A big outage at Google Tuesday

A big outage at Google Tuesday. Things go dark early while most of the U.S. is sleeping. Still, the Internet is without borders and so the glitch leaves millions of people who use Google Web mail and Google Apps, high and dry.

It was mild melodrama for a few hours but things returned to normal after a few hours. It's still unclear what happened, though Google says it's investigating the problem.

Truth be told, the walls of Jericho did not crumble, though the outage nonetheless triggered the (now thoroughly predictable) hand-wringing and bloviating from the usual cast of characters. Amusing to watch, but after this incident, there's also the wider context to consider.

Any outages are embarrassing. But while Gmail did crash a few times in 2008, this is the first time the service has gone down in quite a while. (As my colleague Stephen Shankland noted, Google extends a guarantee to corporate customers paying for any of its business Apps services, which rely on the cloud. The promise: they will be able to access Gmail at least 99.9 percent of the time every month. If not, Google pays them a penalty fee. So far Google says it hasn't fallen below that mark.)

If these sorts of outages occurred with more regularity, I suppose that would seriously retard cloud computing's growth. Google and Salesforce.com and Amazon and any other purveyors of cloud-based services obviously cringe when their connections fail. Not to underplay the anguish customers and vendors find themselves dealing with, but the real news here is how rare these cloud-computing outages have become.

A few years ago it seemed that eBay's Web site was seizing up all of the time. The reality was less severe but merchants and bidders would scream bloody murder. At the same time, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, and Buy.com were dealing with repeated denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Things got so bad that some even feared for the future of e-commerce.

We now know how the story turned out. Fact is that there are no 100 percent guarantees anymore, not in a world in which applications increasingly get hosted on the Internet. When things go bump in the night, as they inevitably will, there is going to be a commotion, albeit a temporary one. Get over it, already.

This is computing, after all.

Indian outsourcers, Microsoft top the list of H-1B users in '08

Microsoft Corp. was the top U.S.-based recipient of H-1B visas in 2008, receiving approval for 1,037 visas, slightly more than in 2007. But the largest users of the program remain the major Indian offshore IT services firms -- and their use of H-1Bs appears to be increasing, according to government data.

(See a searchable listing of the companies receiving H-1B visas in 2008.)

The importance of the H-1B visa program to India-based outsourcers is clear from the fiscal 2008 approval list compiled by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). That fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

The H-1B visa program has been one of the most controversial issues in the IT industry. High-tech firms argue that the visas are needed so they can recruit talented graduates from U.S. universities. But opponents say the program is being used to push down wages and enable the offshoring of IT jobs.

The program is currently capped at 65,000 annually, with another 20,000 set aside for advanced-degree graduates of U.S. universities.

In the latest listing of visa holders, Infosys Technologies Ltd. remained the top user, receiving approval for 4,559 -- the same number it got in fiscal 2007. Otherwise, the numbers for other major users varied, with some of the offshore firms showing sizable increases in their use of the program.

In second place after Infosys was Wipro Ltd., which received approval for 2,678 H-1B visas in 2008. The year before, Wipro got 2,567.

Even though Satyam Computer Services Ltd. revealed late last year that it had substantially misreported its financial statements, leading to a scandal that has put its future at risk, it received approval for 1,917 H-1B visas. That's far in excess of the 1,396 it got in fiscal year 2007.

Fourth on the list was Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., which used 1,539 visas last year, almost double the 797 it got in 2007. Microsoft was fifth on the list, winning approval for 1,018 visas, 59 more than it got in 2007. Among other U.S. firms, Google Inc., which publicly complained in a blog post last year about the H-1B system, received 248 visas -- far less than it wanted. And Lehman Brothers Inc., which failed late last year, received 130 visas.

There has been a recent backlash in Congress over the use of the visas. The $787 billion federal stimulus bill it approved earlier this month imposed restrictions on H-1B use by financial services firms that receive bailout funds.

Federal enforcement of visa laws related to the use of H-1Bs may be growing as well. Earlier this month, federal agents said they had arrested 11 people in six states in a crackdown on H-1B visa fraud; unsealed documents showed how the visa process was used to undercut the salaries of U.S. workers.

At one point, Microsoft's H-1B hiring drew the attention of Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who last month wrote to the company and urged it to give U.S. workers priority over H-1B visa holders in its plan to layoff 5,000 employees.

