Interviews

Do you love Microsoft Corp.'s recent TV ads? Hate its "Apple Tax" marketing campaign? Then meet Brad Brooks. As Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows consumer product marketing, Brooks approved both campaigns as part of his goal of burnishing Windows 7's image in advance of its October launch (and tarnishing Apple's).

Security experts say it all the time: If a company thinks it has suffered a data security breach, the key to getting at the truth unscathed is to have a response plan in place for what needs to be done and who needs to be in charge of certain tasks. And, as SANS Institute instructor Lenny Zeltser advised in CSOonline's recent How to Respond to an Unexpected IT Security Incident article, "ask lots and lots of questions" before making rash decisions.

Computerworld's investigations into the most widely-used programming languages continues as we chat with Giancarlo Niccolai the creator of the Falcon programming language.

The DataPortability Project tasted early fame in January 2008 when an indignant Robert Scoble joined the group after Facebook canceled the tech celebrity's account for exporting his friends list to Plaxo.

Linus Torvalds is a regular visitor to Australia in January. He comes out for some sunshine and to attend the annual linux.conf.au organised by Linux Australia. He took some time out to speak to Rodney Gedda about a host of topics including point releases, filesystems, what it is like switching to GNOME, and puts Windows 7 in perspective.

Australian Geoff Huston is one of the foremost authorities on Internet routing and scaling issues. We sent Huston, a former Chief Scientist, Telstra Internet, a few questions about the U.S. government's plan to bolster R&D to secure the Internet's core routing protocol, the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Here are excerpts of from what Huston had to say:

Craig Barrett spent decades using his business skills to make Intel the world's most powerful semiconductor company. He has now turned his attention to an even bigger challenge -- spreading computers and education throughout the developing world.

We recently got the opportunity to interview Eugene Kaspersky, the man behind Kaspersky Anti Virus. Here's what he had to say about the evolution of malware, the future of cybersecurity, the problems with the internet, and more.

We recently got the opportunity to interview Eugene Kaspersky, the man behind Kaspersky Anti Virus. Here's what he had to say about the evolution of malware, the future of cybersecurity, the problems with the Internet, and more.

Computerworld is undertaking a series of investigations into the most widely-used programming languages. This time we chat with Larry Wall, creator of the Perl programming language and regarded as the father of modern scripting languages.

Imagine an IP voice and unified communications system that can be integrated into any application and customised to meet business needs. Sounds great, right? Well that project is the Asterisk IP-PBX and it's free to use and you get the source code. A far cry from proprietary PBX systems perhaps, but Asterisk has a vibrant ecosystem and is replacing systems from more established telephony vendors. Following interviews with the leaders of the Horde and Free Telephony projects, the Open Source Identity series talked to Asterisk founder and Digium CTO Mark Spencer about how one application can have such a profound effect on businesses and how open source can be a tough competitive landscape.

With most Americans switching their mobile handsets once every 18 months, the need to find safe ways to dispose of old mobile phones has only grown. ReCellular, a self-described "electronics-sustainability" firm based in the US, has spent the past two decades working with the US-based Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) to become a major recycler and reseller of mobile handsets and accessories. Every day, ReCellular processes thousands of unwanted handsets and either fixes them for resale or sends them off to be melted down and recycled. ReCellular Vice President Mike Newman spoke with Brad Reed about how his company is helping to reduce e-waste, as well as how enterprises can benefit from donating their mobile devices for reuse and recycling.

On Monday, Meru Networks announced virtual ports, a technology designed to make Wi-Fi networks as reliable as wired Ethernet. IDG News Service interviewed the CEO of Meru, Ihab Abu-Hakima, on a visit to London.

Recent outages affecting Google Apps have received a disproportionately large amount of coverage from the technology press, resulting in a misperception about the stability of this hosted collaboration and communication suite.