Is Apple pushing antivirus software? Seb Janacek examines the source of the recommendation. In short: don't panic. Apple touts the Mac's invulnerability to viruses as one of the key unique selling points over the PC. In one of the very first 'Get a Mac' ads, the PC struggles with one of the 114,000 viruses out in the wild for the platform. Not so the Mac.

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To fight the UK downturn, retailers are looking abroad for growth. This could be a good move, says Matthew Cushen - if shops watch how they manage the IT. In the same week that Europe's largest indoor shopping centre opened at Westfield in London (270 stores in 1.6 million square feet), the new Dubai Mall opened (1,200 stores over 3.8 million square feet) and Wal-Mart announced that, for the first time, it would be allocating more of its investment billions to emerging markets such as Brazil and India rather than to mature markets such as Canada and the UK.

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IT workers will be among 1,150 staff to lose their jobs at financial giants HSBC and Credit Suisse. Most of HSBC's cuts will take place at the bank's London headquarters in Canary Wharf but regional centres such as Birmingham and Leeds are also expected to see losses. silicon.com Financial Services Get the latest financial services news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the FS newsletter today!

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With JavaFX being launched today, Sun Microsystems hopes to attract a new class of developer while building a much-needed new revenue source. JavaFX 1.0 returns to the sales pitch that Sun used during Java's launch more than 13 years ago: a foundation for software on a wide variety of computing "clients" such as desktop computers or mobile phones. JavaFX builds on current Java technology but adds two major pieces.

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Still struggling to think of how to reward your hard-working tech team this festive season or just looking for a Christmas present for yourself? Check out silicon.com's suggestions for the perfect techie gifts. First up, for the would-be codebreaker: a pocket version of the Enigma codebreaking machine from Bletchley Park.

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With more than 300 separate databases, each with a possible 100 variables and an offshore team preparing datasets that will be transformed into complex analytical models, pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca is reliant on high quality data. Wayne Obetz, senior manager of quantitative commercial insight at AstraZeneca, told silicon.com about the challenges in keeping data up to scratch.

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Offshoring is having a negative impact on the skill level of the UK workforce, according to the exclusive 2008 silicon.com Skills Survey. Almost half (48 per cent) of respondents agree or strongly agree offshoring is undermining the skillsets of UK techies. Exclusive to silicon.com Skills Survey 2008Why are low paid IT jobs on the riseWhy CIO salaries are still growingHas the IT skills crisis turned a corner? Does the IT industry discriminate against women?Sexes split on how to fix IT gender imbalance

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IT systems are notorious for failing just when they're needed most. Freeform Dynamic's Tony Lock asks: is there anything organisations can do to fix this? A recent report by Freeform Dynamics shows that IT systems fail. What's more, a quick glance at the chart below shows they fail far more frequently than one might expect in today's 'high availability' environments.

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Technology research has received a significant boost with £250m of funding for 44 new PhD research centres. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has allocated the money for the doctoral research centres at 22 universities across England and Scotland.

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Forget fancy new technology projects - squeezing the most out of existing IT budgets and making sure projects pay back quickly are the top priorities for CIOs next year. The Corporate IT Forum asked some of its top CIO members about their priorities for 2009, with managing costs and careful budgeting - as well as cutting back on technology for technology's sake - surfacing as key issues.

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This competition is now closed. The winning caption, from reader David Supple was "Blackberry users looking for Storm upgrade driven to extreme phone loss techniques". Photo credit: Lewis Imagebank

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Microsoft is hiring former Yahoo! executive Qi Lu to run its online services business, but in the process, it is losing one of its own top advertising executives. In its announcement of Lu as the president of Microsoft's online services group, Microsoft said Brian McAndrews, former CEO of Aquantive, would be leaving Microsoft. McAndrews was seen as the top internal candidate for the post, which came open when Kevin Johnson left to become CEO of Juniper Networks.

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The Department of Homeland Security has failed to ensure the nation's cybersecurity, a new report to be released Monday concludes, because the threat of cyberattacks is too vast for any one agency to tackle and must be addressed by a new White House office, as well as revised laws and government practices. As President-elect Barack Obama fills the remaining cabinet positions in his administration, a Center for Strategic and International Studies commission is recommending Obama create a new office in the White House: the National Office for Cyberspace, headed by an Assistant to the President for Cyberspace.

