In a meeting this week with Kenneth Schneider, CTO and VP Fellow for Symantec's Security and Data Management Group, the subject of social networking sites and threats came up.

One area that's getting more attention than before, Schneider said, are shortened URLs and services that provide them.  The idea behind such URL services is to make links to sites via social networking sites, such as Twitter or Facebook, easier to read - - as well as to make it easier to exchange links via email or instant message.

But like all areas of new technology, evil-doers can often find exploits to do damage; in the case of the URL shortening services it's simply a matter of masking URLs that go to dangerous sites.   On the whole, the services are great. Bit.ly, for example, also provides web analytics tied to every URL that is shortened by its service - - for free.

Kaspersky Lab's Viruslist.com, on its blog, Friday unveiled the results of a short URL service study it did for URLs posted on Twitter: Bit.ly is the runaway Twitter share leader with 53.75 percent of all links shortened on the site, followed by tinyurl.com in a distant second place with 7.55 percent.

Writes Viruslist.com: "What’s really worth noticing is that more than half of the URLs being tweeted every day are hosted by a single service, bit.ly. But with great power comes great responsibility - if this service got compromised, that would mean more than half of the URLs circulating every day on Twitter would be compromised."

On Twitter, for example, links and "retweets" can go viral literally within minutes. Count on the security labs paying more attention to this. Unfortunately, so will the hackers and malware guys.

Microsoft filed its 10-K annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday morning, outlining its 2009 fiscal year results in greater detail and providing more information about perceived strengths and threats to its business.

While the company repeated assertions from its last annual report that rival Apple and the Linux community are making market-share inroads, Microsoft went out of its way to write an additional line in its annual report detail what it perceives as a risk to its business:

"Partners such as Hewlett-Packard and Intel have been actively working with alternative Linux-based operating systems," Microsoft wrote, providing no additional detail.

While it's been known for some time that HP - - which sells some notebooks and netbooks and servers with Linux - - and Intel have dedicated some resources to Linux development, this is the first time that Microsoft has singled out its two biggest and arguably most important technology partners for this work. While the language in 10-K reports is traditionally dry, legalistic and boilerplate, for a company like Microsoft to add that information for the first time is notable. It also comes at a time when Microsoft reported a double-digit decline in its client software business even as it reported selling more than 300 million units of Windows Vista over the past two years. (It sold 130 million units two years ago and 180 million units of Vista last year, although it doesn't specify how many units were sold or activated with "downgrade rights" to Windows XP.)

How is Microsoft responding to threats from Apple and Linux? By pumping tons of new funds into R&D. According to its 10-K:

"During fiscal years 2009, 2008, and 2007, research and development expense was $9.0 billion, $8.2 billion, and $7.1 billion, respectively. These amounts represented 15 percent, 14 percent, and 14 percent, respectively, of revenue in each of those years. We plan to continue to make significant investments in a broad range of research and product development efforts."

That leads to the question: Can Microsoft gain enough through R&D to stem the tide of Linux and Apple against its client software business?

Microsoft delivered 20,000 lines of code to the open-source software movement under the General Public License, and that brought (not surprisingly) a combination of praise and suspicion/criticism from some in the Linux community.

But what does the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds have to say? Linux-Mag.com, via OS News, quotes Torvalds:

“I'm a big believer in "technology over politics." I don't care who it comes from, as long as there are solid reasons for the code, and as long as we don't have to worry about licensing, etc., issues.

“I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease. I believe in open development, and that very much involves not just making the source open, but also not shutting other people and companies out.”

Good for Torvalds. And coining the phrase “Microsoft Hatred” could be useful: let’s sort out the cynicism from the facts.

Also: Microsoft is getting weaker, so hammering the company with criticism every day might not be as satisfying. Yesterday, Microsoft reported that its client software business dropped by more than $2 billion from its 2008 fiscal year to its 2009 fiscal year. Meanwhile, Mac and Linux continue to grow.

Is Microsoft hatred starting to eat into its business, after all these years?

Virtualization powerhouses VMware and Citrix both reported quarterly earnings Wednesday night and, as expected, top executives at each company talked up Cloud Computing during conference calls with financial analysts.

Via SeekingAlpha.com, here are conference call transcript excerpts from both Mark Templeton, CEO of Citrix, and Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware, relating to their statements last night on the cloud:

Templeton: “Leading indicators point to a growing desire to break with the legacy thinking of distributed computing, embracing IT as an on demand service from desktop to datacenter to cloud, and Citrix is at the epicenter of this transformation. It’s exactly why we’re sticking to our fiscal and strategic plan and precisely how we’re increasing our relative market position.

“As we look to 2010, we are on track to offer a revolutionary system for desktop virtualization, to enable core infrastructure for the next generation datacenter extended to the Cloud and to broaden our SasS footprint for web-based collaboration.”

Maritz: “As early feedback coming in from our customers and our ecosystem partners has been very positive, it’s in particular gratifying to see that there are approximately 1,000 ecosystem partners which range from very large server vendors to small ISVs have been working hard at certifying their products and are leasing new products that work with the vSphere foundation.

