognition technology has swept aside the old-fashioned signing of the register at a school. Sixth-formers will now have their faces scanned as they arrive in the morning at the City of Ely Community College. It is one of the first schools in the UK to trial the new technology with its students. Face Register uses the latest high-tech gadgets to register students in and out of school in just 1.5 seconds.'”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look for in a CMS?
So your car doesn’t have an iPod dock. Rather than scrapping your mp3 player for burned cds, (or scrapping your car, for that matter) owners of dockless vehicles can patch together a method for streaming their MP3s through the built-in stereo. Effort and expense will vary, and some setups will sound much better than others.
Security researcher Charlie Miller, who last year won ,000 for hacking into a MacBook Air via Safari in just two minutes, says he thinks Safari will be the first browser to fall at this year’s Pwn2Own contest.
The news vacuum that’s followed Apple’s Mac desktop refresh offers space for some updates on the company’s software-related efforts, which should soon produce new builds of Snow Leopard. Meanwhile, minor updates to iWeb, Remote Desktop, and other OS X components are also reportedly in the works.
