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The article reports that the British Computer Society has launched a course in information risk management. The ISEB course is aimed at information security and assurance professionals. It uses international standards and takes a hands-on approach to risk assessment and management. The syllabus of the course covers concepts and the importance of information risk management, the risk management environment, risk assessment and management stages and information classification schemes. The course runs in Bedfordshire, England.

The article reports that LogicaCMG PLC has launched a scheme to recruit undergraduates and fund them through a Bachelor of Arts degree course in Great Britain. The information technology (IT) services firm has launched the scheme to tackle recruitment problems in the IT services industry. According to director for firm's telecoms division Charlie Painter, there are fewer graduates coming through IT services, which is not as attractive as it was five or six years ago. Painter mentioned that under the scheme, the telecoms division would take on 20 students with good A-levels as paid full-time employees.

The article reports that Novell Inc. is planning to provide an Open XML plug-in for its edition of the open source Openoffice.org productivity suite to boost interoperability with Microsoft Corp.'s Office 2007. Novell is creating two-way translators between Openoffice, which uses Open Document Format, and Microsoft Office, which uses Open XML. The translators will let users share files between Microsoft Office and Openoffice more easily, with more consistent formats and templates across the two suites.

The article reports on the findings of a survey by PMP Research for Computacenter Services related to the preference of various businesses for centralized information technology (IT) delivery. PMP surveyed 100 senior IT executives and found that more than 80% of businesses are centralizing IT delivery into datacentres in a bid to increase efficiency and cut costs. The survey found that nearly 25% of the surveyed executives had already centralized IT delivery, with another 63% in the processes of moving or planning to do the same. Only 12% had no intention of centralizing.

The article reports that the City Council of Westminster, England, has approved plans to extend a wireless network across the city through the Wireless City project. The projects is aimed at improving the council's services through remote working technology. The council will also provide Wi-Fi hotspot access to the Internet for members of the public. Colin Barrow, deputy leader of the council, says that the new wireless technology will allow council officers to directly link to the council's server.

The article reports that the Scottish health service has signed a 300m pounds IT services contract with a consortium led by Atos Origin SA. The contract, negotiated through the NHS National Services Scotland agency, will cover infrastructure services, datacentre services, security management, business continuity, helpdesk services and first-line application support. The Scottish care summary system is set to run on a different basis to the electronic care record service at the heart of the English NHS 12.4bn pound National Programme for IT.

The article informs that Sun Microsystems Inc. has made the Java source code available to the open source community under the GNU General Public Licence. In May 2006, the company put a collection of Java technologies, including its Java Studio Creator and Java System Portal Server, into the open source realm, and in August 2006 it launched a Java open source website to signal that moving Java to open source was coming. It has been stated that Sun's move is one of the largest contributions to the open source community.

The article reports that Homeserve GB is installing software from Corizon at its call center to support its sales and customer support staff. The firm provides insurance-paid home emergency call-out services and repair. The software will be operational over the next three months at the company's West Midlands headquarters. The Corizon technology will give the company the scope to deliver a customer contact system that allows our agents to be more effective. Integration with the company's telephony system will be managed by specialist supplier Sabio.

The article reports on the warning of analyst firm Gartner Research that the changes to security features in Microsoft Corp.'s Vista operating system would not be complete in time and could take years to deliver, leaving users with incompatibiliy problems. Microsoft has been forced to promise changes to meet the European Commission's antitrust requirements in two areas of Vista's security features: Patchguard, and the Windows Security Centre. Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald warned businesses using or considering host-based intrusion prevention systems would not get full functionality using 64-bit Vista.

The article focuses on the findings of a survey by Hitachi Data Systems Corp. related to the impact of the data storage systems of the firms on their energy costs. Hitachi surveyed 300 people from different companies and revealed that they failed to assess the electricity usage by their data storage systems. Nearly half of the respondents were storing huge volumes of data while nearly half did not knew the impact this had on their firm's energy consumption. These findings predict the rise in the energy costs of the IT budgets in the next few years.

The article presents an obituary for Ray Noorda, pioneer for computer networks.