“This is a key step on the journey we’re offering to our customers to allow them to not only operate their computing equipment much more efficiently but to do so more flexibly and in fact open up future bridges to the cloud. So building on this foundation, we’re going to be releasing a series of complimentary products over the coming quarters that fall into three basic categories.

“Firstly we’re releasing a series of management add-ons that speak to common usage scenarios such as test and development, application or SLA level management, business continuity, and the internal cloud. These products not only enable operational benefits that customers can get out of the virtualization journey but they will speak to the maturity of the product line we have. No other virtualization vendor has anything close and the first of these products have in fact been released this month.”

In the CRN Test Center, we’ve liked products from both companies - - a lot. We believe the virtualization story is compelling. Both companies are blazing important trails. But when financial analysts had opportunities to ask each executive about their performance and future expectations, none had a single question for executives at either company about the cloud. They were essentially focused on the much less sexy business of understanding license revenue, margins, costs and the like.

Remember, analysts get paid to follow the money both now and in the future.

Via Slashdot, this story out of London is gaining a little bit of attention:

“The identities of more than four million Britons are being offered for sale on the internet, The Times has learnt.

“Highly sensitive financial information, including credit card details, bank account numbers, telephone numbers and even PINs are available to the highest bidder.”

Worldwide, according to the report, 40 million people have personal data that’s been compromised in this fashion. That data is traded on the underground market like a commodity; a British company collected the compromised information and had it “collated into a single database." That's some valuable, single database.

During a down economy, businesses postpone or cancel IT projects and purchases - - including security upgrades. That's nothing new. But stories like this one make you scratch your head at how little is actually common knowledge about the extent of data breaches around the globe. We see hackers snooping and trying to break in, every day, to our own security trap network at the CRN Test Center.

It’s not uncommon for our network to be on the receiving end of SQL attacks, database entry attempts, and non-stop port scanning by hackers from all over the world. If we had real data in that network, we could actually see it under siege almost on a 24-by-7 basis.

One breach into a business’ database, with proprietary or customer data,  could put a company out of business. Do stories like these scare IT customers, or is it written off as white noise?

The last time a major tech executive pointed to something at Apple and called it a “fad,” Kevin Rollins of Dell was talking about its iPhone and paving the way for his eventual career as a “former technology executive.”

So consider it puzzling that Google’s engineering vice president, Vic Gundotra, dismissed Apple’s iTunes App store business model by describing it as a fad during an appearance at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco last week. (There have been 1.5 billion downloads from the App Store in little more than a year. Some fad.)

Gundotra’s reasoning is that innovation is happening at a blistering pace on the web browser platform, and that its economies are unbeatable.

For a respected, veteran technology executive, Gundotra sure has a short memory.

In  the 1990s, IBM’s rate and pace of innovation on OS/2 and OS/2 Warp was strong. The company, which made hardware and software, was still bigger than Microsoft and offered strong economic incentives for building technology to its platform, too.

But developers decided it was easier, and with a greater chance for growth and profit, to build software on Windows. Microsoft wound up blowing IBM’s doors off because its ecosystem grew faster and stronger and more profitably - - by orders of magnitude.

Developers get to cast the vote on which platform, standalone apps or browser-based apps, will win. Right now, we can project the winner of this election will be the standalone apps.

Apple has made it cheap and easy to build applications for its iPhone platform, and companies like Adobe have made it easy (with its AIR platform) to build desktop applications quickly and robustly for everything from CRM to social networking. It’s just as easy to build applications for the iPhone or desktop as it is to build browser-based applications for Android or Palm phones, or for desktops - - but now there’s a more tangible financial reward for developers on the application side.

Developers followed the money in the 1990s, and they are clearly following it now as evidenced by how busy the iTunes App Store has been. Until Google and other browser-platform cheerleaders can provide a better profit map for the folks who are actually building the ecosystem, standalone applications will have the edge.

So a question for technology and solution providers: Where would you invest your software development money? Which will provide more opportunity for differentiation or profit?

Advanced Micro Devices reports quarterly earnings this week, and there is already conversation that the company will be hard-pressed to match Intel’s better-than-expected, quarterly numbers.

That’s correct, but it’s also misplaced. AMD doesn’t need to keep pace with Intel this quarter. It should have its own, unique criteria for success including:

- Credibility with the channel. That means keeping supply strong, hitting its release targets and delivering stable, reliable product;

- Keeping margins strong. AMD has made a strategic decision to avoid the very attractive netbook space -- Intel saw 65 percent growth in its Atom business last quarter -- and focus instead on delivering into the less flashy notebook, desktop and server spaces;

- Growth in its ATI graphics business, which differentiates itself from Intel and which could be a stronger foundation for growth in AMD's custom system business going forward.

Traditionally, AMD does best when it sticks to the basics, focuses on its partners and stays out of the headlines. Headlines, like the kind it made 18 months ago with its Barcelona troubles, are generally the kind AMD likes to avoid.

The decision to sit out the netbook play eliminates pricing complexity that AMD didn’t need anyway, in a segment that is still trying to find its legs.

