Open-Xchange, developer of Open-Xchange Server 5, and ChatterEmail, announced a joint initiative to promote standards-based mobility solutions for Smart Collaboration. Open-Xchange Server 5 enables Smart Collaboration by providing mission critical collaborative functions like email, calendaring, contacts and task management–fully integrated with advanced groupware features such as Smart Linking, Smart Permissions, document sharing, project tracking, user forums, and a knowledge base. Open-Xchange Server 5 works with the widest variety of browsers, mobile devices and rich clients such as Microsoft Outlook. ChatterEmail extends real time “push” email to Palm OS based Treo smartphones including the recently released Treo 700p.

Sensitive information on millions of U.S. military personnel and veterans remains at grave risk because of weak security controls that have not yet been fixed, government investigators said Wednesday. In testimony to Congress, the Government Accountability Office and Veterans Affairs inspector general detailed ignored warnings, weak management and lax rules in their review of VA information security following the theft of 26.5 million military personnel’s private data last month. They found that the Veterans Affairs Department routinely failed to control and monitor employee access to private information, did not restrict users to “need-to-know” data and often waited too long to terminate accounts when an employee quit or was fired.

This month, we had the opportunity to interview Heather Skinner, an executive at Kingston Technology, the world’s largest independent memory manufacturer. Heather was kind enough to help us understand a fascinating new technology called U3.

Read this Computing Unplugged article.

Symantec on Monday noted a new JavaScript worm that exploits an unpatched vulnerability in Yahoo Web mail. This vulnerability enables scripts embedded in HTML e-mails to be run by the user’s browser, which are normally blocked by Yahoo Mail for security reasons. The worm, JS.Yamanner@m, spreads from person to person when the user opens the e-mail that is originally sent by the worm. The worm then sends itself to the user’s contacts that also use Yahoo Mail, while simultaneously sending those e-mail addresses to a remote server on the Internet.

Palm has released new drivers for their Universal Wireless IR keyboard. This new driver, dated June 2, is available for both Palm OS and Windows Mobile OSes. It adds some compatibility fixes, as well as support for the Treo 700p.

Microsoft said it is putting the finishing touches on the next generation of its email server and will pump out the second beta of Exchange Server 2007 in July. Announced at Tech Ed 2006, the software is oriented for the mobile worker: Exchange Server 2007 will support searches on a smartphone or handheld computer, render HTML in email over the device and allow users to perform their own remote device wipe.

Corporate information on handheld devices is becoming more necessary than ever. Learn about the opportunities and challenges in developing Web services applications on mobile devices.

22Moo has launched its iPod compatible USB Host Media Player which is capable of TV playback of MPEG1, MPEG4, WMA, MP3, and JPEG files directly from USB devices such as flash drives, external hard drives, MP3/MP4 portable players and iPods. The player supports both PAL and NTSC standards and includes an IR remote and incorporates two USB Host ports.

Instant messaging, the quicker-than-e-mail alternative for online communication, is moving rapidly from teenagers’ bedrooms to mainstream America. And with it, IM is bringing a dark new legion of computer security problems that could eventually be worse than the worms, viruses and other Internet maladies that already haunt email.

Bulgaria’s largest mobile operator and Research In Motion announced the launch of BlackBerry in Bulgaria. Mobiltel will initially offer the BlackBerry 8700v quad-band device.