John at myITforum.com

Bradley, a former Gateway executive who joined Palm in June 2001, will step down Feb. 25 and serve as an adviser to the company through May. PalmOne President Ed Colligan will take on the role of interim CEO while the company conducts a search for a permanent head.

"Todd was an operations guy...PalmOne needs fresh leadership with the right vision to lead PalmOne into the wireless future," said Pablo Perez-Fernandez, a research analyst at Stanford Financial Group. "Colligan is considered to be very knowledgeable about wireless."

Bradley joined Palm when it was struggling with a glut of products and was credited with helping steady the company. However, analysts said new leadership might be needed as the company increasingly focuses on its Treo line of advanced cell phones.

Search-engine rivals Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. will open a new front in their Internet battle today when they plan to unveil dueling efforts to let users hunt through the content of television shows.

Google Video will let people look for text in the closed-captioning of television shows on PBS, C-SPAN, Fox News, ABC and other channels. Google has been recording thousands of hours of programming with its own equipment and hopes to eventually let people watch the content through Google Video.

Yahoo Video Search, which has been available in an experimental form since last month, scours the Web for video clips. And Yahoo plans to announce today that its video search engine will soon include news clips from Bloomberg and the BBC that are indexed by closed-captioning.

Hewlett-Packard's board of directors is considering a plan that would redistribute some of the day-to-day responsibilities of its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Carly Fiorina to other HP executives, due in part to the board's displeasure with the company's uneven performance, according to a report published Monday.

Rather than seeking to undermine Fiorina, the board believes that by giving three senior executives more authority, it would enable HP to respond more quickly to customer demands and the increased competition it faces from industry players such as Dell according to a report in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). The Journal article doesn't name any sources, only citing "people familiar with the situation."

Symbian OS anti-virus specialist SimWorks has announced that it has identified the first malware able to so severely disrupt the functioning of a Symbian phone that it can no longer be used to make phone calls. Previously identified threats, such as the Skulls trojans, have affected only the higher level functions of a device, not affecting basic functionality such as the ability to make calls.

The threat, Gavno.a is spread via a file called patch.sis and induces Symbian OS device users to install it on their devices by masquerading as a patch for their phone, a concept familiar from other computing platforms such as Microsoft Windows.

CNN hemorrhaged more than half their audience from the 2001 Inauguration. The news network only averaged 779,000 viewers during Inauguration coverage from 10am-4pm with just 168,000 of those viewers landing in the coveted 25-54 demo.

Like CNN, MSNBC also suffered major losses, only averaging 438,000 viewers throughout coverage (141,000 in 25-54), down a whopping 68% over 2001 and faring even worse in primetime with just 385,000 viewers.

In contrast, Fox News averaged 2,581,000 viewers from 10a-4p (up 30% over 2001) and their 25-54 demo average of 705,000 came close to CNN's total coverage ratings yesterday.

Fox News anyone? 

Interesting news article this morning.  Apparently Argentina’s Juan Ignacio Chela spit at Lleyton Hewitt during a third round match at the Australian Open.   Hewitt won the match 6-2, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 but Chela became irritated by Hewitt's antics whenever he won a big point and after the Australian appeared to swear at him, he spat in his direction.

Spitting during a professional tennis match?  I quit doing that during kick ball at recess in the third grade.  How about you?  When’s the last time you spit at someone during a sporting event.  What a true sportsman.

The Microsoft Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference 2005 (MEDC) is coming to a Las Vegas near you, MEDC 2005 will be held at the Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas 9^th thru 12^th May 2005 – SAVE THE DATES !!!

What to expect at this years event…

• Windows XP Embedded SP2
• Windows CE 5.0
• Windows Mobile and Visual Studio 2005

Two vulnerabilities were reported in in the Sun Java Plug-in. A malicious applet can access local files and applications or interfere with other running applets.  A remote user can create an applet that, when loaded, will gain elevated privileges via malicious Javascript. The applet can read and write local files or execute local applications with the privileges of the user running the untrusted applet.

An untrusted applet may also be able to interfere with another applet within the same web page, causing the other applet to incorrectly load non-code resources such as files and web pages.  Sun credits Fujitsu with reporting these flaws.

SDK and JRE 1.4.2_05 and earlier, all 1.4.1 and 1.4.0 releases, and 1.3.1_12 and earlier are affected.

