A new Web-based application tracks user behavior after they have downloaded a PDF.

A video is making the rounds showing how Vista SP1 has significantly improved Vista's immensely annoying User Account Control (UAC). But there appears to be less to the improvement than meets the eye --- hardly any changes were made to UAC in SP1, and it remains a very big Vista annoyance. I've got details in my blog.

I'm one of those paper packrats who likes to keep records of anything, no matter how trivial, just in case they might be needed. (I can still show you the receipts and manual for a stereo system I bought in 1978, if you're interested.) Paper, though, has become passé, and so those of us who are obsessed with keeping digital records of all that hardcopy need scanners.

Consumer reports rankings put Apple at the bottom of its list for laptop repairs. But that's misleading.

So are you getting excited about a nice, long weekend for Memorial Day? Well, before you start cooking hot dogs and hamburgers, start thinking about putting procedures in place for you to be contacted if there is a security problem.

PATMOS, GREECE -- The "Fruit Wars" are heating up, with Apple expected to launch a hot new version of the iPhone, and RIM slated to launch a new "iPhone Killer" called the BlackBerry Thunder -- one that shares the iPhone's conspicuous lack of a physical keyboard.

I expect Apple to stick to its strengths and ship an all-screen, no-keyboard iPhone that's just like the current iPhone, but with better and additional options.

General Electric's appliance business in Lexington, KY -- now on the chopping block -- installed the first electronic computer for business data processing in the U.S., back in January 1954. It was the first bleeding-edge corporate IT project, and the IT manager took the fall.

Let's face it, the energy IT can save through green technology for society is modest. But that doesn't mean it should not be done.

This pilot fish works for a company that supplies software to automobile dealerships. But one afternoon, the connections to four dealers go down simultaneously, and it's fish's job to find out why.

In today's podcast: Yahoo responds to Icahn; OLPC puts Windows XP on the XO laptop; and Sharp reveals fuel-cell prototype.

It's IT Blogwatch: in which billionaire investor Carl Icahn starts a proxy fight to restart the Microsoft/Yahoo merger talks. Not to mention a bizarre German street performer...

Juan Carlos Perez reports:

"Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him," says Robert De Niro, playing gangster Al Capone in one of my favorite movies, The Untouchables. That line popped into my head while reading Mike Manos' vigorous, occasionally-mulish rebuttal to my article last week with, admittedly, the rather provocative title, '6 reasons why Microsoft's container-based approach to data centers won't work' (and, yes, the even more goading kicker, 'Are you listening, Microsoft?')

A marketing war over energy isn't a bad thing.

Debian, the popular Linux distribution has just been shown to have made an all-time stupid security goof-up. They managed to change OpenSSL in their distribution so that it had no security to speak of. Good job guys!

I've just put the beta of OpenOffice 3 through its paces, and found that the office suite can do just about anything that Microsoft Office can do, supports a wide variety of formats...and, of course, is free. Given all that, who needs Microsoft Office? Check out my blog for details and screenshots.