Matt Lake

Earlier this month, the guardian of the Internet’s domain name system, ICANN, played straight into the hands of the ICM Registry. ICANN trumpeted the news that a sexy new top-level domain has been approved for rollout later this year. ICM Registry hopes to get what is coyly called the adult entertainment industry to register domains with the suffix .xxx.

What's in it for the skin merchants? Not much--just a chance to market what they are currently selling quite successfully from .com domains. By raising public awareness of this announcement, ICANN and the news media have given publicity to something that is, in essence, an unwanted product.

It should come as some relief for Skype fans to learn that the company has fixed the frustrating bug that caused Skype 5.0 and 5.1 to spawn multiple browser windows popping up, when used with Facebook on some corporate and educational networks.

The company initially responded to this PCWorld Business Center report about this issue last week with a report that they had fixed this problem on the server side shortly after it appeared in late January. But on further investigation, it turned out that the fix required an update to Skype's Windows client software.

Back in October when Skype 5.0 client software appeared, it was heralded as a good thing all round. It integrated Skype's audio and video conferencing into Facebook's social media management, allowing Skype users to view and comment on Facebook friends' posts, and to communicate with them via SMS and Skype's voice service.

So far so good, but just over a month ago, a strange quirk emerged at many companies and schools that cast a shadow over the whole thing. As of the aftermath of Presidents' Day, that shadow is still looming.

It's a truth universally acknowledged that public Wi-Fi hotspots aren't secure, but they're so convenient that most of us use them anyway. That's why there was something of a panic last year when Eric Butler showed everyone how easy it is to hijack Facebook, Twitter and PayPal accounts on open Wi-Fi networks via his FireSheep Firefox add-on.

Of course, not everything you do in an open Wi-Fi environment can be picked up by digital eavesdropping. Secure HTTPS servers are great, but it's likely that your e-mail account and many social networking sites don't use HTTPS servers, or maybe just use them for logging in. Or worse, have you submit your user name and password from an HTTP page to get to an HTTPS server. (There is at least one add-on for Firefox that offers HTTPS protection, but only for certain sites.)

Did you forget to mark your calendar? September 9 was Debugging Day. It's been associated with removing bugs for more than 50 years now but is rarely formally celebrated. So let's start the tradition this year.

It all began with a log entry from 1947 by Harvard University's Mark II technical team. The now-classic entry features a moth taped to the page, time-stamped 15:45, with the caption "Relay #70 Panel F (moth) in relay" and the proud boast, "First actual case of bug being found." (Click on the image for a close-up view of the historic logbook.)

Despite its valiant attempts at creating a carnival atmosphere, when Microsoft launches a new operating system, it seldom feels like a world-changing event in the world of design. Even the considerable hoopla surrounding the introduction of Windows XP was hardly like the introduction of the bikini or the Volkswagen Beetle -- or, dare we say it, the iPhone.

Toshiba Satellite T135

In the past few months, the dream of the digital nomad lifestyle has really taken flight. You know when major newspapers pick up on a trend, it's reaching the mainstream -- something that Computerworld's own Mike Elgan has been predicting for some time.

Like humanity's original nomads, today's denizens of the open road must carry everything they need. In fact, if you use, say, a ten-inch netbook, it's tempting to think that maybe, just maybe, in addition to a computer, you can cram everything else that makes up a digital office into your shoulder bag or backpack.

The release of Windows 7 to manufacturing begins a tale of two operating systems: the one you want and the one you don't. It is packed with improvements and cool stuff, but it still carries a whiff of Vista that may put XP diehards off. That said, people who have gotten used to Vista will enjoy the fact that Windows 7 looks the same but acts a whole lot better.

Like many people who compute both at home and at work, I use XP and Vista as well as Mac OS X Leopard, and I like elements of all three. So I've been watching the beta and RC versions of Windows 7 very closely. Does the final "release to manufacturing" (RTM) code -- the same code that will ship with new PCs and retail versions of Windows 7 in October -- merit a jump from any of my current platforms?