Hewlett-Packard’s decision to drop the OpenView and Mercury brand names is part of efforts to build the brand equity of HP Software, says a company official. During HP’s Software Universe event earlier this month in Vienna, Austria, company officials confirmed plans to replace the Mercury and OpenView brands with the HP Software sticker.

For years, the Internet’s technical constraints went hand-in-hand with the realities of Internet usage. At first, most people viewed Web pages but did little to create or change them. Web journals, photo sites and video sharing didn’t come until later. Even when users had a need to send information–an email here, a shopping transaction there–the amount of data was small. But as those consumers evolve into contributors and require better upload speeds, many of the old technical constraints remain. Consider DSL services from phone companies.

A Department of Homeland Security program that linked details on millions of air travelers with profiles drawn from commercial databases was plagued by "privacy missteps" that misled the public, a new government report concludes. The Transportation Security Agency, operating under the auspices of Homeland Security, had publicly pledged two years ago–in official notices describing the Secure Flight program–that it "will not receive" or have access to dossiers on American travelers compiled by a Beltway contractor. That promise turned out to be untrue, according to a report published Friday by DHS’ privacy office. The commercial data "made its way directly to TSA, contrary to the express statements in the fall privacy notices about the Secure Flight program," the report says.

When the majority of people talk about work, it’s almost undoubtedly followed up with a complaint. From "Dilbert" comics to the movie "Office Space," the grumblings are remarkably similar: too little pay, too many hours, no respect, bad chairs, mean bosses, stifled creativity, under-funded projects, lousy equipment and an assault of busy work. Last month, eWEEK editorial asked more than a dozen IT professionals about the worst job they’d ever had and the seemingly most unusual thing happened: more than two-thirds came back saying they hadn’t had an IT job they didn’t like.

Securities regulators on Dec. 19 filed a disciplinary complaint against one of the nation’s largest investment firms because, at best, it wasn’t sure what email was backed up. The worst-case scenario has Morgan Stanley telling investors that their email records were destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City, while knowing that the backup records of those transactions were intact. Although the central facts of the case are in dispute–Morgan Stanley’s position is that the existence of the backup tapes was disclosed while the National Association of Securities Dealers says the disclosure was not made–the big-picture message is Morgan Stanley wasn’t really sure what email copies existed, what time period they covered and where they were.

Jeremy Allison, a leading Samba developer and well-known open-source speaker, has decided to leave Novell because of his objections to the Microsoft/Novell patent agreement. In his public letter of resignation, Allison said, "This has been a very difficult decision, but one I feel I have no choice but to make."

Disk drive sales leader Seagate Technology continued its expansion-by-acquisition strategy with the announcement that it will acquire privately held EVault, a provider of online backup services, in an all-cash transaction for about $185 million. With the deal, Seagate significantly augments its service business, which includes data recovery, online backup/recovery and archiving for SMBs (small and midsize businesses).

Storage media provider FujiFilm revealed that it has joined forces with IBM to create a tape cartridge with 700GB of uncompressed storage capacity. The technology was developed for use in the IBM System Storage TS1120 Tape Drive, introduced in 2005, and now the first enterprise-grade tape system to use the 700 GB cartridges.

The key to project success is learning from what works as well as what doesn’t work. Baseline has compiled a list of best practices drawn from nearly 230 case studies they have written in the last five years.

It was a year full of transitions and surprises, and the next year looks likely to bring more of the same. Here’s a look at some of eWEEK’s most interesting stories from 2006.