BizzRoot

Every time I send out a survey using my Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey accounts, there is always at least one wise guy among the respondents who dings me for risking their privacy with these tools. But do they have a point? Last week I decided to finally find out.

Imagine wandering through Times Square and seeing a 60-foot-tall animation depicting you (yes, you) as a creepy child-baiting ice cream truck driver. How would you feel? That’s probably the question Google’s Eric Schmidt is being asked today.

Hewlett-Packard swooped in with the better bid to overtake Dell and win 3Par, so now we can all sit back and wait for the next acquisition battle to roll around. Meanwhile, Apple debuted updated iPods and Apple TV to entertain us, among other IT news stories of the week.

It seems Apple is getting into the social networking business, God help them. Among the other life changing products rolled out at this week’s semi-annual Apple fanboyfest this week was "Ping," a service that lets you see what music the other 160 million people using iTunes like and recommend.

The bidding duel between Hewlett-Packard and Dell over 3PAR took over IT news headlines this week with a dizzying back-and-forth flurry of increased bids. Meanwhile, DLL attacks are keeping IT security pros up at night and a top official said that the Pentagon got a security-related wake-up call when a low-level worm caused a serious systems breach.

The more I use Adobe Flash, the more I understand why Steve Jobs hates it. I can’t tell you how many times a misbehaving Flash video has crashed my browser and/or slowed my system to sludge. Happens at least once a week.

Raphael Reich looks at 5 sources of unstructured data at risk of being overlooked or underprotected

Google’s patching of vulnerabilities in its open source Chrome Web browser last week wasn’t so much notable in itself; Microsoft, to be sure, is forever issuing patches for the many bugs that afflict its products.

Now at the midyear mark, Symantec reevaluates its 2010 predictions.

Intel surprised the IT community this week with its plans to buy McAfee. Intel justified the multibillion-dollar purchase price by citing the importance of securing mobile devices, a growing need. Facebook users can now share even more information thanks to the site’s Places service, which allows people to publish their location on their profiles. U.S. broadband user complaints about slow service could be valid, according to a government study that says service providers are skimping on bandwidth. This week brought more private network neutrality talks, further frustrating open Internet advocates who were already miffed by Google and Verizon Communication’s negotiations.