The question tonight: Can AMD find its legs for the second half of 2009?

Gartner Group has issued its latest analysis of the Web hosting and cloud infrastructure services segments -- walking a fine line as it worked to bring into clearer focus what's often loosely, poorly defined or changing segments of IT:

No single vendor in this market does everything well. Moreover, while all vendors on this Magic Quadrant serve a global clientele, their data center footprints and locations vary significantly. As a result, it is important to match your use case with a vendor that excels in serving that particular type of need. Smaller providers may do one thing extraordinarily well, but not have a comprehensive set of services that lets them serve a broad array of use cases. More than ever before, it is crucial to look beyond the Magic Quadrant Leaders when selecting a vendor. The vendor that is perfect for your needs may be a Niche Player.

Got that? It's an informative report, and it describes each company's strengths and weaknesses in nice detail. But it still paints an overall picture of cloud computing that's foggy.

In the much-watched Magic Quadrant for "Web Hosting and Hosted Cloud System Infrastructure Services (On Demand)," companies that made Gartner's cut include IBM, Savvis, AT&T, Terremark and Rackspace. Rackspace had some problems recently, you might recall, with a severe outage that impacted customers. That makes one wonder how, if a company that is considered a Magic Quadrant cloud company can get jammed up with a big outage, cloud benchmarking will evolve over the next year.

Companies that Gartner said it considered, but rejected for the Magic Quadrant in this space: Google ("Google's App Engine offering is a cloud application infrastructure, not a cloud system infrastructure. It does not provide generic virtualized servers; it is a sandboxed, restricted application environment for Python or Java."); and Microsoft ("Microsoft's Azure Services Platform is a cloud application infrastructure, not a cloud system infrastructure.")

In this latest evaluation, Gartner added to its consideration Amazon.com (which qualified for the "Visionary" quadrant), and dropped from consideration Qwest, because it does not offer on-demand hosting.

"Even Twitter was affected, with login success in the 50 percent range during the 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. hours (EST)," Godskind said.

The web site Internetpulse.net, which is run by Internet performance monitoring company Keynote Systems, reported a little more packet loss than usual in various points on the Internet during the afternoon, but overall origin and destination locations between service providers seemed to run smoothly and with little latency. "Overall the Internet is performing ok" according to Keynote's own business index.

Did you, your colleagues or any of your customers notice any blips during the same hours as the Jackson memorial? 

Cloud computing is such a hot topic of discussion and continues to grow as a talking point that not even Canonical -- the company that provides the Ubuntu Linux distro -- can stay away.

In a statement Wednesday, Canonical said:

"Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, today launched new professional services to help and support users building 'private clouds' cloud infrastructures behind a corporate firewall.

"The move follows the technical preview in April of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), an open-source system that enables organisations to build their own clouds that match the interface of Amazon EC2. UEC is now available as part of the Ubuntu Server Edition technology stack.

"By creating private clouds with UEC, organisations can optimise server use and increase data-centre efficiencies, while lowering costs and providing end users with self-service IT."

In other words: Businesses can have some of the benefits of cloud computing without the risk associated with some paid hosting services.

The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud provides further proof that free software means free in the "libre" sense, as opposed to the "free beer" sense. Canonical says it will run $17,500 for 24x7 support of five physical servers and up to 25 virtual Ubuntu servers. Custom, large scale and regional support scales up from there in pricing. While Canonical has been working with VARs to resell professional services, it's not immediately clear how the UEC fits in.

Quick take: Cloud Computing benefits, with a self-hosted model, look interesting on paper. Canonical may need to do a little more to explain the value proposition behind its services, though.

Brian Caulfield at Forbes.com is posing an interesting question: Could Dell, with its awful history in the gadget business, find a way to succeed in that space without a major acquisition?:

"The problem: Dell's track record is terrible. In 2006, Dell killed its line of digital music players. In 2007 it discontinued its Axim line of handheld computers and stopped selling Dell-branded televisions.

"None of these products were bad. In fact the prices on these products were quite nice. The problem? None of them stood out."

Go one step further. Not only has Dell's execution been a failure in the gadget space, its vision has been abominable. Remember when ex-Dell CEO Kevin Rollins, early on in the iPod era, called Apple's MP3 player nothing more than "a fad?" Some fad.

Caulfield suggests that Dell should stick with what it does best: make and sell PCs and servers. That would be the safe strategy.

But Dell was also once a direct-only company. It declared the channel Public Enemy Number 1. It vowed to never sell its products through "middlemen." Now, even though a number of VARs still hate the company beyond hate, few can question that it's thrown a good deal of its fate behind the idea of selling its products through resellers, indirectly. Dell is making money from selling through resellers, and some resellers are making money from selling Dell products.

If Dell really wanted to commit itself to selling into the personal mobile technology space, it would need to do what it did when it reversed course and sold through the channel: change the way it thinks about the segment, change its culture, focus, put careers on the line in making it work and, importantly, don't think of it as a "fad."

Dell still sells a lot more PCs than Apple, and Apple got into the personal mobile technology space quite a bit earlier than Dell, too.