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Only around one-in-five of the UK IT workforce is female, and the 2008 silicon.com Skills Survey reveals broad consensus the lack of women is bad for the industry. silicon.com readers were quick to responding to the survey, with explanations of why the industry has become so male dominated.

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Primary school children should be learning how to use technology earlier in their school career, according to an influential new government review. The review by Sir Jim Rose, a former inspector with schools watchdog Ofsted, has found IT teaching has failed to keep pace with young people's increasing computer literacy.

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Despite only one in five tech workers being female, silicon.com's CIO Jury says that positive discrimination is not the right way to boost the number of women in the IT department. silicon.com Retail & Leisure Get the latest retail and leisure news straight to your inbox. Sign up for the R&L newsletter today! When asked if positive discrimination is needed to encourage more women into the industry, CIO Jury members voted against it by a factor of ten to two.

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If CIOs had a Santa Claus, what would they ask for this Christmas? The Naked CIO is making a list and checking it twice. The following is a list that I intend to send to the North Pole in the hope that Mr Claus and his reindeer stop by on Christmas Eve, jump through my corporate chimney and leave me the gifts I need to run my business effectively.

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Rumours have abounded over the years about a Google operating system, perhaps based on the Ubuntu version of Linux widely used within the company, but on Monday the company revealed an open source project that provides a different answer to the same problem: Native Client. According to Brad Chen of Google's Native Client team, the tech will give developers a helping hand without tying them to a particular browser or operating system. "At Google we're always trying to make the web a better platform. That's why we're working on Native Client, a technology that aims to give web developers access to the full power of the client's CPU while maintaining the browser neutrality, OS portability and safety that people expect from web applications," he wrote in a blog posting.

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UK IT workers are ready to clear more than their desks if the right job comes calling. The vast majority (81 per cent) of techies would happily up sticks and move abroad if a job or work opportunity landed in their lap, according to research by IT jobs site The IT Job Board. A slightly smaller majority (71 per cent) would be happy to relocate to another location within the UK for the same reason.

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Web traders are the latest threat to the UK's coffers, according to the government's spending watchdog. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has singled out individuals trading on the internet – along with the self-employed and buy-to-let landlords – as "new risks to tax revenue", caused by those who don't declare their capital gains and income tax.

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The majority of UK tech workers think their industry is ageist and firmly believe if you're aged over 40 getting an IT job is an uphill struggle. Just over half (52 per cent) of respondents to the exclusive silicon.com 2008 Skills Survey agreed or strongly agreed the IT industry is ageist - compared to just a fifth who held the opposite view.

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Salesforce.com and Google on Monday announced an expanded alliance, aiming to offer a set of developer tools and service around cloud computing applications. Force.com for Google App Engine is designed to enable developers to create applications in the cloud. Here's how it aims to work:

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Google's Android developer team has announced the Android Dev Phone 1, the first Android-based device unlocked to allow the use of any SIM card or software. Android is a full mobile stack, from operating system to applications. It is the handiwork of the Google-led Open Handset Alliance and a developer community, who both hope to create an alternative to the current crop of largely proprietary mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and Windows Mobile.

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Yahoo! began issuing pink slips Wednesday to the majority of the employees affected by its previously announced 10 per cent job cut, the company confirmed. Most of the 1,520 layoffs affect employees at Yahoo!'s US-based locations and come from a number of areas within the company, the company said.

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Top HP software executives said on Tuesday that they believe in the ideas behind cloud computing but don't like the name of the approach or the "hype" surrounding it. Talking at the HP Software Universe show and conference in Vienna, Tom Hogan, senior vice president for software at HP, said the company had taken time to weigh up the promise of cloud computing, which provides web-based access to remote enterprise applications and storage.

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The recent terror attacks in Mumbai are forcing Indian outsourcing companies to shore up their defences more than ever. Saritha Rai reports from Bangalore. The horrific attacks on hotels, a train station, a bar café, an apartment block and a hospital in Mumbai at the end of November, streamed live on television accompanied by incessant commentary, rattled the world.

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Mind the tech pay gap: female IT workers' wads are not as bulging as their male colleagues. Results from this year's exclusive silicon.com Skills Survey show female IT workers are less likely to be pocketing the biggest salaries - and more likely to be on the lowest rung of the wage ladder.

