Stories by: LinuxWorld staff

"Social" sites are not enough. Watch your "inbox" on LinkedIn or any of the other social sites, and you'll see floods of invitations from nervous IT professionals looking to build up some connections before the big job hunt. But people who survived the last tech bubble are taking a few more important steps. It's more important to butter people up than just to collect social network links.

Antispam software vendor SurfControl has released its first network gateway e-mail hardware appliance, called RiskFilter, into the Australian market.

Linux-based enterprise e-mail and calendaring platform, Scalix version 9.1, is now available in Australia.

In ongoing efforts aimed at expanding into enterprise systems, 3Com announced the development of a channel-ready Linux-backed variety of the company's VoIP softswitch.

Major Linux vendors, including Novell, Red Hat, the Gentoo Foundation, and MandrakeSoft, have warned of potential security holes in two Linux components. The vulnerabilities are related to LHA, a compression module, and lmlib, a library used in graphics viewing applications in Gnome. Patches are available to correct both possible entry points.

Available starting September 17, IBM is releasing a new version of its DB2 database software. DB2 version 8.2, codenamed "Stinger," is aimed at users of Linux and Unix. With prices beginning at US$25,000 for DB2 enterprise edition, IBM is aiming at taking market share from Oracle, the database market leader.

Red Hat, the world's largest distributor of Linux, has sent what its CEO Matthew Szulik calls "a very strong message to investors and customers" by appointing Charles E. Peters Jr. as its new chief financial officer to replace Kevin Thompson.

The headline this morning in Finland's Tietoviikko newspaper is not good: "Turku uskoo linuxiin." In other words, Finland second largest city, Turku population around 200,000 - is dropping its Linux plans.

Linux vendor Lycoris has announced the release of PowerPak 1.4 which the copanyclaims will make running Linux applications easier and make migrating from Windows to Linux easier.

In an effort to rally global support for Eclipse development, IBM has awarded to four professors in the Australia and New Zealand region individual grants ranging from US$50,000 (AU$70,124) to $65,000 (AU$91,153). Part of IBMs Eclipse Innovation Grants Program, the awards are in recognition of individuals who have made innovative and creative contributions to Eclipse development.

The IBM Linux Speed-start program is providing a free Software Evaluation Kit (SEK) loaded with the latest IBM middleware that has been ported to Linux.