IT News Week of Aug. 3

08/03/2009

I've been trying to revive a short segment that I used to call "IT Webgems," featuring some nuggets of IT history. The stuff is out there, but doing that type of research is time-consuming. With that, here's something I did run into that was just as interesting to trivia geeks. Did you know that this week in 1806, The Holy Roman Empire finally disappeared in a figurative sense? In its final days, the last ruling monarch was Emperor Francis II, who abdicated on Aug. 6, 1806. That capped 844 years after Otto 1 crowned himself the first Holy Roman Emperor. I'm amazed, but I'm also chagrined that I didn't pay close attention in high school when this fact may have come up in world history class. (The meme for this trivia comes from The New York Times' "On This Day" section.)

In this week's episode, Microsoft rolls out new security initiatives, issues off-cycle patches for Visual Studio, IE; Microsoft and Yahoo reach search deal; Systems Center exec promoted to Microsoft VP role; IBM acquires analytics company; more. Links for items mentioned in this week's audiocast:

If you experience problems listening to this audiocast, send e-mail to [email protected] and describe the problem.

Duration: 10:00


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