CIO —
1. Apple Recalls 1.8 Million Laptop Batteries,"
InfoWorld, 8/24. Another week, another battery recall. This time it was Apple facing the music, not Dell, over batteries that could potentially overheat and pose a fire hazard. However, the battery supplier in both cases was the same: Sony. To date, Apple has come across nine reports of its laptops overheating, including two instances where users suffered minor burns from handling the hot boxes. Apple is advising users of the affected machines to remove the faulty batteries immediately and rely on power from outlets instead until they receive a replacement within the next four to six weeks.
2. "AOL Reviews Privacy Policy After Shake-Up,"
CIO.com, 8/22. The portal and ISP is hoping to avoid another embarrassing security breach like the one that recently led to the search results of 650,000 AOL subscribers being posted online. That major misstep resulted in the immediate resignation this week of Maureen Govern, AOL’s chief technology officer. The company also fired a researcher and manager in the research division that Govern had headed up. In the wake of the breach, AOL is putting together an internal task force to assess how long the company should hold onto data, including search data, and how best to improve its privacy policy.
3. "IBM’s ISS Bid to Broaden Security Portfolio,"
CIO.com, 8/23. IBM made its second billion-dollar-plus offer for a company in less than two weeks, ponying up US$1.3 billion for Internet Security Systems hard on the heels of a US$1.6 billion bid for enterprise content management vendor FileNet. Big Blue is keen to expand its product offerings and expertise in security, particularly in the area of providing managed services, which IBM estimates is a US$22 billion business. Given ISS’ focus on network security, IBM wasn’t the first name to spring to mind as a potential acquirer; vendors like Nortel or Foundry were more obvious choices, according to analysts.
4. "Massachusetts Confirms It Will Stay on Office for Now,"
Computerworld, 8/23. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, government standard bearer for open-source software, won’t be moving over to alternatives to Microsoft’s Office suite quite as quickly as it had at first hoped. Massachusetts had planned to move off Office and adopt the OpenDocument Format come Jan. 1, 2007. Instead, the state will continue to use Office but also employ software plug-ins so its staff can open and save files in ODF next year and then move over fully to ODF in June 2007. The delay is a victory for advocates of people with disabilities who positioned Office alternatives as less compatible with accessibility tools the blind, deaf or mobility-impaired state workers need to do their jobs.
