The Department of Homeland Security has revamped its Ready.gov site, a repository of information designed to help Americans to prepare for threats ranging from terrorist attacks to extreme heat waves. The Ready site was initially launched in early 2003. New features include information for pet owners as well as the elderly and disabled, along with a visual makeover featuring plenty of green backgrounds and Flash animation. The overhauled site also aims to improve access to emergency preparedness information at the state and local level, in order to address region-specific threats like wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes.

After years of hoping to crush Linux, Microsoft is trying to show it can get along with its open-source rival. The software maker is announcing a partnership Monday night that will make sure its next virtualization technology can run versions of Linux that have been adapted for a different, open-source virtualization foundation called Xen. It is linking up with commercial software maker XenSource to offer joint development and support for the two technologies, which take a similar approach.

Malicious software writers are increasingly using open-source methodologies when developing their code, according to security company McAfee. In its Global Threat Report for 2006, McAfee warned that more hackers are sharing source code and ideas freely. This includes distributing source code with documented explanations and annotations of how that code works, which helps programmers adapt it. McAfee said that this can be an extremely effective way of developing code, both legitimate and malicious.

Novell will try to recover from earlier Linux fumbles by releasing major updates, adding Xen virtualization software to its enterprise server product and glitzy graphics to the desktop counterpart. The biggest change is arriving with Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10, the first major version of Linux to incorporate the Xen hypervisor software. Xen is designed to boost a computer’s efficiency by letting it run multiple operating systems simultaneously.

The International Monetary Fund warned of a jump in the number of fraudulent emails and communications claiming to be from or affiliated with the Washington-based multilateral lender. There has been an apparent spike in such messages recently involving people in the United States targeting recent immigrants and people in cities, an IMF official said. The IMF said U.S. authorities have been informed.

The White House has set an early August deadline for government agencies to encrypt sensitive data, after the embarrassing theft of millions of veterans’ personal information. However, experts warn a quick technology fix will not cure security problems. While encryption and other security technology can help, slipshod handling of data and equipment, poor training and the slow moving government bureaucracy are seen as the main causes of vulnerability.

McAfee, without realizing it, has fixed a serious flaw in its popular product for managing security software, the security vendor said Friday. The flaw affects McAfee’s ePolicy Orchestrator (ePO) Common Management Agent prior to the current 3.5.5 version, technology used to manage security software installed on about 40 million PCs in large organizations, McAfee said. A successful attack that exploits the flaw could result in the full compromise of a targeted computer, the company said.

We continue our popular series of interviews. This week, rather than interviewing a Business Partner, we had the opportunity to talk with an actual customer using Lotus technologies. Bill Jenkins is the Senior Director of Information Technology for UNICCO Service Company. UNICCO’s a 19,000 employee, privately held services firm that uses Lotus technologies heavily within it’s IT organization. We had a chance to talk to Bill about his impressions of Portal 6 and how UNICCO’s using Portal and Lotus tech throughout the organization.

Read this DominoPower article.

Negotiating or renegotiating your salary is, to say the least, a delicate dance. You want the folks that control the purse strings to show you the money, and if your workplace is like most, they’d rather keep it in their seemingly gold-lined coffers. Your company might be willing to bend a little, but will avoid disclosing how much from the outset. You’re worried about asking for too much, thus seeming presumptuous; but if you ask for too little, you may be selling yourself short. But it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. With a little bit of preparation, advice from bosses and experts, and that old fallback, common sense, you’d be surprised to find income negotiation wiggle room where it might have seemed impossible.

Four years ago, a former FBI project manager lamented the state of the agency’s primitive electronic case-management system. "There’s no mouse; there’s no icon," the official told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2002, according to a recent government report. "There’s no year 2000 look to it. It’s all very keyboard-intensive." Not much has changed since then. According to recent reports, a string of managerial blunders, financial indiscretions and assorted snags have accompanied efforts to modernize the agency’s computer systems.