Stories about: NBC

New Year's is a great occasion for taking pause to reassess priorities, needs, and wants. As we enter what looks to be a trying 2009, such a pause is even more critical. IT resources will be limited and business pressures higher. But that doesn't mean you withdraw or go into reactive mode. In tough times, being clear on your priorities is even more important, as everything you do is more critical. So InfoWorld asked its CTO Council member and its cadre of expert contributors for their top New Year's resolutions to give the tech industry a list that we hope will help you make the most of your 2009 priorities.

Innovation is not just about cool new products. In technology, the best ideas require a) really smart people and b) lots of funding. For the past 33 years, Microsoft has had both in spades.

Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash and Flex and several other RIA (rich Internet application) and AJAX frameworks, Silverlight arrived with a flourish just over one year ago. Silverlight 1.0 manipulated its multimedia-savvy, WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) user interface using JavaScript. Silverlight 1.1, which added support for compiled .Net languages and supported more of the .Net API, was available at that time only as an alpha test.

Microsoft on Monday offered a software development kit for its tabletop computer to about 1,000 people at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, opening the door to a variety of new applications for the table.

As Microsoft releases its Silverlight 2.0 media player tomorrow, it is claiming strong momentum for its free, would-be Adobe Flash-killer.

A group of technology and entertainment heavyweights is undertaking a public relations campaign to dissuade consumers from illegal file sharing, something the group calls "net pollution."

FBI agents served a search warrant Sunday at the apartment of a college student whom Internet sleuths last week had named as the hacker who accessed US Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail account, a local television station reported.

In many ways, Apple is already a giant. Its US$118 billion market cap, which briefly surpassed Google's this year, is larger than that of Hewlett-Packard Co. Its sales, which are nearly $31 billion a year, have grown almost 40 percent annually the past five years. And, then there's its mindshare with the general public.

Ease of use has driven "media-savvy" consumers to piracy when it comes to obtaining digital entertainment, but a new industry initiative has the potential to lure them back to legal methods, according to an executive at Alcatel-Lucent.

Amazon.com has rolled out a video on demand service that offers users ad-free movies and television shows on Macintoshes or PCs.

For the past two-plus years, Microsoft has stood by while Apple's "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" TV commercials treated Windows Vista like a punching bag.