7/15/2008
Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format, which was technically approved in April as an international standard (ISO/IEC 29500), may be on its way toward surviving an appeals process -- the last challenge to its legitimacy as a standard.
7/10/2008
After some speculation that the final release of SQL Server 2008 may slip yet another quarter, Microsoft said its next-generation database is on pace to ship in the third quarter.
7/8/2008
The University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science is moving away from direct-attached RAIDs to a virtualized SAN environment using StorMagic's SM Series iSCSI Storage Area Network.
7/7/2008
The University of Utah has acquired a site license of CyProof's ErrNET for online document proofreading. ErrNET runs on CyProof's servers and is accessed through the user's Web browser. To check a document, users upload their files to the Web site, the cost is calculated, payment is requested, the document is processed, and the results are presented for download. The service works with PDF files.
7/2/2008
In May in San Francisco, experts from leading universities, libraries, and research institutions around the world met as part of an ongoing effort to address a pressing issue: archiving the world's history, right up to today.
7/2/2008
Cognos, which IBM acquired in January, has released an update to its business intelligence software that will run on the Linux operating system on IBM System z mainframes. IBM Cognos 8 BI was being developed by the two companies prior to the acquisition, but assimilation of Cognos into IBM accelerated development.
6/30/2008
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has a new data center built on Dell PowerEdge M600 blade servers and EqualLogic PS5000X storage arrays. The data center will allow the school to triple both its mailbox quota and the storage capacity available to faculty and students, as well as provide researchers the ability to operate a Linux grid cluster powered by the blade servers.
6/27/2008
The Hesburgh Libraries of the University of Notre Dame will be implementing Primo from Ex Libris Group as a discovery system. The school, a long-time customer of Ex Libris library automation applications, will be using the search and retrieval software to provide a single interface for discovery and delivery of local and remote resources, including books, journal articles and digital objects within the libraries' collections.
6/26/2008
Three colleges--Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom--have gone public with their use of virtualization software from VMware to manage growth and prepare for disaster recovery.
6/26/2008
Microsoft is really serious about this Monday, June 30, being the end date for selling Windows XP licenses with new computers -- so serious that Senior Vice President Bill Veghte wrote a letter clarifying some of the details.
6/26/2008
Google seems to have bested Microsoft in the land down under, according to various accounts of an Australian public school system e-mail contract deal. The deal, announced Tuesday, ousts an e-mail system based on Microsoft's products in favor of using Google's Gmail.
6/26/2008
Three months after the initial release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft has issued what it calls a "reliability update" to sweep out any glitches that may pop up in a complex stack of applications on the new OS version.
6/25/2008
Adobe has now released Acrobat 9, announced earlier this month, along with an updated Creative Suite (version 3.3), which incorporates Acrobat 9 Pro software. The new version expands functionality for students in the areas of collaboration and the creation of electronic portfolios.
6/25/2008
Microsoft has released Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.0, a file translator that allows users to open, edit, and convert Open XML files created in Office 2008 for Mac or Office 2007 for Windows for use in earlier versions of the suite, including Office 2004 11.4 and Office v. X 10.1.9 or later.
6/24/2008
Pentaho, a maker of open business intelligence (BI) software, is moving away from the Mozilla Public License for its BI product. The company announced this month that Version 2 alpha, as well as subsequent versions of its Pentaho BI platform, will be released under the GNU GPL Version 2 license.
6/23/2008
On Thursday, Version 11.0 GM of the openSuSE Linux-based operating system was publicly released. The open source OS, sponsored by Novell, contains "200 new features," improved installation and packaging, plus a few options for the desktop user interface.
6/19/2008
Scheduling when various software applications on your campus should exchange data among themselves might not seem like the most glamorous of needs, but it's essential--and can waste large amounts of IT time and resources when it has to be done by hand.
6/19/2008
Virginia Tech University's Outreach Information Services (OIS) has deployed the Kaseya User State Management (KUSM) module, extending its use of Kaseya IT automation software to include the setting up and deployment of user profiles. Administrators are now able to create, update, migrate and back up user settings and apply the images to workstations remotely through the Kaseya application.
6/17/2008
Microsoft has joined the Open Source Census as a sponsor, according to an announcement issued by OpenLogic, which founded the group. The Open Source Census project tracks the use of open source software by the business community. Survey results are updated on an ongoing basis at the group's Web site.
6/17/2008
The University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton has selected Perceptive Software's ImageNow application for an institution-wide document management project. UNT will initially roll out ImageNow in nine departments, ultimately implementing it across the university.
6/16/2008
Del Mar College has selected Datatel Colleague to create a Web-based self-service capability for constituents and enhanced campus management tools for employees. The Datatel technology solution replaces a legacy administration system.
6/16/2008
Digital education and learning-enhancement company Emantras announced its partnership with digital printer Odyssey Press. The partnership with Odyssey will add on-demand printing for end users of Emantras' REED (Rapid e-Book and e-Journal) platform.
6/16/2008
IT pros wanting to try out the latest Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization technology can now get the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) version via Windows Update. This optional version, which contains minor improvements, was first announced by Microsoft last month.
6/12/2008
A speech given Tuesday by Neelie Kroes, the European commissioner for competition, skewered Microsoft without mentioning the company by name. In the speech, Kroes makes reference to Microsoft's outlaw status in failing to meet the European Commission's competition guidelines.
6/11/2008
Sun Microsystems released the latest version of its business integration and service-oriented architecture package Tuesday. Version 6 of the Java Composite Application Platform Suite (JCAPS) bundles several technologies designed to provide "an open and extensible platform" for developing software infrastructures using an SOA approach.