The USCIS distributes H-1B visas via a lottery system because applications have been exceeding the visa cap routinely in recent years.

The USCIS will begin taking applications for the next fiscal year on April 1 and will distribute the new visas on Oct. 1, at the start of the 2010 fiscal year.

Microsoft tells laid-off workers to keep extra severance pay

Microsoft Corp. will let about two dozen laid-off workers who were overpaid severance keep the money, the company's head of human resources said Monday afternoon.

The decision was a quick turn-about for the company, which last week sent letters to some of the 1,400 employees who were laid off in late January, asking them to return some of their severance because of an "administrative error." The demand received wide coverage after TechCrunch posted a copy of one such letter over the weekend.

"In the normal course of business, we may underpay or overpay in a bonus situation," said Lisa Brummel, the senior vice president of human resources for Microsoft. "If we overpay, we ask that the money be returned. Severance is not unlike that.

"But this is a unique time and our normal practice didn't make sense," she said.

Of the 25 people who were overpaid, Brummel said she had reached 17 by telephone as of mid-afternoon, and left messages for the others, telling them that they could keep the money. "This first came to my attention two days ago," she said, "and I immediately told my staff to stop following through. Since then, I have called each one, to let them know they do not need to repay the money, and apologized to them."

Most of the overpayments were in the $4,000 to $5,000 range, Brummel said, though "there were a couple who were over that." By her figures, Microsoft overpaid between $100,000 and $125,000.

An additional 20 former employees were initially underpaid, but have since been paid what they were owed.

She said the people she had talked with were "very pleased that the company did the right thing. They were quite impressed that I picked up the phone and called them personally."

Earlier today, a Seattle employment lawyer questioned whether Microsoft could make its payback demand stick. Calling the law unclear, attorney D. Jill Pugh said she would advise anyone who received such a letter to call on a lawyer to negotiate with the company.

Later in the day, Brummel dismissed the idea that Microsoft's decision was based on any legal second thoughts. "I wasn't deeply involved in the legal [discussions], but we rarely do anything without thinking of the legal implications," Brummel said. "I think that any company has the right to retrieve any overpayment."

For the future, Microsoft has put a process in place to notify her sooner of such overpayment requests. "We'll be double-checking our accounting, too," she said.

Microsoft laid off approximately 1,400 employees worldwide on Jan. 22, part of a $600 million cost-cutting move this quarter and the first wave of a planned 5,000-worker reduction during 2009. According to reports, the company offered severance packages that equaled a minimum of 60 days salary.

Adobe flaw has been used in attacks since early January

A dangerous and unpatched vulnerability in Adobe Systems Inc.'s PDF-reading software has been around a lot longer than previously realized.

The Adobe Reader flaw, which was first reported late last week, has caused concern because the bug is easy to exploit and Adobe isn't expected to patched it for several weeks.

A vulnerability researcher at intrusion-prevention vendor Sourcefire Inc. posted a patch for the flaw on Sunday. But the unsupported patch applies only to the Windows version of Adobe Reader 9.0 and comes with no guarantees that it will actually work.

Security researchers at Symantec Corp. told Adobe about the flaw, which also affects the vendor's Acrobat software, on Feb. 12. But today, Sourcefire said an analysis of its malware database showed that attackers have been exploiting the flaw for more than six weeks.

Sourcefire has found samples of exploit code dating back to Jan. 9, said Matt Watchinski, the company's senior director of vulnerability research.

To date, the flaw has been used in small-scale attacks targeted against specific individuals, according to security researchers. Symantec, for example, says it has tracked only 100 attacks thus far. But that number has been increasing since exploit code for the flaw, which affects both Windows and Macintosh users, was made public.

Sourcefire has also posted an analysis of the flaw on its Web site, which a hacker using the name k'sOSe credited with helping him write a proof of concept attack that exploits the bug.

"We're starting to see more exploit code show up," said Andre DiMino, co-founder of The Shadowserver Foundation, the organization that made the first public disclosure of the flaw last Thursday.

"This developed legs last week," DiMino added in an instant message. "I think our blogging the vulnerability and Sourcefire blogging the exploit details got it going."

