USA Today

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. (AP) — Oracle  snapped up computer server and software maker Sun Microsystems  for $7.4 billion Monday, pouncing on an opportunity that opened up after rival IBM Corp. abandoned an earlier bid to buy one of Silicon Valley’s best known — and most troubled — companies.

The deal will end Sun’s 27-year history as Silicon Valley‘s brash independent and give Oracle ownership of the Java programming language, which runs on more than 1 billion devices around the world. Oracle also will take charge of the Solaris operating system, which already has been a platform for much of Oracle’s products.

It’s far from Oracle’s biggest acquisition during a four-year shopping spree that has cost more than $40 billion, but it may be the boldest.

Oracle, a Redwood Shores, Calif.-based business software maker, will be branching more into storage and computer hardware as it accelerates its attempts to become a one-stop technology shop for more than 300,000 corporate, government and academic customers.

“With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle is now able to make all of the pieces of the technology stack fit together and work well,” Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison said during a Monday conference call.

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s CEO, predicted the combination will create a “systems and software powerhouse” that “redefines the industry, redrawing the boundaries that have frustrated the industry’s ability to solve.” Among other things, he predicted Oracle will be able to offer its customers simpler computing solutions at less expensive prices by drawing upon Sun’s technology.

Oracle will pay $9.50 in cash for each Sun share. The price represents a 42% premium to Sun’s closing stock price of $6.69 on Friday, and is about twice what Sun was trading for in March, before word leaked that IBM and Sun were in buyout negotiations. Net of Sun’s cash and debt, the transaction is valued at $5.6 billion, Oracle said.

IBM had offered to buy Sun for $9.40 per share, but acquisition talks fell apart this month in a disagreement over price and the extent to which IBM was willing to see the deal through an antitrust review.

Shares of Sun jumped $2.41, or 36%, to $9.10 in Monday’s early trading while Oracle shares shed $1.02, or 5.4%, to $18.04.

Oracle expects the purchase to add at least 15 cents per share to its adjusted earnings in the first year after the deal closes. The company estimated Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun will contribute more than $1.5 billion to Oracle’s adjusted profit in the first year and more than $2 billion in the second year.

If Oracle can hit those targets, Sun would yield more profit than the combined contributions of three other major acquisitions — PeopleSoft Inc., Siebel Systems Inc. and BEA Systems — that cost Oracle a total of more than $25 billion.

Some of Oracle’s earlier acquisitions have resulted in a significant number of layoffs. In Monday’s conference call, Oracle didn’t discuss how the deal would affect jobs. Oracle employs about 86,000 people worldwide while Sun has about 33,000 workers.

Sun, which invented the Java programming language used to develop applications for websites, mobile phones and even DVD players, had been reluctant to sacrifice its independence, even as it reported big losses. Despite billions in sales — $13.3 billion over the last four quarters — the company has not been able to turn a consistent profit, losing $1.9 billion in the same period.

Analysts have long said the company can not stand on its own and many were skeptical the company would be able to find another buyer after talks with IBM broke down.

A deal with Oracle might not be plagued by the same antitrust issues, since there is significantly less overlap between the two companies. Still, Oracle could be able to use Sun’s products to enhance its own software.

Oracle’s main business is database software. Sun’s Solaris operating system is a leading platform for that software. The company also makes “middleware,” which allows business computing applications to work together. Oracle’s middleware is built on Sun’s Java language and software.

Calling Java the “single-most important software asset we have ever acquired,” Ellison predicted it would eventually help make Oracle’s middleware products generate as much revenue as its database line does.

Sun’s takeover is a reminder that a few missteps and bad timing can cause a star to come crashing down.

Sun was founded in 1982 by men who would become legendary Silicon Valley figures: Andy Bechtolsheim, a graduate student whose computer “workstation” for the Stanford University Network (SUN) led to the company’s first product; Bill Joy, whose work formed the basis for Sun’s computer operating system; and Stanford MBAs Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy.

Sun was a pioneer in the concept of networked computing, the idea that computers could do more when lots of them were linked together. Sun’s computers took off at universities and in the government, and became part of the backbone of the early Internet. Then the 1990s boom made Sun a star. It claimed to put “the dot in dot-com,” considered buying a struggling Apple Computer Inc. and saw its market value peak around $200 billion.

