The VoIP (Voice over IP) technology is well on its way to becoming mainstream in both the business sector and for home communications.

The most common VoIP solution is the one supplied by Skype. However, Skype’s dominating position is now facing a serious challenge with the launch of Project Gizmo, the latest brainchild of Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com and the operating system Linspire.

The largest difference between Skype and Gizmo, is that unlike Skype, Gizmo has an open-source API which anyone can use to write their own Gizmo implementations. Other Gizmo features include things like a free voicemail service and a map to show the location of someone that you are chatting with. Gizmo also includes a service similar to Skype Out, which lets users make calls to telephones outside of the Gizmo client.

Source: Neowin

Check Point Software is to build improved spyware defences into the next version of its ZoneAlarm integrated consumer security software package.

ZoneAlarm Security Suite 6, due to be released 18 July, will feature a spyware scanner and an “operating system” firewall.

Source: The Register

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) today announced that two individuals who helped identify the creator of the notorious Sasser worm in 2004 will share a reward of $250,000 (U.S.). The author of the worm, arrested in May 2004, was found guilty Friday by a court in Verden, Germany, and handed a sentence of one year and nine months on probation.

As a parting shot to Apple, a piqued IBM today announced two new lines of its PowerPC 970 processor, better known as the G5. And they’re impressive beasts.

A new, low-power 970FX consumes between 13W and 16W at frequencies of 1.2GHz, 1.4GHz and 1.6GHz. That’s more than the 10W that the Freescale MPC7448 found in today’s 1.5Ghz PowerBooks consumes, but around half the maximum power consumption of Intel’s Pentium M, which powers today’s Centrino laptops. IBM is also unveiled the dual-core 970MP codenamed ‘Antares’, at clock frequencies of 1.4GHz to 2.5GHz. Each core has 1MB of L cache, and one core can be turned off to save power.

Contractual commitments and supporting remarks from IBM since the WWDC announcement suggest that these processors will form the final PPC-based Macs that Apple produces, despite the ill-tempers raised by Apple’s switch to Intel.

Source: The Register

As part of its monthly patching cycle, Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release three security alerts for flaws in Windows and Office.

Two of the security bulletins apply to Windows, and at least one of them is deemed “critical,” Microsoft’s highest risk rating, the company said in a notice posted on its Web site Thursday. Its Office productivity suite will get one bulletin, also rated critical.

Source: News.com