The vulnerability involves the way that Adobe Reader opens files that have been formatted using the JBIG data compression algorithm. Adobe says it plans to patch the bug by March 11.

Security experts say that users can mitigate the possibility of attacks by disabling JavaScript within their Adobe software, but doing so could break corporate applications that rely on the scripting software.

Yahoo may overhaul top management this week, report says

Yahoo Inc. CEO Carol Bartz may be ready to announce a major reorganization of the company's executive ranks next week, according to a news report.

Bartz is expected to name a new senior management team to help turn around the troubled Internet company and to roll back organizational changes made by former CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker, according to a report Friday evening in "All Things Digital," a news blog affiliated with The Wall Street Journal.

The changes are likely to be announced on Wednesday, though they may be rolled out in pieces over the following week, the report said. It cited unnamed sources inside and outside of Yahoo and a memo to the company's staff from Bartz on Friday that pointed to a "big week" ahead.

Bartz, a former executive chairman at software company Autodesk Inc., took on the Yahoo CEO job six weeks ago. She replaced Yang, who stepped down in November after buy-out talks with Microsoft Corp. collapsed and an online advertising deal with Google Inc. fell apart.

Last month, she acknowleged "fundamental issues" that need to be addressed at Yahoo to sharpen its focus and speed up decision-making. "I intend to move quickly to tackle these core issues," she said.

The changes may include a revamped management team with a chief operating officer, chief technical officer and a new, more-powerful chief marketing officer all reporting directly to Bartz, Friday's report said. The structure would be similar to the one Bartz employed to revitalize Autodesk, it said.

Last month, Yahoo reported a net loss of $303 million for the fourth quarter of 2008, down from a profit of $206 million a year earlier. Revenue slipped 1% to $1.81 billion.

Mozilla backs move to decriminalize iPhone jailbreaking

Mozilla Corp. is backing a move that would nullify copyright infringement charges against people who "jailbreak" their iPhones, a practice that Apple Inc. considers against the law.

In comments submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office, the maker of Firefox said it supports the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in its request for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The EFF wants the Copyright Office to let users jailbreak their phones without fear of copyright infringement penalties.

Apple opposes the exemption, and in its own filing with the Copyright Office, has said that jailbreaking is a violation of copyright laws that protect its software.

"This is not us criticizing Apple," John Lilly, Mozilla's CEO, said in an interview Monday. "But it's the principle of the thing. Choice is good for users, and choice shouldn't be criminalized. The Internet is too important for all of us for that."

"Jailbreak" is the term used to describe circumventing the digital rights management (DRM) technology on a cell phone so that the user can install third-party applications not authorized by the phone's maker or the mobile carrier. The term was popularized by iPhone owners after several groups of programmers figured out how to hack the first-generation iPhone's operating system.

Although it never mentioned the iPhone by name in its comments, Mozilla made no bones about the danger it sees if a company like Apple is the sole gatekeeper of a smartphone. "By controlling the software that can be installed on these cellular phones, these companies can limit and control the type of programs and functionality that is available to users of their devices," Mozilla's general counsel, Harvey Anderson, wrote in the comments submitted to the Copyright Office (download PDF).

Anderson said that the DRM technology used to prevent people from installing software has a "chilling effect on users and innovation" because they are afraid that jailbreaking their phones is illegal.

He went on to argue that smartphones are akin to a computer, and because they can be used to access the Internet, should not be limited to the software authorized by the handset maker and/or the mobile service provider. "These devices contain Internet Web browser, and are therefore effectively users' doorway to the Internet -- a public commons," Anderson said. "Consumers should be entitled to use any software program they choose to access the Internet."

Apple includes a version of its own Safari browser on the iPhone, and decides which third-party applications can be downloaded from its App Store online mart, the only authorized distribution channel. In the past, Apple has rejected programs it says duplicate its own iPhone software, a notion that is reportedly spelled out in the iPhone's software development kit (SDK) licensing agreement. So far, no major rival to Safari has been offered to users through the App Store.

As things stand now, Mozilla would be unlikely to craft a version of Firefox for the iPhone, said Lilly. "The SDK is very clear, that Flash and Firefox and other runtimes are not welcome on the iPhone," he said. "Given the choice, would we work on a platform where the sole company controlling it makes us unwelcome, or would we work on a platform, like Linux, where we are welcome? The answer is going to be easy for us."