The article reports on the government in Great Britain that has announced a project worth £12 million with the objective to develop intelligent transport systems for improving safety and road management. The drive came a week after insurer Norwich Union rolled out the first GPS-based pay-as-you-drive insurance scheme in Great Britain. The "Future Intelligent Transport Systems" initiative has been set up to stimulate new ideas, products or services that could help to improve public transport, reduce road congestion and accidents, boost freight transportation and provide better travel information to the public. The government thinks that the new information technology that includes distributed networks of sensors and data mining will help to develop efficient transport systems.

The article announces that James Hall has been appointed as the chief executive officer of the Identity and Passport Service of the National Health Service (NHS).

The article reports on the issue of training of the staff of organizations and business enterprises. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Great Britain reports that a third of employers have refused to train their staff in new skills. The government is giving incentives to encourage workforce development. Inspite of the increase in the gap of the skilled staff, 20% of the firms have refused to give any training to their staff. Therefore in all industrial sectors, more than 8.5 million staff were going without training and only 11.5% are recognized nationally. David Pardo, director of Pardo Fox, an information technology (IT) training consultancy, finds that training is more important in IT than other departments.

The article reports on the testing of World Interoperability for Microwave Access (Wimax) wireless network in Milton Keynes, England for the first time. Wimax is expected to support broadband speeds over wireless networks at a price cheap for the mass market, which is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard. The testing is initiated by the company Pipex Wireless, following a collaboration between Internet service provider Pipex and chip maker Intel Corp. The trial will figure out demand for Wimax from both businesses and consumers, with base stations sited in areas with little or no digital subscriber lines broadband provision. It will involve about 500 users and provide connection speeds of between 2mbps and 10mbps.

The article reports on the launch of the test version of forthcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser by Microsoft Corp. This version has been made publicly available for download through Internet. It is reported that Microsoft is requesting information technology professionals to test and use this new version so that it may prepare the browser for final release.

The article cites a study which states that manufacturers are switching to supply chain management technology in order to overcome the growing complexities of their supply chains. The study, conducted by research firm Datamonitor PLC, reveals that the demand for the technology is coming both from small as well as large businesses. According to Adam Jura, manufacturing technology analyst at Datamonitor and one of the authors of the study, the impact that complex supply chains have on a manufacturing firm's overall business is forcing them to adopt the new technology.

The article reports on the recently launched Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service of Amazon.com Inc. This service allows software developers to obtain, configure and scale the capacity of web computing, they need from Amazon's servers through a web service interface. EC2 works in concomitance with the Simple Storage Service of Amazon, offering a combined package for computing and storage service for its users across a wide range of applications.

The article reports that a chip architecture that enables swifter speech recognition as compared to current software-based technology has been developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The technology will enable searching through large volumes of voice data at a rapid pace. Researcher Rob Rutenbar led the project.

The article presents information on a new educational course that will be offered by Lancaster University, Lancaster, England. The course on ethical hacker qualification has been designed by the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants. According to the ICT Focus unit of the university, that will be offering the course, the intensive five-day course has been designed to help participants gain an insight into the mind of a hacker. It is being considered a different approach to that of many other security courses focusing the risk assessment or disaster recovery.

The article reports that Boeing Co. is planning to cut its Connexion in-flight Internet service. Due to the lack of interest from the airline industry, the company has decided to quit the broadband Internet market. According to Boeing chief executive, Jim McNerney, a detailed market and business analysis of its service including discussions with existing users, led to the decision to close it down.

The article reports that Scientists at the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, are working to develop a prototype of Ballistic Deflection Transistor which could be used to build computer chips that run at terahertz speeds. The scientists have already received a grant of £600,000 from the U.S. National Science Foundation for the project. A chip built by the Ballistic Deflection Transistor would use very little power, generate minimal heat and be highly resistant to the noise inherent in electronic systems.

The article reports that Internet company AOL LLC has sacked its two staffs after the release of Internet search terms used by more than 650,000 subscribers. Maureen Govern, chief technology officer of the company has left the company after the privacy breach. John McKinley will temporarily replace his position. On August 7, 2006 the company apologized for releasing information on web search terms.