But Sun was slow to react when the bottom fell out in 2001. Its high-end products, built on Sun’s proprietary systems and its own microprocessors, suffered against less-expensive rivals that used industry-standard technologies such as chips from Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and software from Microsoft. Sun lost more than $5 billion in the first five years after the bubble burst.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

Gillian Shaw
Sun

1. HINT QA30, $80 WITH BELL MOBILITY THREE-YEAR CONTRACT, $330 WITH NO CONTRACT

A recent survey conducted by Angus Reid Strategies for Motorola found that 10 per cent of Canadians would dump their significant others via Facebook. Harsh. But that may well explain the name of Motorola’s slick little black-and-red handset that comes with a full QWERTY slider keypad which makes it easy to type out those hints and otherwise keep connected with your social networks. The integrated Bell user interface lets you access functions and services, from e-mail to the weather, through 25 icons that are referred to as “bubbles.” It also has a two-megapixel digital zoom camera, plus GPS navigation — both items that top the cellphone wish lists of Canadian consumers, according to a recent TNS study. www.motorola.ca/hint

2. BLUETOOTH HEADSET BH-804, NOKIA, $130

Have you ever been wandering down the street and wondering why people you don’t even know are talking to you? I usually say ‘hello’ back, and then feel like a complete idiot when I realize they’re talking to a cellphone headset and not me. It’s going to get even tougher to tell with Nokia’s new, smallest headset ever. A featherweight 7.2 grams, it has Digital Signal processing to help cut out background noise, and two buttons let you receive and end calls, adjust the volume and redial back the last number you called. It has a neck strap for carrying around and a desktop charger that takes only an hour to fully charge the headset. Online at store.nokia.ca.

3. RECOIL MOBILE IPOD AND IPHONE CHARGER, SCOSCHE INDUSTRIES, $30 US

I am constantly trying to jam the long cord on my iPhone charger into the glovebox of my car, usually trying to shut it several times on the cord before the whole mess gets put away. So naturally, a retractable cord seems a useful car accessory. Plugs into your 12V power and accessory outlet, charges up your iPod or iPhone and then — best of all — its retractable cord neatly disappears, and its magnetic locking dock connector mounts flush when you’re not using it. Someone should tell the ailing U.S. automakers that such useful little gadgets would probably sway techno car buyers. www.Scosche.com.

4. ORB AUDIO HOME THEATRE SPEAKER SYSTEM, $1,000 US

An elegant approach to home theatre sound, it centres on the spherical Mod 1 satellite speaker, made from high-carbon steel and a little bigger than a baseball. The Orbs are handmade by metalwork artisans and hand-assembled in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Measuring 10.6 cm in diameter, they slide into any décor. The Mod 1 Plus Home Theatre System has five speakers, the Super Eight subwoofer, a handmade stainless steel speaker stand with all the cables and wires needed for set up. A quick pack of two satellite speakers is $239 US. The entire Orb Audio speaker system is modular and upgradable. Each Orb speaker in a system can be made from one, two or four individual orbs, so you can start with a Mod 1 system and upgrade to Mod 2 or Mod 4. www.orbaudio.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Sun

1. INSPIRON DESKTOP, DELL, PRICING TO BE ANNOUNCED

Dell’s new Inspiron desktop lineup coming out this spring is all about colour and customization. Eight colours, the option of slim or mini-tower model, plus a range of options from the processor to memory and storage to HDMI connectivity to a Blu-ray disc drive available on the mini-tower. Prices not yet announced on this new lineup are promised for release later this spring. www.dell.ca.

2. MOTO W233

Renew, Motorola, free with Fido two-year contract, or $65 with prepaid service

Is that a water bottle or a cellphone? A little of both in the first mobile phone to be made using 25-per-cent recycled plastic. And you thought those plastic water bottles were only good for getting your deposit back at Safeway. The plastic phone housing in the Renew is 100-per-cent recyclable so you can chat while keeping your enviro-conscience clear. www.motorola.ca/renew

3. GHP-04NC, NOISE-CANCELLING HEADPHONE, GENIUS, $50 US

Noise-cancelling headphones usually come at a higher price point, so it’s worth checking out the sound quality of the latest ones announced by Genius. Based on the “superposition principle,” the headphones promise to cancel sound from low-frequency sources. Two AAA batteries keep it running for up to 50 hours. www.geniusnetusa.com