Mozilla is currently working on a mobile browser based on the same code that drives Firefox. Codenamed "Fennec," the browser is in the preliminary stages of development. The first build for Windows Mobile-powered phones, for instance, was released only last week.

Although he declined to get into product development specifics, Lilly said he doubts Mozilla would venture into the iPhone even if the Copyright Office grants the DMCA exemption over jailbreaking.

Opera Software ASA, a Norwegian company noted for its mobile browser, has come to the same decision. According to CEO Jon von Tetzchner, Opera considered, then abandoned development for the iPhone when it realized that Apple's SDK license barred other browsers.

Mozilla wasn't the only technology company or developer who weighed in on the side of the EFF. Skype Communications, the eBay Inc. subsidiary known for its voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) software, for example, also backed the exemption request. "Copyright law should not interfere with a user using his or her phone to run Skype and enjoy the benefits of low- or no-cost long-distance and international calling," Skype said. So did Jay Freeman, the developer of Cydia, the open-source application installer that acts as an App Store substitute for jailbroken iPhones.

Claiming that his program is installed on 1.6 million iPhones worldwide, a quarter of them in the U.S., Freeman wasted no time blasting Apple's software restrictions. "They have denied competing mail applications, competing camera applications and competing mapping systems," Freeman said in comments he submitted supporting the EFF request (download PDF). "They also have exerted control over what they [feel] to be acceptable content, sometimes vacillating (first denying any application using the word 'fart,' then allowing one in, which rapidly becomes the #1 most popular application in the store."

The danger of a gatekeeper like Apple on the iPhone is that innovation is stifled, Lilly argued. "These vertical silos don't enable innovation," he said. "And technology diffusion takes much longer, if it ever happens."

Why Toshiba is buying Fujitsu's HDD business

With the acquisition of Fujitsu's hard-disk drive (HDD) business, Toshiba would position itself to become a leading contender in the enterprise-class solid-state disk (SSD) drive market, as well as initially leap to the head of the pack in the 2.5-inch HDD space, say industry observers.

Toshiba and Fujitsu said today they had signed a provisional agreement under which Toshiba will acquire 80% of Fujitsu's hard-disk drive business. The deal is expected to close during the April through June quarter.

Fujitsu said it would hold onto 20% of its hard drive business for a not yet determinined period of time to smooth the transition of the business to Toshiba, which will make it a subsidiary.

Fujitsu is a leader in enterprise-class 2.5-inch HDD market, as well as in mobile devices.

The fast growing 2.5-in hard drive marketplace includes Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Fujitsu, Toshiba and Samsung. Fujitsu ranks third in number of units shipped, ahead of Seagate, says Tom Coughlin, an analyst with Coughlin Associates.

Last year, Fujitsu shipped 38.6 million 2.5-in HDDs. Only Hitachi, with 50.4 million, and Western Digital, with 50.3 million, lead it. Toshiba followed Fujitsu with 34.5 million, and Seagate trailed with with 29.8 million units shipped.

Let's make a deal

Western Digital Corp. had been in talks with Fujitsu to buy its HDD business. That deal was estimated to be worth $945 million. The value of Toshiba's Fujitsu buyout was not disclosed.

Coughlin and Gregory Wong, an analyst with the research firm Forward Insights, said the deal between Western Digital and Fujitsu likely fell through because there was not enough cultural synergy between the two companies. Coughlin said the ease with which two Japanese companies could deal with the same currency also probably had an impact on U.S.-based Western Digital's proposed buyout. Both analysts speculated that Japan's government may have helped broker the deal between the two native companies.

While a leader in the hard disk drive market, Fujitsu has been loosing money on its products because its cost to produce drives are too high, Coughlin said. "It has some similarities to the issues Hitachi has having. They had a high cost structure for building drives, which put them at a disadvantage to a Western Digital or Seagate."

Toshiba, on the other hand, has been profitable in the HDD marketplace for the past 30 years. This year will be its first unprofitable year, the company said.

With the acquisition of Fujitsu's 2.5-in HDD business, Toshiba, which sells its hard drives mainly into the consumer laptop marketplace, will effectively be catapulted into first place in unit shipments, Coughlin said. And, with Fujitsu's 20% to 25% share of the enterprise 2.5-inch HDD space, Toshiba gets an instant business customer base.

