Microsoft has an effort called the Interoperability Forum, a Web site where customers, developers and members of the broader open-source community can discuss their interoperability issues, ask questions and get technical advice.

The forum was first announced in February when Microsoft revealed its four new interoperability principles designed to ensure open connections, promote data portability, enhance support for industry standards, and foster a more open engagement with customers and the industry, including open-source communities.

David will be on KBOO-FM 90.7 live in the Portland, Oregon area tomorrow at 10am PST. You can listen live via your browser or visit later and download the MP3.

Upon finding out the name of his interviewer, our already somewhat geeky David began to vibrate. The interviewer’s name is Edison Carder. It’s not exactly Edison Carter (with a T), but it’s close enough for a full-on geekstravaganza. Extra geek points if you know who Edison Carter is, and why being interviewed by someone with even a similar name is cool-cooler than cra-crackers.

Dell plans to cut more jobs than the 8,800 it earlier announced and has already eliminated 5,500 positions, Chief Executive Michael Dell said Thursday.

The CEO said the company will end the year with lower operating expenses than in the previous year. Dell, speaking to analysts at company headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, said job cuts are continuing in the current quarter and will exceed the target announced in May 2007.

Microsoft has released the next version of its desktop management toolset for IT with updates for resetting admin passwords and collecting crash data.

The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2008, which is only available to users with Software Assurance contracts, is designed specifically to help IT administrators manage collections of Windows desktops, including Vista SP1. MDOP includes Application Virtualization to stream applications from a centrally managed service; Asset Inventory Service, an inventory scanning tool; System Center Desktop Error Monitoring; Advanced Group Policy Management (APGM) for change management via group policy objects; and the Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset which helps in recovering a crashed PC.

The world’s largest security conference will kick off next week in San Francisco with the public unveiling of Microsoft’s next-generation of security software, code-named Stirling.

Over the past few months, Microsoft has quietly shown the software to a select group of users, but sources familiar with the company’s plans said that it will release a beta version of the code to users during the RSA Conference next Tuesday. Microsoft will allow attendees to "see new technologies," including Stirling and the company’s next-generation Windows Server 2008 software, according to the conference agenda.

Microsoft’s Forefront product line has been playing with more established security products over the past few years, but with Stirling the company will finally be able to offer administrators a single product that manages all of its security offerings.

Microsoft and Symantec have asked a U.S. federal court to dismiss a two-year-old lawsuit after the companies settled a dispute over storage technology.

Symantec sued Microsoft in 2006, charging that Microsoft wrongfully incorporated storage technology from Veritas Software in its XP, Vista and server operating systems.

Symantec bought Veritas for US$10.2 billion in 2004. Under an August 1996 agreement, Microsoft had been allowed to incorporate volume management technology from Veritas in its Windows NT product.

David’s going to be on CKWR-FM98.5 this evening at 6:05PM in Waterloo, Ontario. You can listen live via your Web browser.

Holding only 27 percent of computer-related jobs, women have never been strongly represented in IT, and recent studies point to a further decline. The number of computer science bachelor’s degrees awarded to women fell from 36 to 21 percent between 1983 and 2006, according to a study by the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

Microsoft aims to stop the shrinking pool of female candidates in technology careers in its tracks by reaching out to high school girls in hopes of showing them a real-world view of IT careers. The second annual DigiGirlz event, held on March 26 in Islandia, N.Y., was attended by more than 150 11th grade girls from seven schools on Long Island. Presenters from all walks of IT gave presentations on career planning and job roles in areas from law to health care, the public sector and security companies.

While ISO isn’t set to announce the official voting tally until tomorrow, the OpenDoc Society has posted to a mailing list what it claims are the final results indicating that Microsoft will be granted ISO approval for its Office Open XML (OOXML) document format.

According to the alleged results page, OOXML received a 75 percent "approve" total. It needed 66.66 percent to become an ISO standard.

ISO officials aren’t commenting on the leaked ballot tally. ISO officials said on March 31 they planned to notify privately the national bodies who participated in the standards vote before publicizing the final results on April 2.

Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith took the hot seat at the Open Source Development Conference March 25, facing an hour of questioning from panelists and attendees. But before the grilling started, Smith gave a 30-minute address about the parallels between open-source and proprietary software business models.

Microsoft respects and appreciates the role free and open-source software has in the industry and the hard work done by its developers, Smith said. "This is not what you have always heard from us, but I wanted to say it," he said.