This article reports that the researchers from Microsoft Corp. are trying to develop new methods for improving Internet search results by analyzing how people use and interact with search engines. They believe that accurately modeling and interpreting users' interactions with search engines will help in improving their performance. It was revealed in two papers presented at the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval conference in August 2006. The researchers said that patterns of user behavior could be used to optimize the algorithms that sorts the results from web searches.

This article reports that the scientists from the University of Manchester, England, are trying to make the web more accessible from mobile devices. They are conducting a three-year project which focuses on the experience of visually impaired people and technology such as screen readers to simplify web site content so that it can be available in a user-friendly format on mobiles. Their goal is to produce a validation engine which will work with a software designed to eliminate the clutter from web pages.

The article reports that Microsoft Corp. is thinking to charge its Office application users who download its Office 2007 beta 2 version. The company reported that three million people have downloaded the software for free in just two months of its release. A Microsoft spokesperson told that it will possibly charge 80p for next every user who will download Office beta 2 version from August 2, 2006.

The article reports on the teaming up of ten major information technology organizations to promote a common language describing system information about networks, servers, applications, and other IT resources. BEA Systems Inc., BMC Software Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Computer Corp., EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., International Business Machines Corp., Intel, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems are the companies that have jointly launched a draft specification for the Service Modelling Language, which defines the way IT resources are described in XML.

The article reports that the next version Windows Server--codenamed Longhorn--will include virtualisation technology that is interoperable with the open source Linux operating system. This move follows a tie-up of Microsoft Corp. with XenSource Inc., which makes virtualisation products based on the open source Xen technology. XenSource will work with Microsoft to provide interoperability between Xen-enabled Linux and Windows Server virtualisation. The new version will support Longhorn users who want to run Linux as well as Windows in virtual environments.

The article reports that British American Tobacco PLC has deployed management technology to protect XML communications across its datacentre network in 180 countries. The company has deployed Vordel Ltd.'s VS3000 gateway appliances, which incorporate traditional security functions with web services management. The appliances have been installed to protect corporate information held on British American Tobacco's SAP back-office system. The technology covers both staff identity control and ensuring that data conforms with XML communication parameters.

The article reports that researchers from the University of Salford are trying to find out why so many women leave the IT industry. According to the Office of National Statistics of Great Britain, the percentage of women in the IT workforce has fallen from 27 percent in 1996 to 21 percent. The research project entitled as "The Disappearing Women: North-West ICT Project," follows a study by the university examining the experience of 500 female IT professionals. Academic fellow at the university, Marie Griffiths said that they have noticed a lot of job churn in the industry. She also cited one woman in an IT management role who found junior male colleagues were being paid $15,000 more than her.

This article reports that according to the iProfile Skills Survey, pay rates for interim directors of various companies in the information technology industry in Great Britain have increased to £80 an hour. The survey was commissioned by the Association of Technology Staffing Companies (Atsco). Ann Swain, the chief executive of Atsco, says that directors of information technology (IT) companies are no longer full-time employees. She says that the need for different skills at each stage of an IT project was one reason for pushing employers towards interim staffing. She adds that companies are looking for the most cost-effective way to rebuild employee skills.

The article focuses on a worldwide survey of 1,700 managers according to which, either server virtualisation or plan to deploy it, is used by 75% of businesses. The survey found that virtualisation is intended to be used by 76% of organizations. Around 60% were in the process of migrating or had virtualisation in place. Within the next 12 months, another 21% of firms interested in virtualisation intended to install it. Reduced infrastructure costs, followed by easier, more flexible deployment of applications is the main reason for adopting virtualisation.

The article cites a survey of 236 information technology directors in Great Britain conducted by the analyst firm Bathwick Group. Almost 50% of the directors surveyed said that the strategic purchases made by them were not sufficient. Nearly 80% of the directors said that the increased productivity can be achieved through the simplification of information technology systems.

