Business Center Blogs

While you struggle to figure out whether your significant other would rather have jewelry, chocolate, flowers, or all of the above, Microsoft has an entirely different view on what to give for Valentine’s Day. Although we’re nearly half way through the month, it just so happens that today is the second Tuesday of February--and that means it’s Patch Tuesday.

As predicted in its Patch Tuesday preview last week, Microsoft released a total of nine new security bulletins today. Four of them are rated as Critical, and the remaining five are Important. I got some input from security experts to help you understand which updates are most urgent, and enable you to prioritize your patch management resources accordingly.

Here's a common office scenario: You run Outlook on your desktop and your laptop, but you have no easy way to keep the data in sync between them. Thus you wind up with some contacts here, other calendar entries there, a mismash of e-mails, and so on. Not exactly efficient.

One way to solve the problem: Astonsoft's EZOutlookSync, which synchronizes Outlook PST files across multiple PCs. (For those unfamiliar with it, the PST is the holding tank for all Outlook data.)

After many months of widespread anticipation, the Document Foundation on Tuesday announced the arrival of LibreOffice 3.5, the third major release of its free and open source office productivity suite.

More than 30,000 changes have been made to the software during its 16 months of development, representing the work of an average of 80 developers each month, the Document Foundation says.

There are reports of alleged pricing information being leaked for the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. If the information is accurate, Samsung has apparently not learned any lessons from its tablet experience thus far, or from the challenges and failures of its rivals. Pricing the Galaxy Tab 2 too high would virtually ensure it is dead on arrival.

A European blog called Sammy Hub has shared details it claims will be the pricing for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 in various countries. The costs vary from country to country, but converting to US dollars reveals that the next-generation 7-inch tablet from Samsung will be somewhere north of $400.

It's no secret that free and open source software is increasingly popular both in the business world and among consumers, and now that it's Valentine's Day, one advocacy group is encouraging fans the world over to show their love.

In fact, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has officially declared today “I Love Free Software Day,” and it's calling on all those who use and appreciate the merits of free software to give a little love back.

The online Microsoft Store in India was hacked – allegedly by a group of Chinese hackers. The big story, though, isn’t that the site was hacked, or that customer data was compromised and exposed by the attackers, but that the Microsoft Store was storing the data in clear text and didn’t take basic steps to protect it in the first place.

Enough already! While the hackers who compromised the India Microsoft Store network, and breached the servers are certainly to blame for exposing the customer data, the blame really lies with the Microsoft Store itself for storing sensitive data in plaintext.

Numerous studies have emerged over the past few years indicating that Linux skills are a hot item in the IT hiring market, but on Tuesday the Linux Foundation will publish a brand-new report suggesting that the search for such talent is taking on a new level of urgency.

To wit: While 81 percent of hiring managers recently surveyed said that hiring Linux talent is a priority in the year ahead--63 percent, in fact, say they will hire Linux talent over other skill areas--a full 85 percent of those hiring managers said that finding Linux professionals is difficult.

Your iPad--what a slacker, right? I mean, it can't even make phone calls! Well, okay, apps like Google Voice and Skype can give you a phone-like experience, but they're not exactly business-friendly.

Enter Toktumi's Line2 HD, which turns your iPad into a call-management hub, complete with a unique phone number and a wealth of business-savvy features.

Hard on the heels of last week's news that Canonical will no longer financially support the Kubuntu variant of its popular Linux distribution, CEO Jane Silber on Friday announced a brand-new version of Ubuntu Linux designed specifically for businesses.

Now available in a release based on Ubuntu 11.10, or “Oneiric Ocelot,” Ubuntu Business Desktop Remix targets corporate and government institutions evaluating Ubuntu as a desktop solution, Silber said. Essentially, it's a version of Ubuntu Linux with the most common corporate changes pre-configured, and can be deployed directly into a corporate environment or used as a basis for further customization.

Much buzz around the next major release of Windows has centered around the controversial ribbon interface for Windows Explorer. However, no ribbon appeared in a sneak preview of Office 15--World, Excel, PowerPoint--that Microsoft gave this week in a video about developing Windows On ARM (WOA).

The examples shown were early desktop versions of Office 15--not in the style of the Metro interface that appears in Windows 8--which may explain the absence of the contentious ribbon design, and provide a hint of what to expect in the next productivity suite.