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Growth in information technology spending next year is expected to reach 1.6 per cent in the US, a substantial drop from previous forecasts. Forrester Research's current 2009 estimate, released on Tuesday, is down from its previous forecast of 6.1 per cent growth, which was issued prior to the steep drop in IT spending at the close of the third quarter.

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It is anything but a season of goodwill on the UK high street. The bright side? Technology might just save retailers from the worst of what faces them, says lawyer Kit Burden. It's been a tough year for retail. Major brand names are going into administration, consumer confidence is at an all-time low and there's nothing to look forward to but a deepening recession in 2009.

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For many quarters, Microsoft's server and tools unit has been the company's shining star. While desktop Windows and Office still provide the bulk of revenue and profits, it's the server business that has been the fastest growing of Microsoft's big businesses. That may continue to be the case but in an interview this week with silicon.com sister site CNET News.com, Microsoft's server and tools boss, Bob Muglia, said the business is definitely feeling the heat from the global economic slowdown.

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Graham Young, senior partner and head of IT for architecture firm Foster + Partners, and a member of this year's exclusive silicon.com CIO50, discusses how he copes with demanding and creative users, as well as the technologies he's planning to exploit in the future.

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UK police are hoping to one day develop a breathalyser-style tool for computers that could instantly flag up illegal activity on any PC it's attached to. Detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie, architect of the UK's Police Central E-crime Unit (PCeU), said frontline police ideally need a digital forensic tool as easy to use as the breathalyser, to help them deal with growing numbers of computers being seized during raids on suspects' homes.

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"LOL, that code 18 thinks he's so book but really he's just a 404 CGI Joe." No idea what I'm talking about? Me neither - but welcome to the cutting edge of tech slang.

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Tech industry leaders feel the economic downturn won't have a huge impact on their businesses, despite economists predicting 2009 could be a tough year for the market. Almost two-thirds (64 per cent) of CEOs and board members from the tech, media and telecommunications sector believe the situation will be no worse than in 2001, when the tech sector suffered its own recession following the dot-com bust. Tech Hotspots: The list 1. Silicon Valley2. Bangalore3. London4. Tokyo5. Boston6. Cambridge7. Shanghai8. Tel Aviv9. Seoul 10.Beijing 11.Chennai 12.Pune 13.Singapore 14.Helsinki 15.Moscow 16.Hong Kong 17.Hyderabad 18.New York 19.Sydney 20.Shenzhen

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In 2008 silicon.com has crossed the globe; delved beneath the streets of London; taken to the skies; travelled back in time; marked the departure of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates; seen the launch of the MacBook Air and the not so spectacular launch of Heathrow Terminal 5; unveiled the tech behind the Beijing Olympics; visited the lab recreating the Big Bang; and taken a look at the SpaceShipOne - the world's first commercial spacecraft. January saw Bill Gates give his last speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, in which he offered his predictions for 2008 and had a musical moment with ex Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash.

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The UK's north-south divide is mirrored in IT salaries, according to results from the exclusive 2008 Skills Survey. Techies who earn in excess of £70,001 are a fifth more likely to dwell in the southerly regions of England than in the North East or West of England, the Midlands or Wales.

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High-profile data leaks with fat fines are causing businesses to take content security seriously. Quocirca's Bob Tarzey offers some advice on how to get it right. The growth in the use of email and other forms of electronic communication between businesses in the last two decades has opened up a whole new area of risk. While there is an imperative to share information to keep business moving, all too often valuable data is getting into the hands of the wrong people.

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Microsoft will have a bunch of stuff to show at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, but a rumoured ZunePhone won't be one of them, according to sources familiar with the company's plans. Instead, much of CEO Steve Ballmer's focus will be on talking about Windows 7 from a consumer perspective. Microsoft is pushing to have Windows 7 done in time for the holiday 2009 shopping season, so that means this CES is Ballmer's best stage to tout its benefits.

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The past year has seen some memorable footage come to silicon.com including Bill Gates' final visit to London before stepping down as Microsoft chairman, and a behind-the-scenes look at the tech in Heathrow's Terminal 5. There were also some fascinating films about Britain's technology heritage and lots more. Early on in the year, the annual mobile phone jamboree Mobile World Congress, formerly known as 3GSM, took place and silicon.com reporter Natasha Lomas quizzed some of the mobile's biggest names about the future of the industry.

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