IBM Lotus announced that its flagship Lotus Notes product is ##now available on the Linux operating system.## With this news, IBM becomes the first major technology vendor to provide native Linux support on the desktop, providing tens of millions of Lotus Notes users worldwide with the option to move to a Linux desktop and escape from being "locked in" to Microsoft’s proprietary model, disruptive upgrades and costly licensing fees. Most refreshing for customers and partners, IBM is delivering on its promise of Lotus Notes on Linux nearly a year ahead of schedule by leveraging open standards and the Eclipse platform. This is in sharp contrast to Microsoft, which has recently been plagued by a number of high-profile product delays that have angered customers and opened the door for them to evaluate competitive offerings in the marketplace. Lotus Notes on Linux–which runs exactly the same as Lotus Notes does on Windows or Macintosh–will help unlock the power of the Linux desktop. It uses the same technology underlying the Notes "Hannover" release slated for 2007, except customers gain Linux support right now and at no additional cost.

Desktop collaboration software options for the Linux platform will get a boost when IBM releases its Lotus Notes on Linux product on July 24. Arthur Fontaine, IBM Lotus’ senior offering manager, told eWEEK that this is the industry’s first business-grade collaboration software to support Linux on the desktop. Now the millions of Lotus Notes users across the world will have access to software that allows an open desktop alternative to proprietary desktop operating systems, Fontaine said. IBM Lotus Notes on Linux, now available as part of Notes Version 7, supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Update 3, with support for Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 to be delivered to customers within 90 days.

Lotus Notes on Linux 7.0.1, which will be generally available July 24, is based on the Eclipse open-source framework. That technology will also be used in the next update to Lotus Notes, code-named Hannover, which is expected to ship next year. "Lotus Notes on Linux was going to come out at the same time as Hannover, but we decided to roll it out earlier. There is a lot of market demand now from our customers, especially in Germany, India, China and Brazil," said Ed Brill, head of IBM’s worldwide Lotus Notes sales. The new desktop software, tailored to the Linux open-source operating system, is designed to help corporations that choose not to use proprietary operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS. And once the Hannover version is released, the software will be able to function as a soup-to-nuts productivity tool, IBM said.

With IBM announcing the retirement of a slew of exams, CertFX is providing many of these free to encourage people to update their certifications prior to them retiring. In addition, CertFX has added two Volume Packages for direct purchase from the Web.

Britain on Thursday approved the extradition a computer expert accused by the United States of perpetrating the world’s "biggest military hack of all time." Gary McKinnon was arrested in June last year following charges by U.S. prosecutors that he illegally accessed 97 U.S. government computers, including the Pentagon, Army, Navy and NASA systems, and causing $700,000 worth of damage. Interior Minister John Reid has signed an order for his extradition, his ministry said.

Though you may have been "googling" people for years, the verb you were using was technically slang, until recently. On Thursday, Merriam-Webster announced its latest update, and the new science and technology words added to the venerable dictionary include agritourism, biodiesel, mouse potato, ringtone and spyware. And google is defined as a transitive verb meaning "to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web." While the entry retains capitalization in explaining the word’s etymology–"Google, trademark for a search engine"–the verb google is lowercase.

The recent announcement, that of Ray Ozzie replacing Bill Gates as Chief Technology Officer, made mainstream TV news programs and newspaper articles around the world. What does it mean for the tech industry? Senior Technical Editor Mick Moignard has the long view.

Read this DominoPower article.

Hewlett-Packard is taking a cue from hackers to help protect corporate systems. The company plans to launch a penetration-testing service for businesses in October that will use the same techniques as hackers to gain access to its customers’ machines. However, the exploit code it will use will be controlled and will not propagate itself as a worm would.

PNY Technologies has introduced its new flash drive Attache Pro. Attache Pro will be available in 1GB, 2GB and 4GB, allowing you to transfer your big presentations, charts or videos in few seconds. The Attache Pro allows you to protect your data thanks to the Secure Lock software. The easy to use, Secure Lock function will then enable you to set a password to prevent unauthorized read or write access to all or part of your data.

Each day this month, a prominent security expert will highlight a new vulnerability found in one of the major Internet browsers. HD Moore, the creator of Metasploit Framework, a tool that helps test whether a system is safe from intrusion, has dubbed July the Month of Browser Bugs. Already, the security researcher has featured five security flaws, three for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and one apiece for Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple Computer’s Safari. Moore noted that one of the IE bugs appeared to have been recently patched.