Scott Maccabe, general manager of the Americas for Toshiba's storage business, said, "We have been investigating entering the enterprise space for some time. We did our due diligence of what it would take to expand our market share. The logic made it more reasonable for us to acquire that rather than develop it in-house." "It really lines up from a strategic as well as tactical perspective for us," Maccabe said.

A solid win on SSD

One market that has escaped Toshiba is in enterprise-class SSD drives, the fastest growing segment of the flash drive marketplace. Toshiba invented NAND flash memory, but for all of its innovation in the space, the company has only two SSD products based on NAND -- one for laptops, the other an enterprise-class drive.

Stec Inc. and Intel Corp. are the current leaders in the enterprise-class SSD space.

Maccabe said the Fujitsu acquisition would open an instant door into the enterprise-class SSD market because of the depth of Fujitsu's existing enterprise-class business customers. Wong agreed.

"I think for Toshiba, they need to make sure their solid-state disk unit and hard-disk drive unit work together. Currently, Toshiba's SSDs are basically being manufactured and sold by their NAND flash business unit. So, internally, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some friction there," Wong said. "Samsung has the same problem."

Maccabe, however, said Toshiba's HDD unit will focus on enterprise SSD sales because they have more experience in that sales space. Toshiba aims to build on the consolidation between the two companies to raise its share in the overall HDD market to over 20% by 2015, it said.

Even with the many synergies between the two companies, Maccabe said he didn't expect layoffs to result from the buyout. Fujitsu and Toshiba both sell into the mobile market place, but Maccabe said overlap was minimal.

Toshiba has a 1.8-inch hard drive line and Fujitsu does not. Fujitsu has an enterprise-class HDD product line; Toshiba doesn't. And, while both companies have 2.5-inch HDD lines, Maccabe said Fujitsu would "leverage any overlap into efficiency and scale and then have a broader set of products," Maccabe said. "We're committed to bringing everybody over," he said.

Experts weigh in on job boards

There are more than 60,000 job boards on the Web. Which ones should you spend your time searching?

If you were among the millions of Super Bowl viewers last month, you might be thinking about looking at sites like CareerBuilder, Monster and TheLadders. All three aired attention-grabbing commercials during the big game.

To home in on the best employment sites, we asked career experts how the big job boards measure up for professionals and where else job seekers can look.

Let's start with the popular sites like Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs. Love them or hate them? "They do a nice job for very young, entry-level job hunters," says Michael Mellone, a senior consultant at ClearRock, a Boston-based outplacement firm. But for more experienced professionals, he says, industry-specific job sites such as Dice.com or the IEEE's job search page are more effective.

Gerry Crispin, co-founder CareerXroads, a consulting firm in Kendall Park, N.J., says CareerBuilder lacks sophistication. Recently he saw a quiz on the site that promised to give job hunters insight into what career path they should pursue based on the colors they like. "I'd be embarrassed as an employer to work with a site that uses such unprofessional approaches to career management," he says.

In contrast, Sarah Hightower Hill, CEO of outplacement firm Chandler Hill Partners Inc. in Tucson, Ariz., says she likes CareerBuilder because it's easy to navigate. "The site drives you right in to the job search. It's no-nonsense," she says.

What are some of your favorite job sites? For Crispin, Jobing.com wins high marks. The site specializes in advertising local employment for job hunters in 41 metro areas across the country. "They have people who physically go out and meet with professional associations that are trying to get their members hired," he says.

Crispin also favors the site for the DirectEmployers Association, Jobcentral.com. Job hunters interested in positions advertised on the site can click on a link to be taken directly to the employer's Web site. "You apply to the company firsthand," he says.

Additionally, Crispin points to Craigslist because "it's the most open, honest and transparent site out there," he says. He also cites its simplicity and ease of use. "It's also one of the most responsive," he says, referring to the company's immediate action when complaints are made. He cautions, though, that job seekers should be aware of potential job scams among the listings.

Rich Gee, an executive coach in Stamford, Conn., recommends Execunet.com. "It's a serious job site," he says. "You cut right through the noise and get to the actual job."

Execunet charges a fee to respond to its help-wanted ads. So do TheLadders and some other job boards. Are they worth paying for? "It's not a lot of money for what you get in return, which is a great filter to get to serious jobs," says Gee.