4. E-450, OLYMPUS, $649.99, ED 14-42MM F3.5/5.6 ZUIKO DIGITAL ZOOM LENS

Look for it starting in July, the latest entry-level digital single-lens reflex camera from Olympus. At 10 megapixels, it has the same three art filters, pop art, pin hole and soft focus, introduced with Olympus‘ E-30 earlier this year. The LCD is a large view at 6.8 cm (2.7 inches), making it easier to compose and review images. You can look, choose the effect you want, and preview it with perfect shot preview and other features like on-screen autofocus, help make the adjustment from a point-and-shoot camera to a DSLR by displaying the subjects of your shot in focus on the LCD when the shutter is pressed halfway down. www.olympus.com.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Mitch Joel
Sun

You thought this column was going to tell you that you’re missing the boat because your company is not on Twitter or blogging. Wrong. Maybe the problem is that you have not created an iPhone app yet, or that you don’t even know if there is a Facebook page for the brands, products and services that you sell. Wrong again. All of the attention you think you should be spending on online marketing in the many digital channels will bring your company zero return if you don’t have a website that is easy to use and findable by all of the search engines (yes, that includes Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!).

It’s time to get back to basics. It’s almost laughable to think that some companies don’t have a serious and up-to-date website in 2009. No matter what you do, everyone at every level of any organization always goes online to see just who they are doing business with. This could be potential customers, clients, vendors and consultants. As each day passes, we’re seeing just how significant a website is to the overall business strategy for all companies.

Here’s a scenario: You’re having lunch with a business colleague who recommends a new laptop for you to check out. Do you run down to Future Shop or Best Buy? Do you call your IT department and have them fax you over a spec sheet? No. You do what everyone does: You check it out online. You do a quick search, look for some reviews, and empower yourself with more knowledge than any retail clerk at any major electronics retailer could ever have. In fact, when you finally do hit the stores, you are so informed about the product that your advanced questions send the clerk to the exact same spot that you used: The manufacturer’s website.

Your website is becoming the primary connection that most people have with your company and brand. Remember the old saying, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression”? Each and every day, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people are thinking about your company, researching it online, and checking out your website. What does your website really say to that person if it is the first impression?

Here’s the good news: Fixing your website is probably one of the most cost-effective marketing solutions to multiple business challenges. Your online presence is no longer just an interactive brochure (that’s so 1998). Now, more than ever, your corporate website is the gateway to your business. It’s far too easy to get caught up in the latest shiny object to come along, but never let that shiny object distract you from taking a good, serious and hard look at what everyone sees when they come to your online home.

“It’s not that important for us. . . It really isn’t that big of a deal. . . Real people with real business opportunities are going to do more due diligence, and they’re going to connect with us in person.” That’s the most common rebuttal to the “get your website fixed ASAP” argument. But it’s plain and simple arrogance. It also demonstrates a true lack of understanding of the realities of the new business landscape. I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with many venture capital-types, and heard many stories about how they had heard about a particular business –whether they were looking for an investing or potential partnership opportunity. But all bets were off once they went to the business’s website (or lack thereof). The simple conclusion from these high-powered business brokers? How could these companies make good partners or a wise investment if they can’t even get a simple website together?

No phone calls were made. No further inquiries were needed. How many opportunities, sales or partnerships were lost? And the businesses in question would never even know.

The big idea here is to take a step back. Analyse what your current website looks like. Use one of the many free Web analytics tools (Google Analytics or Yahoo Web Analytics) to monitor how many people are coming to your website everyday, how did they find you, what keywords did they use in the search engines or what links to find you? Once you know that, you can start building your site around what matters most to your users. You can write copy in their language (not with your business jargon) and make the site flow better. Make sure that your site is built and programmed with “clean” language that is friendly for the search engines. Review your website, frequently. Buy some friends some pizza and ask them for their candid feedback on what you’re doing online.

Remember, even if your website is not perfect, great design and content will make up for any shortcomings. And having a clean and well-structured website will drive traffic from the search engines. Believe it or not, potential customers are looking for you right now. What are they finding? You, or your competition?

Mitch Joel is president of the digital marketing and communications agency Twist Image.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

The tiny iPhone and iPod Touch have dramatically altered the way programmers are looking at developing video games

ALEX PHAM
Sun

SAN FRANCISCO — Only a few years ago, bigger guns, badder enemies and louder explosives mattered most in video games.

