We have been working on moving Network Computing's Green Bay lab for more than a year, and last week finally had the opportunity to tour the new lab space as they were building it out.

The reasons for our move were many, most revolving around being in the basement of a building with a sump-pump in it. I have feared a backup of that sump pump since I first came on staff.

Little did I know, that the sump-pump was the least of our worries.

Big telcos have been waging a silent battle to outlaw towns and cities from building Wi-Fi networks, getting state legislatures in states including Florida, Texas, Virginia and Pennsylvania to curb or ban them. But now a U.S. Senate committee, in a rare moment of lucidity, is backing a bill to ensure that towns and cities can build their own networks.

Apple's next-generation operating system, code-named Leopard, will include VoIP and videoconferencing bundled into iChat 4.0, according to reports. But I don't think Apple will stop there: Expect it to launch a nifty VoIP device, called iVoice maybe?

The news this week was not "news" in the classic sense -- something that happened that you didn't know about beforehand -- but it was news nonetheless.

Finally, there's evidence that FCC head Kevin Martin is in bed with industry lobbyists -- a photo in Details magazine shows Martin in an unmade bed in a hotel room with a lobbyist and a communications executive.

Soliders in Iraq lack many of the most basic amenities, including Internet access, because there are only 6 to 12 computers for every 1,000 troops. So enterprising soliders have set up their own "Hajjinets," troop-owned ISPs on just about every base in the country.

Beyond Print 04 Podcast - CTC Recap (download here) - This week, I give a recap of lessons and discussions from the Collaborative Technology Conference, which I talked about in the last episode. If you couldn't make it, here is an executive summary.

Microsoft today rolled out its unified communications platform for tying together PBXs, desktop PCs, and Windows servers -- but it may be that it's too little, too late. There are already plenty other similar solutions out there, and they're not proprietary to a single vendor.

Hey, it's our old friend FUD making an appearance yet again! FUD, of course, stands for "fear, uncertainty and doubt," and is a weapon that Microsoft has long been accused of using to stave off competition and try to sow just enough doubt in customers' minds to back them off from using non-Microsoft products.

In this first podcast in a series on the emerging enterprise, Andrew Conry-Murray talks with Chuck Hudson, IT director for a pharmaceutical distribution company, about how his IT group works hand in hand with executives to provide competitive advantage and grow the business. Chuck and Andrew also discuss how to develop trust between IT and the business side and keep lines of communication open. Chuck also shares how his IT group stays on top of new technological developments, such as RFID, to make operations more efficient.

More details are emerging over the AT&T-NSA joint snooping program, and it gets scarier every day. A report in Salon says that the program could snoop on VoIP calls, capture credit card information, email and more.

What's the hottest topic to hit blogs in recent months? Could it be Bill Gates' announcement that he'll be stepping down as MS Chief Architect? Perhaps the latest Skype grumblings? Data Security Woes?

Wrong, wrong and zippo. It's all about the gas, baby.

Aw, man, do I have to write about blade servers again?

If you're an AT&T customer, your privacy just went up in smoke. The company has sent a letter to its more than seven million Internet customers telling them, essentially, that all their usage information is owned by AT&T -- and the company can do anything with it that it wants.

I recently signed up for CampFire, the Web-based chat site and was once again impressed by the impact social networking software will have on the enterprise.

Beyond Print 03 - Transparent Aluminum (download here) - New media isn't just about putting content online in different ways, it's also about the type of content.

That thud you heard today wasn't the sound of the Vonage stock price falling -- it was the sound of Vonage investors hitting their heads against the wall as more bad news send the stock plummeting. At this rate, Vonage is headed headed toward becoming a penny stock.

It's looking more and more as if the VoIP hype bubble is going the way of the Internet bubble. Skype, bought for up to $4.1 billion by eBay, is turning out to be a bad investment, and as for the Vonage IPO -- it's more than 40% under its IPO price of a few weeks ago, and heading south.

AOL shipped the beta of its new business-oriented IM client, AIM Pro, this week and while the client has a lot to offer business there's plenty that could be improved.

The FCC decision that VoIP must comply with the same wiretapping rules as landlines will open up gaping security holes, "rendering the entire Internet’s application space more vulnerable than it already is," says Internet godfather Vinton Cerf and others.

Microsoft has claimed the lead in server software market share for a good while now, and Windows Server is pretty ubiquitous. But one area in which most of us probably don't think of Windows as the logical platform is high-performance server software for heavy, complex calculations.

Reading about the Asterisk vulnerability that was announced yesterday along with
Edwin Pena's $1 million VoIP scam might give one the impression that today's corporate VoIP networks are at serious risk. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Beyond Print 02 - Epoll Results - This is the second episode (download here) in the "Beyond Print: Getting Your Message Out" series. This week, I reveal some of our epoll results. I'll say where Network Computing readers stand on a few key issues relating to new media, and then read a few of the short answer responses. I also promised to post our RSS feed, and so here it is. Just paste this link into your podcast aggregator, and you'll be updated on all new Network Computing podcasts. Check back next Monday for another episode of Beyond Print.