Hightower Hill says many job hunters she's worked with complain that too many employment ads on TheLadders are anonymous, making research and due diligence difficult. "It's pretty hard to follow up because you don't always know the identity of the company," she explains.

But Roy Cohen, a career counselor and executive coach in New York, says fee sites market their services too aggressively, making them less worthwhile. "They're constantly selling," he says. "It feels like you are being bombarded to upgrade your service."

Are any sites better at keeping out misleading job ads than others? "There is no site that can promise to perfectly keep away somebody who has a malicious intent," Crispin says. "However, most of the major job boards have pretty good security in place to screen it out."

Crispin notes that Craigslist is particularly vulnerable to the problem because it's less expensive than most job boards for posting employment ads. "It has -- and should have -- a 'buyer beware' warning," he says. "It's one of the hardest sites to keep clean but, Craig himself works very hard to do that."

What advice do you have for job hunters searching employment boards? Don't put too much time into them, advises Cohen. He recommends investing heavily in networking in person and online.

Microsoft expected to wrap up IE8 within weeks

Microsoft Corp. will finish Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) next month, according to a Web site that has accurately predicted other moves by the company.

TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that has reported on Microsoft's plans to offer free upgrades from Windows Vista to the newer Windows 7, said today that Microsoft will reach IE8's "release to manufacturing" milestone, also known as "RTM," in March.

"Microsoft will RTM Internet Explorer 8 in March 2009, most likely sometime during the last two weeks," the site said, citing unnamed sources. "This is because Microsoft plans to announce the final details of the IE8 RTM schedule and available language versions by March 5, 2009."

In development parlance, RTM means that the software has been finished and that the vendor is ready to ship it to partners, release it to the public, send it to duplicators for retail distribution, or all of the above.

Microsoft declined to confirm or deny the TechARP account. "Out timeline is driven by the quality of the product," said a spokeswoman today in an e-mail reply to a request for comment. "Microsoft is deliberate in our approach to releasing new products, and we feel a strong obligation to our customers to do so in a responsible manner that ensures they are getting the safest, most reliable product possible."

TechARP said that once Microsoft declares IE8 has reached RTM, it will offer it to computer makers, which can then add it to machines they ship with either Windows Vista or the older Windows XP operating systems. At the moment, the former comes with IE7, while the latter is bundled with IE6.

IE8 is also slated to be a cornerstone of Windows 7, the successor to Vista.

TechARP had no information on when Microsoft would post the final version of IE8 for public download. But the site's late-March RTM timetable meshes with past IE release schedules.

In 2006, there was a gap of eight weeks between IE7's first release candidate (RC1) and the public posting of the browser. A similar eight-week stretch from Microsoft's delivery of IE8 RC1 in late January 2009 would put the final build's availability at around March 23.

IE8 includes new Web standard compatibility features, performance improvements, a revamped address bar and private browsing tools.

Seagate FreeAgent Theater

If you're looking for a way to view tons of media from your computer on your TV, but you want something other than a media streamer, a hard-drive-based media player like the Seagate FreeAgent Theater (starting at US$129 without the hard drive, as of February 11, 2009) may be for you. But if you take home entertainment seriously, you may want to consider other options.

The FreeAgent Theater is relatively easy to set up: Hook it up to your TV; plug it in to an electrical outlet; connect a USB hard drive, a thumb drive, or a digital camera; and you're ready to go. As noted above, the FreeAgent Theater does not include a hard drive at its base price, but you can buy it packaged with either a 250GB or a 500GB FreeAgent Go hard drive; at its site, Seagate currently sells Go drives in these sizes for $100 and $150, respectively.

The FreeAgent Theater includes PC syncing software for transferring photos, music, and movies from your computer to a hard drive. Plug in the hard drive, and the software will automatically sync your PC's media collection to the external drive. Also included is a cradle for attaching any of Seagate's FreeAgent Go portable hard drives to your PC to make transferring media easier. Plug in a hard drive, click the MediaSync button in the PC sync software toolbar, choose your sync options, and you're ready to go.

The player itself is compact and well-designed, with playback control buttons on top, a USB port on the front (for use with any other USB drive), and a dock where you can insert a FreeAgent Go drive. On the back are component and composite outputs, and S-Video-out, but no HDMI-out. Though the FreeAgent Theater supports high-definition video (up to 1080i), and Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, its lack of HDMI will disappoint some users.

