Network World columnists
Enterprise networking's best analysis and commentary, from Network World.

• 5 reasons you need recipes on your cell
  Mobio Networks is touting a new service that "provides instant access to hundreds of thousands of recipes anytime, anywhere" on your cell phone or gadget of choice.
• An IT Christmas carol
  Try resting merry IT men / Let nothing you dismay / Remember data centers / Still run on Christmas Day
• Dilbert, the DMCA and the Internet bubble video
  Radiohead recently rocked the music industry by making its latest album downloadable for free, or more accurately, for “whatever fans wanted to pay.” The band was lauded for ushering in a new business model that disintermediated record companies and created a closer, more authentic bond between artists and fans. Not so fast: Apparently, Radiohead has discontinued the downloads and is reverting to good old-fashioned CD sales.

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• Maximizing your technology dollar
  Replacing the technology you have with less expensive alternatives (like getting OpenOffice for free rather than spending hundreds on Microsoft Office) can save you money, but it won't really upgrade your business. Bottom line, most people see a word processor as just a word processor, and a computer as just a computer, and don't gain by replacing one version with another.
• Could malware cause DPC problems?
  Deferred procedure calls are consuming too many processor cycles, but could the problem be malware?
• Pleo: The robot you'll love
  It would be easy to call Pleo a robotic dinosaur toy, but that's unfair to both Ugobe, Pleo's maker, and to Pleo itself.
• The Cisco/Microsoft battle for unified communications
  Microsoft has done so many things right with its unified communications strategy that Cisco should be worried. Yet Microsoft has still missed the mark on a few core necessities.
• Endpoint security: "Essential security" or "Impossible dream"?
  Jericho Forum executive explores issues of endpoint security in light of holiday giving of smart phones and other devices that inevitably will wind up on corporate networks.

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• NSFNET: The vibrant ghost of Christmases past
  At the start of the Christmas shopping season 20 years ago the National Science Foundation announced that a group consisting of Michigan's Merit Network, IBM and MCI had won a contract to develop and deploy the T-1 NSFNET. This network led directly to the Internet of today -- the NSFNET was a gift that has kept on giving.
• Fine tuning Eclipse to work with Leopard
  We've been using Eclipse to build multiplatform applications but things are broken on the Mac now that Apple has released Leopard and people are upgrading from Tiger. What changes are required in an Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) application to get it working correctly again on both Tiger and Leopard?
• Google vs the telcos: the new industry Food Fight
  There is nothing we industry pundits love more than a good food fight. Cisco vs. Lucent. Google vs. Microsoft! Intel vs. AMD! Cable vs. Satellite! SAP vs. Oracle! But the Fight of The Future is what is going to happen on your cellular phone and in your home.
• Rolling your own NAS
  I thought of building a RAID system. The Yellow Box gives 2 TB but I could build a box with 2.8 TB for less money. The main feature I would like is to be able to turn on the box for a short time (to back, daily or weekly) saving power and to increasing drive longevity. It would be ideal if the box could turn itself on and off with a schedule. I have built computers before so the hardware is not too intimidating. The problem is I don't know Linux at all, just Windows.
• High-earning spammers face tougher sentences
  More big-time spammers may find themselves doing longer stretches behind bars -- and wouldn't that be swell -- if a federal judge's first-of-its-kind sentencing decision in a Denver case becomes widely applied.

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• Illegal wiretapping is a dangerous wedge
  Not only the government, but also trade groups want to get their fingers on the Internet for their own control purposes. They’re inserting thin wedges into the law and public policy, and if they aren’t stopped we are all in peril.
• Wireless open access: happening or not?
  Seems like carriers and content providers alike have been bitten by the open access bug. Big news recently was Verizon’s announcement that it plans to open up its wireless network to any device or application. And Google upped the ante by announcing its intention to bid on the available 700-MHz spectrum in upcoming auctions, a portion of which, thanks to Google’s lobbying efforts, is required to be open access as well.
• Money saving tips
  On the response sheets I get from those who attend the speeches I make at the ITEC conferences, "Reducing hardware and software costs" always ranks in the top third of important issues. One of my goals is to help SMBs maximize the value of technology in their business. Sometimes that means spending less, sometimes it means spending more. Let's talk about spending less today.