Last week, Vonage announced that the FTC had ended a year-long investigation into whether the company complied with federal emergency 911 regulations. Apparently, the company spoke too soon, because it just announced that the investigation is still ongoing.

In a world where network hardware is increasingly a commodity, where can Cisco turn for its profits in the future? If today's buyout of two private companies is any sign, Cisco is betting the farm on VoIP.

Ever since F5 introduced iRules (a TCL-based language) in its BIG-IP line of application delivery controllers I've been waiting for an editor to assist in crafting these powerful rules.

Next week F5 unveils a brand-new set of features within its DevCentral site, as well as a .NET-based iRules editor and the addition of support for its FirePass products.

Happy Friday!

Today's almost-freebie combines security and FTP servers. It's only free for 30 days, but the company suggests that the initial license should give you ample time to analyze network traffic and determine how secure (or insecure) your FTP servers might be.

And today's real freebie is MonoStack from BitRock.

Want to see the future of telecom? Look to the U.K. where British Telecom (BT) is doing the unthinkable: Abandoning its entire legacy phone network and moving wholesale to IP. Better yet, it's making its API available, so anyone, from teenage hackers to competitors, can create phone "mashups" like those done with Google Maps.

Bruce Springsteen's lyric from "My Hometown," which I stole for today's note, is about working-class manufacturing jobs evaporating for good. But it's no factory foreman that's delivering the news about a couple of the server market's biggest companies. Rather, it's going to come from the top--and already has in the case of Sun Microsystems, which will be paring its workforce back by canning some 5,000 workers and rethinking its basic business strategy.

Earlier this week F5 Networks and Reactivity announced a partnership that on the outside appears to be an innocent go-to-market strategy, but a deeper look shows the two are doing more than just holding hands...

Net2Phone's lawsuit against Skype may ruffle more than just the feathers of the leading VoIP service provider. It could reshape much of the industry.

It's certainly a good idea to build security into your SOA, but once you've done that how do you know it's secure? And while you can certainly hope that you've achieved WS-I Basic Profile compliance, how do you know if you don't have a way to test for it?

Forum Systems thinks they have the answer...

iNetWord is a free, AJAX-enabled WYSIWYG editor that comes damn close to proving that Web 2.0 can compete with desktop applications.

The controversial Google Book Search program is in more trouble -- the French publisher group La Martiniere, which owns publishing houses in France, Switzerland, and the US is suing Google for piracy. I'm hoping La Martiniere will win.

I was reading Christopher Hoff's blog yesterday and got to pondering the use and usefulness of UTM and UTM architectures to the mid-to-large enterprise.

There's a lot to say on this topic, so I will confine myself to a couple of points. First, why would you even consider a UTM solution, Second who would own a UTM solution, and third what is with the different architectures.

Beyond Print 01 - Web 2.0 Roundtable - This is the first episode (download here) in a series of podcasts called "Beyond Print: Getting Your Message Out". This series will cover new media and new web technologies such as blogs, podcasts, social networking, web syndication, Web 2.0 and so forth. We'll be looking at using these new mediums both internally and externally. Every Monday until September 14th, I am going to be discussing, debating or conducting interviews about these new technologies. If you have a strong opinion on these topics, or are using new media technologies at work, please feel free to send me a note. Perhaps you can be on a future episode.

As the pointless Vonage IPO goes south, there's a little-known, sleeper VoIP IPO on the horizon that actually makes sense. Acme Packet make an important component of VoIP networks, and the company has just filed an S-1 in preparation to go public. This one is worth watching.

This week, Microsoft began offering Windows Live OneCare. For $49.95 per year, you can get your PC (up to three of them) protected, maintained, and backed up.

I can see how this plan came about...

Scott Silverman, chairman of RFID company VeriChip, wants to implant RFID chips in all immigrants so that their movements can be tracked, and would like to see the chips "used for enforcement purposes at the employer level". And you wonder why some people are frightened of the technology?

You can count me as one of those people who's not always impressed by Microsoft's efforts to dominate markets by stuffing every piece of functional software it can find into its base systems. For instance, how does a media player have anything to do with an operating system? The answer, of course, is "it doesn't"--the OS controls the interaction of the software with the hardware, the media player shows you movie files. Apples and oranges: That media player could easily stand apart from the base Windows operating system, no matter how much smoke Microsoft blows to convince us otherwise.

The feds are about to put their hands in your pocket again. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is recommending that VoIP providers pay a 7% tax, and you can be sure that they'll pass that cost along to you.