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.
"While companies have generally treated physical security as part of the facilities department and computer security as part of the information-technology group, employee information has increasingly become integrated, allowing businesses to link the two systems."So says Steve Hunt, an analyst with Forrester Research, according to a News.
From the day it went public, Wall Street's fascination with Google, which is trading near $200 today, continues to stymie me. Back in July, I opined:I've yet to see any proof that Google's dominant position in the [search find, and obtain]market is something it can protect.
News.com's Martin LaMonica has a story on how an increasing percentage of the traffic crossing the Net is carrying data that's encoded in the highly text-oriented Extensible Markup Language (XML).
News.com dissects the value proposition of the Mac mini, and opinion vary on whether it will be a blockbuster: According to Steve Baker, an analyst with The NPD Group, "A lot of whether (the Mini) is a good value or not depends on who it's targeted at and who is really going to buy it.
[A note from the product folks] On Wednesday, ZDNet Blogs joined the community of ZDNet News in using our TalkBack software. When you post comments on this blog -- and please do!
On one hand, the 500 patents that IBM has released for unencumbered use by open source software developers is a giant step in the right direction, if you ask open source attorney and advocate Larry Rosen. Said Rosen in my podcast interview (download the MP3) of him, "IBM is saying we will not assert these patents against you and that's a great relief.
Today's announcement by Novatel Wireless that its dual band EV-DO / 1xRTT PC card for notebook computers (and some handhelds) is available for usage through Verizon Wireless is precisely the reason I have some misgivings about public Wi-Fi. Verizon Wireless' network is based on CDMA technology.
Microsoft's growing endorsement of the Really Simple Syndication protocol (RSS) may leave the company with no choice but to refresh some of its desktop applications ahead of its current plans. News.
In response to my column about monoculture and podcasting, a reporter from a nationally known news organization contacted me for more details in hopes of determining whether a special report on blogging, RSS-type syndication, podcasting, social networking, and monoculture (all interrelated) might be worthwhile.
In his blog post, technology journalist Sandy McMurray does the best job I've seen today summarizing Steve Jobs' keynote presentation at Macworld and laying out the parade of announcements in its entirety in easy-to-read point-form format. A pair of ZDNet videos provides a close look at the new Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle, and a review offers some opinion.