Computerworld staff

True privacy can be hard to come by in the socially enabled online world, but Twitter on Thursday announced that it has joined Firefox maker Mozilla in taking a big step forward for users.

Specifically, the popular microblogging site has signed onto enabling Firefox's Do Not Track feature, making it possible for Firefox users on Twitter to opt out of third-party tracking cookies used for advertising and other purposes.

Executives at AstraZeneca, a global pharmaceutical company, know that it's not enough to provide social collaboration tools for their employees. Those tools need to be highly mobile.

Employees are likely to be happy to get enterprise-level social collaboration tools, but they are just as likely to be frustrated if those tools aren't highly mobile, said Angela Yochem, chief technology officer at AstraZeneca, which has 57,200 employees in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Leap Day brought with it the chance to download the beta release of the next version of Microsoft's server platform, along with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and first looks at the next versions of the company's developer software. Then, this morning, Microsoft announced the new features and enhancements that have made it into the server beta, which you can download here .

I've spent some time putting the beta through its paces in my test environment. I used a Dell PowerEdge T300 with a 2.5-Ghz Intel Xeon processor and 24GB of RAM, and tested with both a native installation and as a virtual machine within Windows Server 2008 R2's Hyper-V platform.

The U.S. government may start issuing terror alerts using Facebook and Twitter , according to a news service report.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working to overhaul the current color-coded terror alert system. The new system, according to the report, would have only two levels of alerts -- elevated and imminent.

Microsoft today reminded customers that it will pull the support plug for the aged Office XP in July.

Office XP, which launched nearly 10 years ago, will exit support July 12, that month's Patch Tuesday. The date will be the last time Microsoft issues security updates for the suite.

A rocket carrying a satellite designed to help scientists study the Earth's climate suffered a technical failure and may have crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean.

Now NASA, which attempted to launch the rocket in the early hours of Friday morning, has convened an investigative committee to figure out what caused the failure of the $424 million Glory satellite mission.

Poor etiquette by mobile users is rampant and getting worse every day as use of smartphones and other wireless devices continues to mushroom, according to an Ipsos survey of U.S. adults.

The survey found that 75% of the 2,000 adults surveyed believe mobile manners have worsened since 2009. And more than 90% said they have witnessed first-hand poor mobile behavior -- activities ranging from texting while driving or walking to talking on a mobile phone in a public restroom.

More than one-in-four iPhone owners now using AT&T will switch to Verizon, a U.S. consumer survey said today.

According to ChangeWave Research, 26% of iPhone owners said that they will leave AT&T for Verizon. The biggest chunk of those consumers will make the switch in the first three months that Verizon offers the iPhone 4, with the bulk of the remainder dumping AT&T within the next year.

That didn't take long.

Apple has now sold more than two million iPad tablets, the company said Monday, less than two months after the iPad's April 3 U.S. launch.

Spring must be here, because the wireless carriers are launching new phones with a focus on style, quick connections and lower costs.

AT&T today announced four of its Quick Messaging Devices designed to bring "smartphone-like experiences to a wider range of powerful, yet affordable, devices designed for mass market," the carrier said.

Well, it certainly didn't take long.

Spammers began targeting Google Buzz just days after it was launched, according to security company Websense, Inc.

Owners of Apple 's 27-in. iMac have reported that the firmware update released earlier this week has not solved their flickering display problems, according to Apple's own support forum.

Apple issued the firmware update Monday, saying that it was designed to "address issues that may cause image corruption or the display to flicker" on 27-in. iMacs equipped with the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards.