New Year’s resolutions. We all make and, generally, break them each year. But, since it’s yet another new year, I resolve to try again. In this delightful article, Contributing Nancy Hand gives us her ten favorite New Year’s resolutions.

Read this DominoPower article.

Once upon a time, when DOS walked the earth, the command line was the primary user interface for most of our computers. Then, Windows came along, and Microsoft seemed set on leaving the command prompt to dry up and wither into obscurity. Fortunately, Microsoft has again turned its attention to the command line and, in so doing, has produced one of the most compelling new Windows features eWEEK Labs has ever had the pleasure to test: Windows PowerShell.

Siemens Communications, a division of Siemens AG, announced that the company is extending its unified communications platform, OpenScape, to IBM’s Lotus Sametime. Currently OpenScape is designed to work with Microsoft products only. The new application, which features click-to-contact, click-to-conference, advanced presence, and instant messaging, is designed to work closely with Siemens SIP based telephony products, including their wireless VOIP (voice over IP) phones.

While a gender wage gap may be alive and kicking among technology workers, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction among executive-level IT professionals in 2006, according to the annual salary survey released on Jan. 24 by New York-based Dice, a career site for IT and engineering professionals. The report also noted a continued occurrence of gender salary gap in technology, where women earned on average 9.7 percent less than men in 2006. This has narrowed slightly from the year prior when the difference was 10.9 percent.

The newest wireless LAN specification–802.11n–isn’t ratified yet, but that’s not stopping vendors from releasing products based on a draft version of it. Is this gear worth the gamble? Not if you expect your wireless experience to be easy, reliable or consistent, eWEEK Labs’ tests reveal. The 802.11n spec promises throughput well north of 100M bps–a tempting proposition for users whose performance thirst cannot be slaked. But products based on the draft version of the spec may not be compatible with the shipping spec, which means that users could be looking at significant upgrades or even total overhauls of the draft-based gear once "real" 802.11n products are released (sometime next year).

The continued rise of IT threats that seek to trick even the most careful, experienced PC users ranks among the top issues highlighted by software maker CA in its latest online security research report. Published on Jan. 25, the CA 2007 Internet Threat Outlook highlights the most pressing online security trends projected to have an impact over the next 12 months by researchers at the IT systems management and authentication applications provider.

Cloudmark added a new feature to its Cloudmark Authority 2.0 security tool to help Internet service providers reduce spam. Cloudmark’s Active Scan is able to block the vast majority of unwanted email by allowing service providers to filter unread messages against up-to-the-minute lists of known attacks. Every minute, Authority 2.0 updates local caches of message fingerprints, allowing a simple but sophisticated rescan to be performed locally by checking header information against these caches.

IBM and Freescale Semiconductor are working together to research and develop 45-nanometer chip technology that will find its first practical applications in consumer devices, such as cell phones and other handheld devices. The two companies will develop this 45-nanometer manufacturing process with an eye toward chips that will have low power consumption but yield high performance.

Robert Bohannon, a Durham, North Carolina molecular scientist, has developed caffeinated doughnuts. Bobby Boy, you’re a god, man, you’re a god!

A former Hewlett-Packard executive accused by the company of stealing trade secrets is now saying that he was instructed by the company’s management to spy on rival Dell. Karl Kamb Jr., previously HP’s vice president of business development and strategy, was named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by HP in 2005. It alleges that onetime HP employees illegally started a rival flat-screen TV company while still working at HP and it is claiming up to $100 million in damages.