I found the FreeAgent Theater straightforward to use. After you plug in a drive and switch it on, the device is ready to use. To view your media, select the drive, and you'll be able to access any media file that is in a format that the FreeAgent Theater can play back. The menu interface is simple to navigate; you can sort through content by device and then narrow it down by category. One quirk I ran into involved the photo slideshow: To go backward or forward through the slides manually, you press the up/down arrow keys on the remote, not the left/right arrows as I would have expected. Instead, the left/right keys rotate the photo.

The device does have some limitations. For one thing, the FreeAgent Theater doesn't play unprotected AAC audio files at all. So any music you've ripped from your CD collection using iTunes' default settings--along with any iTunes Plus (DRM-free) songs you've purchased--can't be played via the FreeAgent Theater. Also, the only way it can play back MPEG-4 video is if that video uses the DivX, Xvid, or AVI codec.

By and large, the FreeAgent Theater does an admirable job; and for many users, it should provide an easy, painless way to release the media held hostage on their PC. For high-end users, though, the lack of HDMI output may be a deal-breaker.

Microsoft halts Windows 7 beta downloads

As promised late last month, Microsoft Corp. last week shut off the Windows 7 beta spigot for users looking to test the software.

Microsoft has not said when it will offer an updated build of Windows 7 to the public, although Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president in charge of the Windows engineering group, said late last month that the software will move directly from the current beta version to release candidate status.

In the past, Microsoft has run through multiple public betas of its operating systems before shipping a release candidate, the last step in the testing process.

The company did note that subscribers to the TechNet and Microsoft Developer Network services can continue to access the Windows 7 beta. The beta is set to expire Aug. 1, after which users must upgrade to a newer version or reinstall an earlier Windows release.

Hackers attack antivirus firm's tech-support site

A Kaspersky Lab technical support site was hacked late last month, exposing private customer information for 11 days, the Moscow-based security company admitted last week. The company learned of and closed the breach on Feb. 7 after it was notified by the Romanian hackers.

"This is not good for any company, especially for a company dealing with security," acknowledged Roel Schouwenberg, a senior antivirus researcher at Kaspersky, in a conference call last week. "This should not have happened."

The company had revamped the U.S. support site and relaunched it on Jan. 28. From that point until Feb. 7, the support database was open to attack, Schouwenberg said. The revamped site has now been replaced by the old version.

In a blog post, the hackers claimed that they were able to access a customer database that held e-mail addresses and software-activation codes by launching a SQL injection attack.

Schouwenberg confirmed that the database was hacked via SQL injection, but he contended that only the database's table labels were accessed, not the customer data. However, the e-mail addresses of about 2,500 customers and some 25,000 activation codes were at risk, he noted.

Schouwenberg said the hack was made possible by a combination of vulnerable code crafted by an unnamed third-party vendor and poor code review by Kaspersky.

Kaspersky hired Next Generation Security Software Ltd.'s David Litchfield, an expert on SQL injection attacks, to audit the systems. His report, delivered Feb. 12, confirmed Kaspersky's findings.

Microsoft lashes out at Adobe over Silverlight comments

Microsoft is crying foul over recent comments made by an Adobe executive that Silverlight has "fizzled" as a competitor to Adobe's Flash.

In his blog, Tim Sneath, director of the Windows and Silverlight technical evangelism team, accused Mark Garrett, Adobe's executive vice president and CFO, of "living in a fantasy world" if he thinks that Silverlight adoption is waning.

"The idea that Silverlight is in anything other than rude health is more to do with what Adobe would like to be the case, rather than what actually is the case," he wrote in the blog posting. "The suggestion that 'Silverlight adoption has fizzled out in the last 6-9 months' is pretty risible, in fact. For starters, Silverlight 2 shipped four months ago, and in just the first month of its availability, we saw over 100 million successful installations just on consumer machines. That doesn’t sound like 'fizzling out' to me."

Sneath was responding to comments Garrett made when answering a question about Silverlight and the competitive landscape at the Thomas Weisel Partners Technology & Telecom Conference 2009 in San Francisco on Tuesday. In his comments, confirmed Thursday by an Adobe representative, Garrett said Silverlight adoption was strong when the technology was right out of the gate but has tapered off in the past six to nine months.

