C2C announced that Archive One now supports the archiving, search, and retrieval of IM (Instant Messages) and RSS feeds, extending its retention capabilities for regulatory compliance and policy enforcement beyond email. Customers can store, search and retrieve IM and RSS feeds in Archive One’s secure data repositories to meet regulatory compliance and internal requirements. The archives may be accessible only to permitted officers and administrators (Archive One Compliance) or may be searched by users for message retrieval (Archive One Policy), depending on the organization’s internal policies and retention requirements.

Can bloggers be considered "journalists"? That question has been the source of a lot of debate, and it’s one that may take on a slightly different flavor shortly. Congress is preparing to consider a law that will likely legislate who can be called a "journalist." And Senator Richard Lugar, one of the sponsors of the bill, thinks that probably won’t include bloggers. If that’s the case, a law posing as a protection of journalistic integrity could turn out to have wide-ranging effects on any individual or organization that publishes content expressing any sort of message, explicit or implicit, regarding current events. Regardless of whether you’re an individual blogger, an e-marketer, a media corporation, or someone selling t-shirts on CafePress, there’s reason for you to take notice.

The police should talk more to security companies that gather vast amounts of data on the activities and whereabouts of hackers and virus writers, a security expert urged. Peter Tippett, chief technology officer at Cybertrust, said that information provided by the security company led to the successful arrests of the writers of the Melissa and Kournikova viruses, yet he says the police still rarely ask him for intelligence.

Symantec has quietly raised renewal prices for its Norton antivirus and other products, a move some see as a parting shot before Microsoft enters the consumer security fray next year. On Monday, the security software giant raised the prices Norton users pay for another year of updates to their installed products by as much as 33 percent. The updates include traditional virus signatures and product enhancements, which are a new feature and part of Symantec’s move to a subscription model.

While the United States continues to be the world’s worst source of spam, computers there are relaying far fewer junk emails than a year ago, according to Sophos. In contrast, the spam volume from South Korea and China is substantially up, compared with the same period last year, the security software maker said in a report released Wednesday. The report covered Sophos’ analysis of messages received in its scanning network between April and September this year.

T-Mobile USA and Research In Motion announced the availability of the new BlackBerry 7105t together with a new BlackBerry Internet Email service for Yahoo! Mail users. Whether in a meeting or out on the road, this new BlackBerry device and service offers an unmatched e-mail experience, providing busy professionals with the freedom to easily manage both corporate and personal messages, while on the go.

Microsoft is set to enter the security arena next year, but Symantec won’t compete by complaining to antitrust regulators or suing the software giant. "We’re not looking to go whining to the EU or the DOJ for anything," Symantec Chief Executive Officer John Thompson said Tuesday, referring to the European Union and the U.S. Department of Justice. Thompson was responding to questions from reporters after an event at the Commonwealth Club.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been fending off charges of responding sluggishly to a disaster. Is the cybersecurity division next? Like FEMA, the U.S. government’s cybersecurity functions were centralized under the Department of Homeland Security during the vast reshuffling that cobbled together 22 federal agencies three years ago. Government auditors have been saying that Homeland Security has failed to live up to its cybersecurity responsibilities and may be "unprepared" for emergencies.

Microsoft officials said they believe the new features in the upcoming version of Visual Basic will go some way to appease developers who have been upset since the company moved from Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic .Net. New features in the upcoming Visual Basic 9.0, such as the LINQ (Language Integrated Query) Project and others, are expected to significantly enhance developer productivity. Microsoft’s phase-out of Visual Basic 6 and move to Visual Basic .Net set up an uproar in the ranks of some of Microsoft’s most loyal developers.

Compuware affirmed its commitment to Microsoft’s Windows and the .Net platform by announcing plans to increase support for the Microsoft Visual Studio suite of development tools. At the company’s OJ.X developer conference, Bob Barker, vice president of strategic planning for technology, said Compuware will continue to deliver products that support the Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio Team System development experience.