Larry Dignan and other IT industry experts, blogging at the intersection of business and technology, deliver daily news and analysis on vital enterprise trends.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.
Andrew Nusca is a writer-editor for ZDNet, contributor to CNET and the editor of SmartPlanet, ZDNet's sister site about innovation. In 2013, his coverage will focus on enterprise startups. He is based in New York.
Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.
The latest slithering worms infecting Windows 2000 systems--and hitting systems at CNN, ABC and the New York Times--are the outcome of a duel between rival virus writers, according to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure. "There appear to be three different virus-writing gangs turning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were competing to build the biggest network of infected machines,"Hypponen said.
By way of ZDNet reader Darren Clarke comes a pointer to a news report on British tech site ComputerWeekly.com that has the details on why, after having once forsaken proprietary software for open source, the Central Scotland Police have ditched Plan A for Plan B: Microsoft (some open source will be kept).
SAP's new offering is going to be nothing more than a defensive play, like the current version of Microsoft CRM — a half-hearted answer to customers who enquire whether the vendor has an on-demand option.
Today, while driving my 15 year-old home from a doctor's appointment, I asked him what he thought should happen when you stick a DVD into a computer. "That's obvious Dad.
Look outside your window (or check the manhole cover down the street). Not just anyone can hang a wire on that pole or drag one underground -- a wire that eventually connects to your house.
BusinessWeek recently published a list of 10 newer technologies to which CEOs (and CIOs, etc.) should pay attention, depending on their industry.
Dan Farber has a great point about podcasting being a lousy name for Internet-delivered audio files. Podcasting as a moniker has been useful as a starting point for moving from a niche medium to a medium medium.
Baseline Magazine has an interview with 7-Eleven CEO James Keyes on how the company uses data from its point-of-sale systems to spot trends, find growth opportunities and control shelf space. 7-Eleven's store are like a big, distributed research facility, where it can test market ideas for different products in different geographies in near real-time.
Steve Gillmor gathers Podshow.com's/Boku Communications' co-founder Ron Bloom and the Gang to talk about the future of podcasting and a few other choice topics (such as whether CNET/ZDNet is incumbent media and Google's freeze-out of CNET reporters).
IBM is talking up a new consortium that it has established called Blade.org.