The awful truth about technology projects is that the blunders become visible overnight–your main consultant pulls out, or your security breach becomes a national news story. The problems are embarrassing and sometimes career-ending. Successful technology initiatives, by contrast, happen over time and are overshadowed by the splashier victories they enable. Baseline has released a slide show of this year’s technology project triumphs and trip-ups.

Best Buy, the nation’s leading electronics retailer, has embarked on a radical–if risky–experiment to transform a culture once known for killer hours and herd-riding bosses. The endeavor, called ROWE, for results-only work environment, seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours. There are no schedules. No mandatory meetings. No impression-management hustles. Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It’s OK to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid. Best Buy did not invent the post-geographic office. Tech companies have been going bedouin for several years. At IBM, 40% of the workforce has no official office; at AT&T, a third of managers are untethered. Sun Microsystems Inc. calculates that it’s saved $400 million over six years in real estate costs by allowing nearly half of all employees to work anywhere they want. And this trend seems to have legs.

Hewlett-Packard has settled its civil case with the California Attorney General’s Office, and the company will pay $14.5 million in fines but admit no liability, according to a statement released Dec. 7. In addition to the fine, HP, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., agreed to implement a series of legal and ethical measures to ensure that any future internal investigations into boardroom leaks are conducted according to California law, the company said in a statement. In turn, California prosecutors will not pursue civil charges against the company or its current and former employees and members of the board of directors.

There’s a reason a lot of workers dread holiday parties. Can you drink? Must you wear a tie? What if you say the wrong thing? What if your manager says you should loosen up but doesn’t really mean it? What if you make a bad joke? To some, it feels like walking a tightrope and its reason enough to just want to stay home. You’re going to have to show up, and you’ll have to clean up your mess if you blow it. But eWEEK strives to make this a lot less daunting with by leading you through a guided tour of the things you should not do.

Organized gangs have adopted "KGB-style" tactics to hire high-flying computer students to commit Internet crime, a report said on Friday. Criminals are targeting universities, computer clubs and online forums to find undergraduates, according to Internet security firm McAfee. Some gangs have sponsored promising students from other disciplines to attend computer courses before planting them in businesses as "sleepers." McAfee said the students write computer viruses, commit identity theft and launder money in a multi-billion dollar industry that is more lucrative than the drugs trade.

Contributing Editor Nancy Hand is back with another story from the support trenches. This time,she’s retrieving POP mail from a non-Domino server.

Read this DominoPower article.

When IBM announced its $1.3 billion buyout of Internet Security Systems in late August, many industry experts wondered aloud what its long-term strategy for the company might be. According to ISS’ long-standing chief executive, Big Blue is already investing time and money in the name of boosting the firm’s standing in the market.

integra4notes, the integration and reporting product, has released version 4.3 which delivers performance and interface improvements for users that wish to extract data from their Lotus Notes applications to the Microsoft Office suite. "The facility to easily set Microsoft Excel pivot tables and graphs from within Integra enables flexible and functional analysis for little effort" said John de Giorgio, CEO, Integra.

CertFX announced that their practice test for Administering IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5 is now available for purchase. In addition, they are giving a 30% discount on all practice tests. They also announced two new volume purchases that are available via the Web–Volume Package-10, which includes 10 practice tests for $45 each, and Volume Package-20, which includes 20 practice tests for $35 each. Visit CertFX for complete details.

Verizon Communications announced on Dec.5 the launching of Verizon Online Backup, a broadband product that will allow small and midsize businesses to protect company and customer information. Verizon Online Backup allows business users to back up files to an online storage space where users can retrieve the files anytime, as long as he or she has access to the Internet. The new product will also let the SMB user enable automatic backups, which will allow users to protect files and documents from common problems such as hardware failure, natural disasters and human error while also providing security during transmission and at an online facility.