Sun has issued the following fixes:

SDK and JRE 1.4.2_06 and later and 1.3.1_13 and later

J2SE releases are available at:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/

J2SE 5.0: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp
J2SE 1.4.2_06: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html and http://java.com
J2SE 1.3.1_14: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/download.html

Microsoft has released Deploying Windows XP Service Pack 2 in Enterprise Environments

The guides describe planning and implementation considerations for deploying Microsoft® Windows® XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) in enterprise environments.  The guides describe planning and implementation considerations for deploying Microsoft® Windows® XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) in enterprise environments. It includes readiness assessment, application compatibility, training, and infrastructure planning. It describes the three methods for deploying Microsoft® Windows® XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) in enterprise environments: Microsoft® Software Update Services (SUS), Systems Management Server (SMS), and Group Policy.

Go here.

Virus researchers at identified a new worm which poses as information on the latest news stories. Crowt-A(W32/Crowt-A) takes its subject lines, message content and attachment names from headlines gathered in real-time from the CNN website. It attempts to send itself by email to addresses found on infected computers.  Crowt-A's subject line and attachment share the same name, but continually change to mirror the front-page headline on the CNN news site. The message text is also lifted from CNN's site, duping the recipient into thinking that they are reading a bonafide newsletter rather than receiving an infected email.

Crowt-A also installs a backdoor Trojan function. This attempts to log keystrokes on infected PCs and sends gathered data to a remote user. These Trojans are often used by hackers to gain unauthorised control of PCs and to steal personal information such as bank passwords.

Looks like the virus writers are getting a little more clever, and according to folks like Cringely, it’s all Microsoft’s fault.

Well, the reports are in.  Firefox gained a whopping .88% market share during the months of December and January.  All this news reporting drove users of IE en masse to pick up the Firefox browser.  Without naming names here (again, very BIASED reporting), some news agencies are actually calling this a “snowballing effect”.  .88% increase a snowballing effect?  That’s .88, please notice where the decimal point is.  Not  even one percent.  Take you forever to build a snowman at this rate.

I will give the reporting agencies a little credit though.  They actually did draw attention to the fact that viruses and spyware are often aimed at IE because of its near-total market dominance, and that FireFox may eventually attract the attention of malicious code writers trying to exploit security holes, as evidenced by the recent download flaw (which some said wasn’t a flaw).  Next they’ll be saying it’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.

Stay tuned.  Time will tell.

Emir Aboulhosn, vice president of Marketing Communications for Laplink Software Inc., will discuss Laplink's adoption of Microsoft(R) Office Live Meeting, an online collaboration and Web conferencing service, during an online business seminar titled "Laplink Connects With Its Customers." During the complimentary seminar powered by Live Meeting, Aboulhosn will explore how Live Meeting has strengthened and shortened Laplink's sales cycles while enabling the company to reach a broader audience without the need to travel. Aboulhosn will also discuss how Laplink expects to recover an estimated $80,000 in expenses and lost productivity by replacing some business travel with Live Meeting Web conferences.

During the seminar, Aboulhosn will interact with participants in real time through instant polling, ongoing questions and answers, and an online survey, empowering the audience to deliver immediate feedback, exchange ideas and communicate directly with him. The "Laplink Connects With Its Customers" business seminar is part of an ongoing series of complimentary business interest seminars powered by Live Meeting. These engaging seminars are targeted at helping companies maximize their potential through interactive
discussions on topics that affect today's business leaders, including communication as a business tool, customer loyalty, the power of persuasion and teamwork.

What:     Emir Aboulhosn discusses Laplink's adoption of Live Meeting and how the solution has benefited the company during the "Laplink Connects With Its Customers" business seminar.
When:     Thursday, Jan. 27, 9-10 a.m. PST
Where:    Details and registration information can be found at http://www.placeware.com/go/laplink . Those interested in taking part in the seminar need only a phone and a PC with an Internet connection.

Virus experts have discovered a mass-mailing worm that fools computer users into believing that pornographic adult content has been found on their PC, and lures them into running malicious code which opens a backdoor allowing remote hackers access to their data.

The W32/Baba-C worm spreads via email, duping innocent users into believing that it is a warning about XXX content found on their Windows PC. Users are told that adult material on their PC can be hidden by running a program called "Evidence Cleaner". However, in reality, no X-rated content has been found on the PC, and clicking on the attached file runs the worm which will attempt to forward itself to other email addresses, and open a backdoor for hackers to gain access to the system.

Part of the email message sent by the W32/Baba-C worm.

Emails sent by the worm have the following characteristics:

Subject:
Important! XXX sites found on your computer!

Message body:
Windows Evidence Checker has found XXX content on your computer. You can hide your activities with Evidence Cleaner service.

To run Evidence Cleaner click to quick shortcut attached.

Warning! Your copy of Evidence Cleaner will be expired after 7 days. Today you can register for FREE.

Please check attached instructions for more details.