Cody Taylor

miller60 writes “As more companies look into using a ‘data center in a box,’ you can now get your UPS and generator in a box as well. HP and Sun have begun offering containerized power and cooling infrastructure along with their data center containers, offering an expansion path for facility owners that have run out of power and cooling capacity. Microsoft also plans to use containerized power and cooling in its next-generation facilities, allowing it to build them with no roofs (remember its tent data centers?).”

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nandemoari writes “A hole allowing hackers to take control of Microsoft Exchange was just one ‘critical’ issue the Redmond-based company promises it has fixed with a patch correcting a total of eight vulnerabilities in its programs, including the Internet Explorer browser, Office, and its SQL Server. Three of the eight vulnerabilities patched yesterday were marked ‘critical.’ The most concerning is an issue with Exchange that would allow attackers to take over an Exchange server by simply forwarding a carefully crafted message to a corporate mail server. Microsoft has admitted that the vulnerability can be exploited when a user opens or previews an email in the Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (TNEF).”

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David Burnett recommends an eWeek article on the leading contenders to make an iPhone out of an iPod Touch. Of course your newly phone-capable iTouch needs no activation and no binding carrier contract, just Wi-Fi. One of the companies working in this space, JaJah, is bundling the software with back-end services such as billing, so that carriers — or anyone really — can offer free-calling iTouch phones.

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krou notes reporting in the Christian Science Monitor that the current economic crisis is helping China’s push into higher-end manufacturing by shaking out low-profit companies. The hope is that, instead of just assembling iPods, Chinese companies will be able to invent the next big thing instead. In this move China is following the well-worn path taken by Japan and the Asian tigers before it. “Last month, the National Development and Reform Commission announced revised plans to transform Guangdong and neighboring Hong Kong and Macau into a ‘significant innovation center’ by 2020. One hundred R&D labs will be set up over the next three years. By 2012, per-capita output in the region should jump 50 percent from 2007, to 80,000 yuan (,700). And by 2020, the study predicts, 30 percent of all industrial output should come from high-tech manufacturing.”

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Your next cheap phone might be a Linux phone – but you might never know it. The LiMo Foundation announced Monday that Verizon Wireless and other global carriers will be rolling out Linux-based phones in 2009, possibly including low-cost devices capable of running advanced Web apps.