The article focuses on the results of a study on data protection, revealed at the Fifth Workshop on the Economics of Information Security at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England. Alessandro Acquisti and Rahul Telang of Carnegie Mellon University and Allan Friedman of Harvard University conducted the study. The study focused on 78 security breaches in various firms between 1999 and 2006, and gauged their impact on the stock prices of the firms. The study concluded that data security breaches cause a decline in the market value of the companies.

The article reports that Cisco Systems Inc. has issued a warning to its clients that a series of bugs exist in its Wireless Control System which could result in hacking. The company has made solutions to the problem available on its Web site. However, the company said that it was not aware of any exploitation of the flaws in the version 4.0 of the Wireless Control System. The company had issued a warning in November last year as well about the existence of a security flaw in its wireless local area network controllers.

The article provides information on the online preview of Office 2007 software launched by Microsoft Corp. Computer users can try Office 2007 without downloading the beta version. It is stated that 2.5 million people had already downloaded the beta 2 version of Office 2007 within a month. The preview offers sample data so that users can test document editing, e-mailing and other functions. The preview provides product-specific tutorials to users. It has been informed that the preview will be also be made available in French, German, Japanese and Spanish languages.

The article reports that Dell Computer Corp. is investigating why one of its laptops exploded at a conference in Japan. Pictures of the accident showing flames bursting from the laptop were posted on the Web site. Dell has denied to comment on the reason behind the explosion before completing the investigation. The author has informed that Dell had recalled 22,000 laptop computer batteries, because of fire risks from overheating in December 2006. Dell has commented on the commitment to product quality and safety.

The article focuses on the blame that Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) officials are putting on the suppliers responsible for the NHS National Program for IT (NPfIT) which seeks to load patient data on to national clinical records systems. It is reported that NHS acting chief executive Ian Carruthers, director of IT implementation Richard Jeavons and Richard Granger, chief executive of Connecting for Health, which runs the IT programme, were questioned at the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee hearing to examine the National Audit Office's report on the NPfIT. Granger expressed the shortage of capacity in the IT industry which he found responsible for the delay in the IT scheme.

The article presents information on a survey, according to which the average earnings of Information Technology professionals have increased by 4.4% during 2006. The survey was conducted by analyst firm Computer Economics Inc., on more than 57,000 IT jobs in more than 500 organizations. The survey revealed that there was an increase in the salaries and bonuses of IT managers. The average 4.4% increase in total earnings during 2006 was a slight increase on last year's increase of 4%. According to Computer Economics managing director Paul Campfield, the IT employment market had become much stable as compared with a few years ago.

The article reports that the University of Abertay Dundee in Dundee, Scotland will offer the undergraduate course in ethical hacking and countermeasures from October 2006. The course has been introduced to meet increasing demand for information technology security skills from employers. The Abertay Dundee course aims to provide core skills in network security. It is vocationally focused and has been based on collaboration with computer security companies. The university intends to put the course forward for British Computer Society accreditation.

The article reports that Linux supplier Red Hat Inc. has completed the acquisition of open source middleware firm JBoss Inc. in a deal worth £187m, plus an extra £38m if future sales targets are met. The deal will bring together Red Hat's enterprise infrastructure portfolio with standards-based middleware technologies, in a move the companies say will help accelerate the shift to open source service oriented architectures. The acquisition will cause waves among software suppliers.

The article reports that Microsoft Corp. has axed plans to include a feature allowing users to save files in PDF format in the next version of XPS in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, Publisher, Visio, Onenote and Infopath applications in the Office 2007 suite. A Microsoft spokesperson said that they have been working closely with Adobe Systems Inc. to resolve concerns regarding new features in Office and Windows Vista.

The article reports that Screwfix Direct, supplier of trade tools, accessories and hardware products, is to install Vecta's Sales Intelligence software to improve management information and boost sales. Sales Intelligence will be used by Screwfix Direct's key accounts team, which handles several thousand customer accounts and a range of 13,000 products. Key accounts operations manager, Martyn Sheppard, said the software would improve intelligence about customers' ordering patterns. Screwfix is planning to install the new software on its existing key accounts server, a dual core Xeon machine running Windows 2000 and SQL 2000. Sheppard added that information generated by Sales Intelligence would also be used to make strategic business decisions and to run targeted sales campaigns.

