We can’t live with email; we can’t live without it. Indispensable to most businesses today, email can be a millstone around the necks of office workers and the corporate IT professionals who serve them. Bloated in-boxes conceal rather than expose critical email messages, and vast archives of spam and useless messages clog servers and network pipes. "RSS" stands for several terms, the most widely accepted of which is Really Simple Syndication. There are a large number of RSS readers–browser utilities, for the most part, free–that retrieve and present RSS feeds to PC users. RSS made its first appearance seven years ago in Netscape Communications’ Netscape Communicator browser and has since attracted a big following among tech-savvy consumers. The technology is poised for a surge in enterprise adoption in 2007 as Microsoft implements more robust support for RSS in its Outlook email client and SharePoint Server and IBM’s Lotus division bolsters RSS support in Notes Domino 8, due in mid-2007.

Sounding a little like the Y2K concerns at the turn of this century, the U.S. Congress’s expansion of daylight-saving time, which moves the clock change from early April to March 11, may cause some VARs to lose a little sleep. The change will require patches for many software products, some which will require manual installations. But customers shouldn’t expect VARs to be pushing such patches very hard. "People will wait and see what will really happen because of Y2K," said Jim Locke, president of JWLocke and Associates, a VAR based in Pasadena, Calif. "Everybody shouted that the world was going to come to an end with Y2K, and of course it didn’t."

How do you make chips more powerful? Take stuff out, according to a new proposal from Hewlett-Packard. Researchers from HP Labs plan to publish a paper this month that outlines how it may become possible to substantially increase the performance of certain types of chips, and reduce their power consumption, by replacing the communication wires inside chips with an overhead grid of tiny nanowires. The architectural concept could prove a novel way to help tackle one of the major problems facing semiconductor designers–how to continue to shrink chips and the components inside chips.

Sage Software has unveiled new software aimed at cutting costs and increasing efficiency for small and midsize businesses. Sage TimeSheet–MAS 90 Edition, now available through certified Sage business partners, will integrate Sage TimeSheet into Sage MAS 90 and Sage MAS 2000. Among its other functions, the software will eliminate duplicate data entry by using single point access through Sage TimeSheet, which automatically transfers information into Sage MAS 90 and MAS 200 modules such as Job Cost and Payroll, Sage officials said.

DYS Analytics, provider of innovative products and services that manage today’s top messaging platforms, announced that it has shipped its Email CONTROL! Enforcer for IBM Notes and Domino to tighten control over outbound email and improve the efficiency of corporate email infrastructures. Formerly code-named Email Guardian, Email CONTROL! Enforcer delivers email management features that provide the highest quality email service for all users while actively enforcing corporate policies.

Up dramatically from prior quarters, 72 percent of CIOs reported that they intended to increase their spending with external service providers in 2007, according to the quarterly CIO User Survey released by Merrill Lynch on Jan. 9. Up from 46 percent in the third quarter of 2006 and 58 percent 12 months earlier, as spending on IT services represents an increasing part of overall IT budgets, it is likely that offshore outsourcing will also be on the rise.

Blancco, provider of professional data destruction and computer reuse management solutions, has just released Blancco–Stealth Cleaner 2.0, a technologically advanced erasure software. It is highly secure and is designed to safeguard your data if your laptop or PC is lost or stolen. The software is ideal for securing logistics, a critical phase in the equipment lifecycle where an alarming number of PCs are misplaced or stolen. The unique automatic lock and erase function renders data recovery impossible ensuring maximum security.

Adobe Systems announced the availability of Adobe Acrobat Connect, the first hosted Web conferencing service to offer "always-on" personal meeting rooms. Acrobat Connect enables knowledge workers to instantly meet and conduct business online through real-time, interactive Web conferencing that is simple to access and easy to use. Unlike other Web conferencing solutions, Acrobat Connect enables users to choose an easy-to-remember Web address for their online personal meeting room that is unique to them, much like a phone number or email address. Accessing a personal meeting room is easy and instant, requiring little more than a Web browser and the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player software, installed on more than 97 percent of Internet-connected computers worldwide. Because there is no cumbersome software to download, knowledge workers can easily hold spontaneous, ad-hoc meetings that are virtually hassle-free to join.

Hewlett-Packard is scheduled to unveil a series of software management tools designed to keep track of assets within an enterprise’s data center. The new software, which includes improvements to HP’s Insight Control Environment, Systems Insight Manager and Insight Power Manager, will work with the company’s x86 line of servers, which includes the HP ProLiant and BladeSystem systems. The software will also work with Microsoft Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems.

Pro-softnet has launched its new IDrive-E service–targeted at the mass audience who wish to backup data for free. IDrive-E is an online consumer backup offering. This offering comes absolutely free of cost to consumers for storage of up to 2 GB and the IDrive-E unlimited plan allows consumers to backup unlimited amount of data for a modest $4.95 per month.