Microsoft Sends Office and Vista Off to Manufacturing
After more than five years of development, Microsoft is finally ready to give birth to what may be that last major product release of its kind given the increased focus on iterative development that emphasizes slipstream new features over major new product releases. For a quick overview of the major features of both Vista and the new version of Office, we would encourage you to check out some slide shows that eWEEK has specially prepared to walk you through the major features. Nevertheless, there are those of us who continue to say that because of a lack of Windows XP to Vista migration tools and few new applications that really leverage the visualization potential of Vista, the real potential of Microsoft's new operating system won't be realized until well into 2007.

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Midterm Elections Bring Heavy Scrutiny to Electronic Voting
Although political pundits across the spectrum have issues with electronic voting, it looks like this medium is going to become a permanent part of the electoral process. But confidence in the systems remains low due mostly to a lack of training. In the meantime, if you want to see how e-voting machines actually work, check out this slide show. The good news for IT people is that former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich says they should expect to see little change in approach to rules and regulations now that Congress is dominated by Democrats.

Google Turns into Virus Distribution Service
The old joke is that Microsoft Outlook is the most efficient virus distribution mechanism ever created, but it now looks like Google is thinking about laying claims to that honor.

Novell Defends Open-Source Alliance with Microsoft
The open-source community is still trying to get over the shock of a broad-ranging alliance between Novell and Microsoft, but when you think about how close IBM is to Red Hat at Novell's expense, it seems like Novell had little choice besides embracing Microsoft if it ever really hoped to distinguish itself from Red Hat. For its part, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company is willing to take a magnanimous approach to patent discussions across the entire open-source community before it ultimately tries to drop the intellectual property hammer.

Spam Volume Is on the Rise Again
After what looked like a period where spam was increasingly coming under control, it turns out that spam volume is rising rapidly again as spammers leverage botnets to power underground networks.

Microsoft Readies Secret Python Project
Microsoft appears to becoming downright agnostic when it comes to programming languages these days, even going so far as to create a CTP (Community Technology Preview) of a new Microsoft IronPython for ASP.Net product that is focused on helping developers create richer Web applications when using Microsoft's Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer tools.

Web 2.0 Finally Goes Corporate
After studying this online phenomenon for the past three years it appears that a number of major corporations have finally wrapped their minds around how to get their customers to create online content for them that helps expand their marketing efforts.

When IT Comes to Business Intelligence, Users Have It All Over the Vendors
Once widely considered to be an oxymoron, business intelligence software has moved into the mainstream thanks more to the innovative approaches taken by users rather than vendors. For an update on business intelligence, take a look at this report.