Now, small is beautiful, and Apple Inc.’ s iPhone is largely responsible. The emergence of the iPhone and its phone-less sibling, the iPod Touch, as hand-held g a m e c o n s o l e s h a s s t a r t e d to change the dynamics of the $ 40-billion game software industry. In addition to making titles for iPhones, publishers are studying the thousands of games already available, figuring out what works and applying those lessons to more traditional games.

After years of building large, graphics-intensive blockbusters that come out every few years, developers are starting to make shorter, less expensive games that are released in more frequent instalments. They’re also making iPhone versions of major franchises that tie into the version for the console or computer.

“ The iPhone has changed everything,” said Neil Young, a game developer who last year left one of the industry’s largest publishers, Electronic Arts Inc., to found Ngmoco:), a San Francisco maker of iPhone games.

It’s not just the device that’s having an effect. It’s also Apple’s App Store, an online marketplace where users can browse through 25,000 software applications from thousands of publishers.

Many are games that take advantage of the multi-touch screens, accelerometers and Web connections featured in the iPhone and iPod Touch. On a typical day, six to eight of the 10 bestselling apps are games.

After shoppers submit their credit card information at Apple’s online iTunes store, they can start buying apps from a computer or directly on their devices with a single click, without having to reach for their wallets again.

Since July, consumers have downloaded 800 million apps. Some are free, but many others cost 99 cents to $ 10. ( Apple takes a 30-per-cent cut.)

Video games that cost less than $ 10 are a big change. A typical title for a console or PC typically sells for $ 30 to $ 60. For handheld games on Nintendo Co.’ s DS, games cost $ 20 to $ 35 a pop.

Nintendo recently announced that owners of its forthcoming DSi handheld console would be able to buy downloadable games for as little as $ 2. Nintendo executives say their pricing strategy was formed independently from the App Store, and they are quick to point out how their business is different from Apple’s.

“ A r e w e i n t r i g u e d b y t h e iPhone? Yes,” said Reggie FilsAime, president of Nintendo’s North American business. “ But our approach is fundamentally different. We want to give our customers high-quality, innovative and captivating entertainment. A storefront with 10,000 pieces of content doesn’t do that.”

Analysts see a different story.
“ Nintendo is definitely paying attention,” said Billy Pidgeon, an analyst with IDC. “ It’s pretty obvious from their pricing that Nintendo studies what Apple does.”

Other game companies are also paying attention. EA, which is releasing 14 iPhone titles this year, is starting to explore how iPhone apps can be an extension of its larger games, said Travis Boatman, the Redwood City company’s vice-president of mobile studios.

EA’s Spore Origins game for the iPhone was a stand-alone title meant to boost the visibility of its bigger sibling, Spore for the PC. But two games did not connect, so players couldn’t export virtual creatures from the iPhone game to the PC version. Boatman said future projects were more likely to have those types of crossovers.

“ There’s potentially a lot of money to be made from those connections,” he said, noting that there are more than 17 million iPhones and 13 million iPod Touches in the market. “ You will see this happen more because there are very good business reasons for doing it.”

Pidgeon said that big publishers such as EA are watching the experiments of small studios that have made top-selling games for the iPhone, such as Subatomic Studio’s Fieldrunners, Secret Exit’s Zen Bound and Steve Demeter’s Trism, which generated $ 250,000 in sales in its first two months.

“ They’re seeing that small shops with one or two people can make a hit game,” he said. “ IPhone has taught them that small bets can pay off big.”

The iPhone is also giving developers reasons to rethink their creative approach. Instead of spending two years and more than $ 25 million to develop a title, some developers are looking at releasing multiple episodes over time.

The idea of smaller, cheaper, faster game development isn’t entirely new.

Decades ago, The Sims, from EA, pioneered the notion of selling expansion packs that contained several dozen virtual items such as outfits, pets and furniture, said Bing Gordon, partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture company in Menlo Park, Calif.

And sped-up game development has its roots in the mid1990s with Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who taught his students to make lots of quick prototypes of their ideas, rather than trying to hone one perfect project.

“ The real breakthrough is iTunes and the App Store,” a section within iTunes, Gordon said. “ It suddenly opens the floodgates” for consumers to buy smaller games in massive quantities.

Lorne Lanning, president of Oddworld Inhabitants, a game developer in San Luis Obispo, Calif., said he liked the iPhone’s ability to reach millions of players who can offer feedback on a game’s features.

Developers can take that information and refine current versions with software updates or build it into their next installment, Lanning said.

