Internet and mobile services are expected to score against handheld video game players and satellite radio amid an economic recession, according to results from a Forrester Research survey released Monday.

According to the survey results, 51 percent of North America consumers surveyed said they planned to curtail technology spending next year, due to the economy. And areas expected to take the greatest hit include handheld video game players, followed by satellite radio, smart phones, video game consoles and portable GPS devices, the survey found.

The report noted:

While no device is immune from consumer spending cuts, new devices such as satellite radios and handheld video game players are the most likely to be left off the priority list - two thirds of

I wrote not long ago about the various disciplines that data center operations teams will need to work through to address those cloud-computing values you often hear hyped by people like me.

In that post, I noted that many organizations had gained an understanding of how server virtualization could be used to abstract software concepts, thus managing them distinctly from the underlying hardware. I also noted, however, that few organizations had made the decision to systematically automate that management.

Channel-V tonight pointed me to an interview by Virtualization Review's Keith Ward of Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's senior director of product marketing. In the interview, Balkansky discusses the upcoming VDC-OS product release, and what it means to the next

A big reason for the growing popularity of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser is the amazingly creative and abundantly useful add-ons that are being created for Firefox. My three new favorites let you ax the ads on a site, see the tracking pixels on the current page, and gain a wealth of options when you select and right-click text in your browser.

Browse faster by blocking ads
Wouldn't you like to watch TV and listen to the radio without having to sit through the ads that pay the freight? Or dismantle the billboards that line the freeways? I can't help you with TV spots or roadside distractions, but you can kiss Web ads good-bye. Just download and install Wladimir Palant's Adblock Plus extension for Firefox.

After browsing with Adblock Plus enabled for a whi

The health of Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been a topic of concern for some months now. On Monday, with the company's Macworld show getting under way, Apple and Jobs issued statements issued Jobs' health. We'll be following this breaking story throughout the day.

In October, Steve Jobs briefly addressed his state of health onstage at an Apple event.

As we have said before, if there ever comes a day when Steve wants to retire or for other reasons cannot continue to fulfill his duties as Apple's CEO, you will know it.

Apple is very luc

Apple has admitted that Steve Jobs will not appear at Macworld because of health concerns.

Apple has admitted that CEO Steve Jobs is skipping Tuesday's Macworld keynote for health-related reasons, after initially pointing to other reasons for his absence.

Throughout 2008 Apple was plagued with rumors about Jobs' health, but steadfastly refused to acknowledge that anything was behind concerns over what many believed was substantial weight loss suffered by the iconic Apple founder. Apple stunned onlookers in December with the news that Jobs would be skipping his much-anticipated Macworld keynote, but said the reason was that Apple had decided not to invest in a Macworld keynote because it would be the company's last year at