Stories by: Mitchell Ashley

A reversal seemed highly likely from the moment Microsoft announced a three-application limit in the Windows 7 Starter Edition OS planned for netbooks.

Did you know that by converting from Windows XP to Windows Vista, you are helping the environment?

Social networking is the killer Internet app, but it can also lead directly to identity theft.

You knew the argument had to come up sometime: survive the economic down turn by using open source to help you save money. Now Computer World's Steve J. Vaughan-Nichols makes that claim in Linux Will Save Us'.

With the economic downturn on everyone's mind, assumptions about job security come under question, and everyone starts reexamining their skills. There are lots and lots of valuable jobs performed in IT, but some skills are valued even more highly than others. With all the upheaval we're experiencing in IT, many new skills are in high demand or rapidly increasing in value. Here are my Top 7 skills that could help you not only keep that job, but secure an even better new job, positioning you to work on the next generation of IT applications and software products in the era of Web-delivered online applications.

The Blackberry Bold (9000) was announced last week, with a plethora of new and upgraded hardware and software features. If the Apple iPhone has done nothing else, it's causing RIM to raise its game and bring out even better devices. The net-net on the Blackberry 9000 is a beautiful 480x320 display, 3.5G / Bluetooth / GPS network support, upgraded apps, better media / music apps, and iPhone-ish stylized case. An iPhone killer? No, but it's feature and upgrades are rich enough to keep many existing or new Blackberry users happy, and possibly stave off running down to get the new iPhone 3G this year... maybe.

Wayne Kelly, leader of the open source Ruby.Net development project, announced last week that he intends to discontinue development of Ruby.Net and join up with Microsoft's IronRuby open source efforts. This might sound good on the surface, but it is a bad idea.