Charisse Jones
USA Today

A sea change may be coming to cyberspace with Web addresses ending in anything from .a to .z. That has businesses increasingly worried they will have to spend millions to guard their brand names.

The familiar .com, .net, .org and 18 other suffixes — officially “generic top-level domains” — could be joined by a seemingly endless stream of new ones next year under a landmark change approved last summer by the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, the entity that oversees the Web’s address system.

Tourists might find information about the Liberty Bell, for example, at a site ending in .philly. A rapper might apply for a Web address ending in .hiphop.

“Whatever is open to the imagination can be applied for,” says Paul Levins, ICANN’s vice president of corporate affairs. “It could translate into one of the largest marketing and branding opportunities in history.”

Many businesses see more problems than profits — opportunities for scammers to exploit brand names and mislead consumers, or even attack brands.

“It costs companies hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, to enforce their trademark rights in the existing space, so imagine how expensive it will be when Verizon gets infringed in a thousand new domains,” says Sarah Deutsch, vice president and associate general counsel for Verizon. “Many businesses feel this is a form of extortion.”

To beat a competitor to the punch, a company might decide it needs to control a new generic domain, such as .cereal or .detergent, but it would be costly. The currently proposed application fee is $185,000, says Levins, plus an annual “continuance” fee of $25,000. If more than one company wants a suffix, there could be a bidding war.

A more likely scenario would be for a business just to register site Web addresses pairing their brand name with any new extensions, such as fios.telephone or gillette.razor. But even that defense could cost marketers up to $1.5 billion, estimates the not-for-profit Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse.

Many businesses already do that, usually then redirecting users from, say “product”.net to the product’s primary website ending in .com. More generic domains will add to that cost.

Companies will “do it more out of competitive necessity than any real desire or ability to meet consumer needs or improve their business, and that’s a bad reason,” says Peter Fader, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “I would bet a large number of registrations would be purely that — people carving out turf they don’t want other people to have, but not necessarily turf they can do anything good with.”

The turf war could be endless, says Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers trade group of big marketers. “Think about some of the companies out there. Some have hundreds, maybe thousands of brands. … It’s really open-ended.”

Levins says ICANN is still taking comments on rules to protect trademarks, secure the Web and solidify a process to challenge new extensions as offensive.

ICANN won’t take new generic domain applications “until we’ve addressed those concerns,” he says, adding that the earliest would be the end of this year.

While some fret about new, more specific generic domains, others see opportunity.

“There’s prestige to it,” says film producer Minor Childers, who co-founded Dot Eco to push for a .eco domain for use by environmentalists. Al Gore is among its supporters. “It’s of value to someone who wants to say something about their identity.”

Such value would take effort to establish, however. At the end of 2008, 90.4 million of the 177 million registered website names ended in .com or .net, according to VeriSign, the company that manages those extensions.

Liliana Gil, director of global marketing services with Johnson & Johnson, doesn’t see the common suffixes being overtaken but believes, “This could be a fun new way to communicate a message digitally. …You could have tylenol.children, tylenol.pm.”

A new extension likely would need a marketing push. Generic top-level domains, such as .travel, approved in 2005 and .biz, approved in 2001, have been slow to catch on, says Ron Jackson, editor of Domain Name Journal.

“.Com was the only choice in the early years of the Internet, so that has been branded in the public’s consciousness,” he says. “If you’re a small businessman and you buy a new extension you’ve got an uphill fight. … It’s going to be like being invisible on the Web.”

Sun

EOS Rebel T1i Digital SLR camera, Canon, $1,000

The latest addition to Canon’s Rebel lineup is its first digital single-lens reflex camera with full high-definition video capture. It also has a 15.1-megapixel CMOS sensor, the combo making it a good entry-level for the photo enthusiast making that first step up to a DSLR. The camera has a built-in microphone and an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) to display images on your high-def TV. Expected availability is early May with the body-only configuration at $1,000 and a kit version with Canon’s EF-S18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens at $1,100. www.canon.ca.

Dx9000 TouchSmart Business PC, HP, $1,750

HP’s touch-enabled PC for business, the dx9000 TouchSmart comes with Windows Vista Business 64, an Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor, four gigabytes of memory and a 320-GB hard drive. It has a 22-inch diagonal high-definition widescreen LCD display that tilts up or down, a built-in slot-load SuperMulti DVD drive for creating or viewing CDs and DVDs, and integrated stereo speakers. Also built-in is a five-in-one media card reader for transferring files, photos and videos from memory cards. www.hp.com/canada.

