Apple, Amazon pre-sell Office 2008 for Mac

Microsoft's Office 2008 for Mac may not officially be unveiled until next week, but it's on sale now as a pre-order from Apple Inc.'s online store and through Amazon.com.

Microsoft to provide virtual access to Library of Congress

Microsoft teams with the Library of Congress to put the library's exhibits online.

Virtualization to eat into IT budgets

The technology is "vastly misunderstood and underestimated within user enterprises," a new report says.

Systemax to buy CompUSA brand, 16 retail outlets

Systemax plans to buy the CompUSA brand, trademarks, e-commerce business and up to 16 retail outlets in a deal valued at $30 million.

CES: IBM, Emotiv show advances in virtual reality worlds

IBM and its partners showed what's possible with virtual reality at CES, including the ability to control an avatar using brain signals and a wireless connection to a PC.

Google Apps lures early adopters with low price, easy setup

Microsoft remains dominant in the office tools market, but Google's suite of e-mail, instant messaging and VoIP tools is making some inroads, particularly with small customers.

Microsoft makes FAST move to expand its enterprise search capabilities

Microsoft said its planned $1.2 billion acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer, or FAST, will give it a full-fledged enterprise search product line that can scale to billions of documents.

Linus Torvalds still sticking with GPL 2

The older version better matches his vision of what a license should do. Plus, he said, "Because I have accepted code over the last 15 years by people who kind of accepted my original choice of the GPL Version 2, I'm not just, I think, ethically bound by those people's choices, I am also actually legally bound."

Automate Best Practices

Mark Hall hears about the benefits of automating support best practices.

AOL Plans to Drop Curtain on Netscape's Browser

AOLs Netscape unit said it will stop developing its Navigator browser -- ironically, on the same day that Microsoft filed court papers citing the continuing distribution of Navigator among the reasons why its antitrust consent decree should expire.

Software Glitch Mars Seattle's New Year's Fireworks Show

A corrupted computer file forced the operators of a New Year's Eve fireworks show in Seattle to launch most of the projectiles manually, throwing the show out of sync with its accompanying music.

App Support Limitations Could Impede Virtualization

One of the factors that could put a damper on the server virtualization market is the lack of formal commitments by software vendors to support their applications on virtual systems.

Prisoners of Legacy

Frank Hayes argues that IT hasn't changed the PC users experience since the 1980s, so this is the year to start delivering better technology to end users.

John Hagel

Deloitte's IT strategy guru talks about 'innovation blowback,' green IT, the real point of outsourcing, the invasion of the enterprise and the end of IT as we know it.

Eclipse reeling in Swordfish as SOA framework

The Eclipse Foundation is developing an open source, (SOA) framework for applications ranging from enterprise environments to embedded systems.

Q&A: Gates' role as innovator, deal-maker, philanthropist

In an interview with the IDG News Service, Bill Gates defends his legacy as an innovator and explains how deals announced this week came about.

Update: Intuit patches Mac QuickBooks

Intuit on Thursday addressed problems with QuickBooks Pro 2006, pushing a new patch to users. However, the patch itself disables the program's upgrade mechanism, which makes some users suspicious of the company's intentions.

Apache Wicket 1.3 set for Java Web development

Looking to make Web development easier for Java developers, the Apache Software Foundation began offering this week Apache Wicket 1.3, an open-source, component-based Web framework.

CES: Gadget lovers seek out 2008's hottest products

The Consumer Electronics Show kicks off in Las Vegas next week, but economic headwinds, such as a global credit crunch and higher oil prices, may tone down the glitz of a conference that defines what gadgets are in store for 2008.

US-CERT warns of flaw in latest RealPlayer

A bug in version 11 of RealPlayer was found by a Russian security firm over the holiday and has been confirmed by US-CERT.