Information Builders Upgrades Performance Management Software

Information Builders released a new version of its performance management software Thursday. Enhancements include features related to predictive analysis and forecasting alert management and businessprocess management.

Performance management is a new area for business intelligence software vendors including Information Builders (IBI) Cognos and Hyperion. Performance management refers to the use of data analysis and business scorecard applications to set goals for a business and then measure progress toward meeting those goals. While most vendors have concentrated on financial performance management IBI has focused

IBM extending tech support to raw Eclipse platform

IBM is announcing plans to provide technical support for the Eclipse open source tools platform thus giving customers a single point of contact for both open source and IBM's commercial technologies for software development. IBM will also unveil plans for upcoming tools geared to the new Eclipse . platform and it is rolling out online developer resources for Eclipse users. IBM is making the announcements at the EclipseWorld conference in Cambridge Mass.
 
Through its IBM Rational Elite Support for Eclipse

CrossOver virtualization software public beta offered

Codeweavers has announced the release of a public beta version of CrossOver Mac their virtualization software that lets Intelbased Macs run Windows applications without having Windows installed.

Based on the opensource project WINE CrossOver Mac provides the ability to run Windows applications and some games on the Mac without having to reboot or switch to a virtual machine interface &; applications appear in the same Finder interface that Mac users are accustomed to. Because it&;s based on WINE which translates Windowsspecific code references

Microsoft Software Aims At 'Safe' Family Web Browsing

Microsoft on Wednesday released in beta a Windows Live service meant to give parents control over their children's Web surfing.
OneCare Family Safety available in the United States and formerly known as Family Safety Settings provides Web filtering and activity reports. The service requires a software download from http://ideas.live.com/ .

The filtering feature lets parents chose "allow block or warn" settings for a range of content categories. Unique settings can be applied to each member of the household. Parents

Google's Plan to Dominate Business Software

Googles introduction this week of communications applications for enterprises has extended the software battle that has been brewing with Microsoft. And according to analysts it will likely prompt an aggressive response from Redmond.
 
Google Apps for Your Domain launched Monday is a set of hosted applications for organizations that want to provide communications tools to their users without the troubles and costs of installing and maintaining software or hardware.

"Its plan to provide applications such as email calendaring instant

Lattix offers software architecture management for .Net

Lattix is extending its software architecture management product which examines architectural dependencies to .Net projects.
 
Developers and architects involved in Microsoft .Netbased software projects now can avail themselves to Lattix's Lightweight Dependency Models (LDM) technology for controlling projects with Lattix LDM for .Net. The product allows for visualizing and controlling of a software architecture to prevent dependencies from arising that should not exist such as the implementation of a framework that depends on the business layer.

Previously available for Java

Interactive Intelligence Upgrades Unified Communications Software

Interactive Intelligence has released an upgraded version of its unified communications software Communite which offers unified messaging interactive voice response and realtime communications services.
 
The new release version . offers new functions for speechenabled mobile applications including adding a speechenabled menu for message retrieval status changes and company directory access. In addition a new telephone user interface allows for the use of XML for emulation of existing voice mail menus which can reduce user training requirements when replacing voice mail

Google, Real, Mozilla in Pact

Google Inc. has extended a multiyear deal with RealNetworks Inc. to promote Google software across Real's entertainment and multimedia products the companies said on Wednesday.

RealNetworks and Google together with Web browser maker Mozilla Corp. said they had agreed to distribute the Mozilla Firefox browser together with the Google Toolbar along with Real's RealPlayer audio and video playback software.

No financial terms were disclosed.

Google Toolbar is a software program users install inside a browser allowing them to more quickly search the

Software Tools Promise to Create Virtual ATMs

Authentium which sells software development tools to security applications vendors introduced a new product July that promises to give banks and other online service providers the ability to create more secure Webbased transactions.

Dubbed VirtualATM the SDK (software developer kit) is aimed squarely at businesses looking to boost security of their online operations by further locking down users' computers to decrease the likelihood of fraud during sensitive communications.

Meant to be offered directly to customers by financial services firms and Internet

Spiceworks Introduces Free, Ad-Supported IT Management Software

On Monday a startup called Spiceworks released a beta version of its free adsupported IT management software for network administrators.

"After probably plus years in this business it struck us as kind of odd maybe even a little perverse that you should have to pay for technology to manage your technology" says Scott Abel cofounder and CEO of Spiceworks.

Until it can ramp up its ad revenue Spiceworks will pay its staff to manage its technology with $ million in venture funding it received

Riffworks guitar recording software comes to the Mac

Sonoma Wire Works has completed its extensive beta period and has released Riffworks . for Mac OS X. The first time Riffworks has been made available for the Mac the application has been released as a Universal Binary supporting Intelbased Macs.
 
Riffworks is contains a Riffbased workflow allowing guitarists to record short riffs and piece together a song in the applications interface. You can also add realtime effects changing your sound and tone in a variety of ways.

The application

Security Software Expands Protection

A new generation of security software embodying a holistic vision of PC health is right around the corner. Besides offering updated security features new software from AOL McAfee Microsoft and Symantec promises backup services and PC tuning utilities with a different yearly service type of pricing.
 
Microsoft kicked off the new trend at the end of May with its launch of Windows Live OneCare which combines antivirus antispyware and firewall tools with Windows' defragging and cleanup utilities in one easytouse interface.

Cisco Patches Security Software Glitch

Cisco Systems released a security update meant to close three vulnerabilities in one of its network monitoring products.
 
The San Jose Calif.based company released an advisory to its customers warning of the flaws in its CSMARS (Cisco Security Monitoring Analysis and Response System) and is offering clients a patch update that promises to close the loopholes.

The issues are related to the software's interaction with thirdparty applications and revolve around the program's CLI (command line interface) the company said.

Rally readies enterprise-level agile project management

With agile programming spreading to larger groups of developers Rally Software Development on Monday will introduce an enterpriselevel version of its life cycle management platform for agile software development. The product includes an onpremise deployment option.
 
Rally is introducing Enterprise Edition because customer sites are getting larger and users want things like project management and the ability to comply with regulations according to the company. Rally defines agile programming as using lean manufacturing methods and building software in twoweek increments.

AmberPoint, Reactivity team up for SOA management

Stacks pushed by the software giants may dominate development and deployment of enterprise SOAs. In the realm of runtime service management and security however a handful of pure plays still hold sway. Today two companies in that space Reactivity and AmberPoint announced a solution that integrates their products.
 
AmberPoint provides comprehensive management of the runtime SOA including detailed SLA reporting exception handling and policy enforcement. Reactivity&;s Gateways defend against XML threats and control access to services and provide transformation mediation