Talk Jack, YUBZ, $19.50 US

A new USB adapter turns your YUBZ retro handset into a phone you can use for Internet calls over your computer. Available in pink and black, it works with VoIP services such as Skype, Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger. An answering button on the handset lets you pick up and hang up with one touch, and it has a volume slider to adjust the noise level. www.yubz.com.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

 

Conficker may have infected 50 million computers

Tiffany Crawford
Sun

Wednesday was D-Day for malicious Conficker, the super-worm that was supposed to be eating its way through computers worldwide, but no systems crashed despite sensationalized fears the latest scourge would wreak havoc on the Internet.

The worm was activated on April Fool’s Day, but experts said Wednesday that although nothing noticeable had occurred computer users are not off the hook.

As the worm slithered through millions of infected machines running Microsoft’s Windows operating systems, computers were expected to try and phone home to a master control centre by logging on to thousands of Internet domain names.

Patrik Runald, chief security adviser for F-Secure, estimated more than 50 million computers were infected worldwide, meaning the worm could still be lurking on computers. “That is happening right now,” he said on Wednesday. “Obviously April 1st has already hit Asia so we’ve had over 24 hours of these computers reaching out to these websites and nothing has happened.”

The worm infects computers by taking control of the operating system. Then it spreads like cancer, ravaging security services by attacking vulnerabilities in the Windows system and blocking access to security websites.

Runald, whose company works as part of an industry alliance of security companies and Internet service providers called the Conficker Working Group, anticipated the worm will continue for weeks.

“Just because nothing happened today doesn’t mean the danger is over and we can relax because something could happen at any moment.”

But just what will happen baffles even the most tech-savvy individuals.

No one knows who created it but the president of Canada‘s Internet Registration Authority says it’s likely a group of elite hackers whose motivation is old-fashioned greed rather than something like bringing down the Internet.

The hackers could be collecting credit card numbers stored in confidential documents on infected computers, which could generate millions of dollars, said Byron Holland.

He added there is no doubt in his mind the worm’s authors picked April Fool’s Day intentionally to launch the worm to create a smokescreen by making people think it’s a prank, thereby lulling people into a false sense of security.

“This particular piece of code is extremely sophisticated, clearly written by software engineers,” he said. “This is not an unconscious decision. The fact is it gets people wondering if it’s a joke, creates confusion and people don’t take it seriously.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Jon Swartz
USA Today

SAN FRANCISCO — For one day, at least, Conficker was more April Fools’ prank than devastating PC menace.

The computer worm, which has quickly tainted millions of PCs and was programmed to possibly inflict more damage Wednesday, came and went without any major disruptions.

But that doesn’t mean the threat is finished.

TECHNOLOGY LIVE: How to tell if you have the Conficker worm

“It’s like smoking,” says Mike Rothman, senior vice president of strategy at eIQnetworks, a security-software maker. “It may not kill you today, but it could in weeks, months or years.” The scope of Conficker’s reach and the fact it could be programmed to attack machines later make it a lingering threat, he says.

The much-hyped malicious software code has exploited a security hole in Microsoft’s Windows operating system to infect 3 million to 12 million PCs the past several months. Infected PCs are stitched into bots, a network of compromised computers usually controlled by criminals.

Examination of the code reveals the bots were programmed to follow instructions on April 1. When activated, the worm could instruct the bots to steal personal information, wipe hard drives, spread e-mail fraud schemes or remain dormant until a later date.

So far, the infections haven’t produced many glitches, computer-security experts say. Cisco Systems detected little activity.

Hoopla surrounding the potential mayhem of Conficker has been compared with the Y2K bug, when the dawn of the 21st century was thought to threaten computer networks by misinterpreting the new year as 1900 rather than 2000. Not much happened then, either.

Consumers have largely been shielded from Conficker if they update their PCs with a security fix provided by Microsoft since October. In February, Microsoft offered a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the worm.

Some companies, government agencies and schools that don’t properly patch PCs are more at risk, says Roger Thompson, chief research officer at security-software maker AVG Technologies.

Consumers and corporations should be “much more concerned about unrecognized (PC) threats,” says John Pescatore, an analyst at market researcher Gartner.

