IE9 beta set for release

In today's podcast: HP hit with shareholder lawsuit; India wants Blackberry data access; and IE9 beta set for release.

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Hewlett-Packard's board of directors has been hit with a shareholder lawsuit alleging mismanagement and breach of fiduciary duties following last week's abrupt departure of Chairman and CEO Mark Hurd. The suit, known as a shareholder derivative lawsuit, was filed by a Connecticut-based law firm on behalf of the Brockton Contributory Retirement System, an organization in Massachusetts that is said to hold shares in HP. It names as defendants all 10 members of the HP board; Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak, who also became interim CEO after Hurd's departure; and Hurd himself. The suit accuses the board of failing to live up to its guidelines for corporate governance and allowing Hurd to run HP as "his own private fiefdom." It criticizes Hurd for hiring "a former reality TV contestant" with "no background in the high-tech industry" to help woo customers at marketing events. The complaint follows Hurd's sudden departure from HP last Friday. The board asked him to resign after he was accused of sexual harassment by an outside marketing contractor, who later identified herself as the actress Jodie Fisher.

India may ask Google, Skype and other online service providers to allow the country's law enforcement agencies to access communications on their networks, the head of an Internet association said on Friday. On Thursday the government said it will ask service providers in the country to ensure that some BlackBerry services should be made accessible to its law enforcement agencies by Aug. 31, or face a block of these services. The Indian government's public threat against BlackBerry is running in parallel with an as yet unannounced decision to pursue similar concerns with Google, Skype and other communications services, The Financial Times said in a report on Friday, citing a government report.

Microsoft on Thursday announced it will release a public beta of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) on Sept. 15, a little less than five weeks from now. Only a minority of Windows users will be able to try the beta, however. IE9 will not work on Windows XP, the aged operating system that powers nearly 68% of all PCs running Windows. The new browser requires either Windows Vista or Windows 7.
According to reports earlier this year, IE9 was to feature a look copied from Windows Phone 7's "Metro" interface. Today Neowin.net said sources had told it that Metro is out and a "simplistic UI similar to that of Google's Chrome" is in.

The U.K.'s data protection agency -- Information Commissioner’s Office, or ICO is viewing Google's collection of Wi-Fi data as part of its Street View program but said it does not appear to have jeopardized people's personal information. ICO officials visited Google last month and analyzed some of the data, which Google has said included snippets from unencrypted Wi-Fi routers, such as SSID (Service Set Identifier) information and MAC (Media Access Control) addresses. "The information that we saw does not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person," the agency said in a statement. Google said the data collection occurred while vehicles were collecting imagery for Street View, its photo mapping Web application. The company said the Wi-Fi sampling had been a mistake and stopped it. We remain vigilant and will be reviewing our own findings together with the relevant findings and evidence from our international counterparts' investigations," the ICO said in a statement. "In light of this we will decide what, if any further action to take. The case has not been closed."

And those are the top headlines from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. This is Marc Ferranti in the New York bureau. Join us later for more news from the world of technology.