The article focuses on a study by Nielsen Norman Group,which shows that commercial websites aimed at business users are losing out through bad design, despite their potential to generate far more money than consumer sites. Business-to-business websites offer visitors a much worse experience than consumer sites, the study by Nielsen Norman Group found. Users of B2B sites were able to accomplish what they set out to do only 58% of the time, compared with 66% for consumer e-commerce sites. The research, conducted through field studies, focus groups and user testing by business professionals visiting nearly 200 B2B sites, found that bad Web site design harmed people's perception of a company. The research highlighted bad design elements that led to poor user experience, including incomplete product descriptions, overwhelming and convoluted content, a difficult navigational structure and pushy marketing tactics.

The article informs that in the field of Information Technology (IT), Great Britain's public sector pay growth has kept ahead with a rise of 5%. According to the Society of IT Management's annual survey, IT salaries in local authorities grew at a greater rate than those in the private sector in 2006. Local councils offered a higher percentage salary increases and a wider range of benefits than private sector employers. IT professionals working for fire services got the best deal, with increases of 6.7%. Local authorities are increasingly offering a package of staff benefits and flexible working in a bid to retain staff. Employers report a steep rise in difficulties in IT recruitments.

The article presents information on the strategic planning of Royal Numico NV to install Cogno Inc.'s Power-play and Report Net software products to improve data integration and business intelligence across the company. Nutricia, which is divided into infant nutrition and clinical products divisions, made the move after struggling to extract useful business information for its two operations from an ageing ERP system. The software overhaul was also designed to improve mobile access to sales reports and to support the different reporting needs of the company's sites in Wiltshire, Liverpool and Dublin.

The article reports that large companies are unaware of the risks posed by failures in information technology (IT). This information was based on a survey of more than 1,000 IT executives in 22 countries. When IT managers were asked what business outcomes were heavily dependent on IT, 80% cited reducing the cost of operations, 66% highlighted meeting regulatory requirements, and nearly 60% pointed to the ability to merge businesses. It found that 33% of senior IT managers in Great Britain thought IT business risk was not managed in a co-ordinated way.

This article reports that Cisco Systems Inc. is working with chipmaker Intel Corp., mobile phone company Nokia Corp. and Blackberry maker Research In Motion Ltd. to provide voice over Wi-Fi systems for enterprises. The move towards voice-ready wireless networks is in response to increasing business interest in the benefits of wireless working and voice over IP technology. The collaboration aims to ensure mobile device manufacturers can produce handsets that are interoperable with Cisco's wireless local area network infrastructure, are secure and can support advanced voice features through updates to Cisco's Compatible Extensions program.

The article reports that the European Social Forum is subsidising IT training courses aimed at helping small and medium-sized enterprises in London, England, use IT more effectively. ICT4SMES is a three-stage programme beginning with an IT "health check" to assess the current IT capacity of each small business. The second stage offers training in how to set up networks, wireless technology and tackling IT security threats. Viren Punjani, managing director at eCademy, which will provide the training, said that smaller businesses are often not clear on how to set up networks so they can share data. The training is aimed particularly at the smaller end of the SME market which desperately needs the support. The aim of the programme is to help SMEs develop their IT use to a level that is self-sustainable, cuts costs and streamlines processes. The ICT4SMEs programme is co-financed by the European Social Forum through the central London Learning and Skills Council and costs 300 pound plus VAT per person.

The article reports that Hewlett-Packard Co. is to recall more than 15,000 laptop batteries worldwide because a fault makes them a fire hazard. The move comes six months after the company was forced to recall about 135,000 lithium ion rechargeable battery packs after several faulty devices overheated melting users' laptops. The new recall of 15,700 HP and Compaq laptop computer batteries was announced by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. HP has received 20 reports of batteries overheating, with one minor burn injury reported. Eleven cases of minor property damage have also been reported. The recalled batteries are among those manufactured in early January 2005, and carry a barcode label starting with L3. Laptop computers in the HP Pavillion, HP Compaq and Compaq Presario families may contain affected batteries.