Millions of computers are routinely infected with other viruses that are potentially nastier than Conficker, McAfee CEO Dave DeWalt says.

Gmail, Yammer allow employees to ‘commute’ to work from Tahiti

Gillian Shaw
Sun

At a time of tightened budgets and economic uncertainty, businesses are casting around for ways to save money. Some may not have to look far.

Budgets for those fancy boardrooms, the humongous telephone system, expensive real estate, the lost hours spent in long commutes, can be shaved considerably by transforming bricks and mortar into virtual offices.

It’s not an option being looked at only by tech companies and nimble startups. Even such traditional operations as Telus are sending employees home from office cubicles and call centres to save money on real estate, improve employees’ working conditions and shrink the company’s environmental footprint.

Telus now has 750 agents working at home, with that number to climb to 1,100 by the end of this year.

Entrepreneur Steve Jagger recently told members of the Vancouver chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (http://www.eonetwork.org) how his companies, Ubertor.com and Reachd.com, trimmed down from spacious Yaletown digs at some $7,500 a month to virtual offices spread across Canada and overseas.

When employees meet in person, it could be in Whistler, on a beach in Tahiti, in a downtown coffee shop, in airports. “Wherever there is Internet service we can run the business,” Jagger said.

Many of the tools he used in creating a virtual office are free or low-cost. What tools work for you depend on your business. While EO attendee Ian Daburn isn’t about to close his hair salons, he immediately implemented some of the virtual office tools to save money and make his business more efficient.

Here are Jagger’s top 10 tools for the virtual office:

1. Gmail. Web-based, with lots of bells and whistles and best of all, free — unless you want the $50-per-year-per-user Google apps version, which offers more tools plus a support number to call. Gmail also gives you video chat so you can actually see whether those employees are sitting on a beach in Tahiti or not, plus Web-based applications like Google docs for writing, spreadsheets and presentations.

2. Yammer. Twitter with a business twist. A closed circle, Yammer lets you talk to people in your company, posting updates as you would on Twitter, only in a secured setting and not in plain view of the entire Internet world. It comes in three versions: free, $1 per user per month to the gold level at $5 per user. www.yammer.com.

3. Mail Boxes, Etc. Launching a startup in your bedroom in your parents’ house could lend a less-than-corporate image when Mom answers the door to a client delivering a cheque. Jagger turned to Mail Boxes, Etc. Saving money plus trees, the company has never had to change the address on its stationery through several moves. www.mailboxesetc.com.

4. Google Voice. If you didn’t sign up with Grand Central before it was taken over by Google, you’ll have to wait to use this phone system, which delivers via a website everything a phone system does. Currently only available for Grand Central members, you can sign up to be contacted as soon as Google Voice becomes open to all. www.google.com/voice.

5. Slim Timer. Another free product that also comes in a paid version, Slim Timer puts your time sheets online. Tasks can be broken out into specific functions, thereby letting you review just how much time various jobs are taking, and you can decide whether or not it is worth the cost of automating them or redirecting staff resources elsewhere. http://slimtimer.com/

6. Live Chat. “Live chat allows potential clients to interact with the website before they are ready to pick up the phone,” Jagger said. “People are scared to call sales. With Live Chat, they can ask their questions and when they are ready to talk to sales, they’ll call.”

7. Wikis. Move the company manual online and make it an evolving document, not something carved in stone. A wiki is an online website that can have content added and can be edited by users. There is both free and paid wiki software available. Try sites.google.com for one free offering or for a comparison of wiki software, check out http://www.wikimatrix.org/

8. Meetup.com. Everyone has a sales pitch. Consumers are demanding more and meetup.com is one way to bring people with common interests together. Ubertor.com used to pay commissioned salespeople to drive around meeting real estate agents and try to sign them up. Now people come to meet-ups organized by the company, all with an educational purpose and no sales pitch. Check out meetup.com to find meet-ups covering a range of issues and subjects in your area. It’s also a good way to network and get out of your virtual office.

9. Twitter. If you’re not listening to what your customers, potential customers and others in the community are saying about you, someone else will. Twitter is free, sign up, start listening and start interacting online.

10. Monitoring tools. Free and simple tools such as Google Alerts and Twilerts can keep you up to date on what is being said online about you and your company. More sophisticated tools are also available. Most recently Salesforce.com announced this week the addition of Twitter to its customer service platform Service Cloud. See www.google.com/alerts and www.twilert.com.

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