Sneath's reference to Silverlight 2, the second version of the technology, is key to his defense of the technology. Silverlight, which comprises a tool for developing and designing Internet applications and a media player for delivering content, was first introduced in Version 1.0 in April 2007. However, it wasn't until the release of Silverlight 2 that the technology was fully baked and became truly viable as an alternative to Adobe Flash.

But Microsoft lost customers when Silverlight didn't live up to its expectations, even after Silverlight 2 was released. MLB.com, which switched from Flash to Silverlight to stream live baseball games beginning in August 2007 with Silverlight 1.0, said in November -- a month after 2's release -- that it was dumping Silverlight and had signed a two-year deal with Adobe to use Flash again for live streaming.

That said, some high-profile Web sites have used Silverlight 2 to live-stream some notable events recently -- the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama last month and the 2008 Summer Olympics in August were among them.

In his post, Sneath pointed out some other recent high-profile Silverlight customers, not just in the U.S. but also overseas. In the U.S., both Netflix and the Home Shopping Network launched on-demand services that use Silverlight, he said. In Europe, satellite broadcast network Sky launched a video-on-demand service using Silverlight in December, and the technology also is being adopted for television broadcasting portals in Japan and Korea, Sneath added.

But Flash has had a significant head start, and adoption of the technology remains strong, according to Adobe. It has been doing some touting of its own lately, not just about Flash but also about a new technology, Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). AIR allows developers to use the same tools with which they build Web-based applications to create desktop apps.

Two weeks ago, Adobe said the newest version of Flash, Flash 10, was installed on more than 55% of computers worldwide in the first two months of its release and is expected to surpass 80% adoption by the second quarter, the fastest installation rate of any versions of the technology. Moreover, AIR has reached nearly 100 million installations in less than a year after release.

Flash is actually gaining momentum since Microsoft released Silverlight, according to comScore research for 2008 that shows Flash increasing its worldwide share of video on the Web from 66% to more than 80%.

Also, although Silverlight has scored some high-profile Web sites as customers, enterprise developers have said its adoption among businesses -- a scenario in which it actually has an advantage over Flash because of Microsoft's historical strength in that market and the ability of developers to use .Net tools to build Silverlight applications -- has been lackluster.

Developers cited Silverlight 2's launch during an economic recession -- when businesses, particularly enterprises, are hesitant to switch to new technologies -- as a factor hampering its adoption.

Microsoft plans retail stores, hires Dreamworks exec

Microsoft Corp. plans to open its own retail stores to "transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience," the company said Wednesday as it hired an executive to run the retail operation.

The stores will help Microsoft engage more deeply with consumers and learn firsthand about what they want to buy and how, according to a Microsoft statement. Deciding where the stores will be located and what they'll look like will be the first order of business for David Porter, who will report to work on Monday as corporate vice president of retail stores.

Microsoft has long been perceived as lagging behind rival Apple Inc. in appealing directly to consumers, and Apple has a head start of several years in running a chain of stores. While Microsoft makes its own Xbox game terminals, Zune media players and some other devices, it doesn't have a branded PC product of its own like Apple's Macintosh.

In December, Apple neared 10% of PC sales while Windows lost a full percentage point of share for the second month in a row.

With the retail strategy, Microsoft said it hopes to articulate and demonstrate its innovation and value proposition. It will pass on lessons it learns from the stores to its retail and OEM partners.

The move comes as the company gears up for the release of the Windows 7 PC operating system as well as new releases of Windows Mobile and of the Windows Live online portal. It follows changes Microsoft has made to its marketing efforts as the Windows Vista operating system took on a negative image.

Porter has been head of worldwide product distribution for Dreamworks Animation SKG since 2007, and before that, he spent 25 years at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. His last position there was vice president and general merchandise manager of entertainment.

Microsoft has already had at least one retail store. In 1999, it opened a large store on the second floor of Sony's Metreon entertainment and shopping complex in downtown San Francisco. Among other things, visitors to the store could try out Windows CE-based handhelds and buy Microsoft apparel, souvenirs and shrink-wrapped software. The shop closed several years later, as did most of the other non-Sony-related businesses in the complex.