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Mozilla has been hard at work since releasing the first alpha of Firefox 4.0 (which is still named 3.7 for some reason). Similar to Chrome and Internet Explorer 8, which separate tabs into different processes, Mozilla has been planning on separating tabs, as well as add-ons, in the same way. The idea, as a whole, is being called "Electrolysis" and will be one of the most important features of Firefox 4.0.

Mozilla has released a second developer preview of Firefox 4.0 which contains a piece of the Electrolysis project. Dubbed "Out-of-Process Plugins," the new feature will ensure that plugins don't bring down the entire browser. When a plugin, such as Flash, crashes, the user's session will stay intact, leaving the plugin to be dealt with on it its own. Firefox will terminate the problematic plugin and then restart it automatically. The browser will also display a nice little error message, telling the user to refresh the page

The federal government's $20 billion-plus healthcare IT stimulus program has more hospitals and doctors than ever planning to implement e-medical record and other health IT systems. But many healthcare providers have put plans on hold as they wait for the government's final "meaningful use" rules that will determine which types of systems are eligible for reimbursements.

"I've been in this industry for 25 years, and I've never seen as much anxiety and confusion," said Dr. Mark Leavitt, chairman of the Certification Commission for Health IT. Leavitt spoke with Informationweek at the Healthcare Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS ) conference in Atlanta Tuesday.

Despite all the uncertainty, there are steps providers can take now that will help them jump-start system deployments once the final rules are issued later this spring. Here are 10 top ones:

1) Get buy-in and sponsorship from your organization's top leadership, including influential clinicians and the CEO. "Solicit your leadership team and actively communicate with upper management," said Curt Kwak, CIO of the western region of Providence Health & Services, a provider that serves Washington, Oregon, Montana, California, and Alaska.

Support from the top is critical, especially when convincing users to give up old work habit and processes. Make sure everyone understands your goals, such as how the new systems will improve quality of care

The Apple iPad is scheduled to hit U.S. stores April 3. Though a consumer device, it's a safe bet that like the iPhone and iPod before it, the iPad will make its way into the enterprise. Before it does, enterprises need to think about the security implications of yet another consumer device touching their networks. What security features should they ask for from Apple? What about protecting data accessed on the device? These questions and more should be on the minds of administrators planning ahead for the device, security pros say. At eWEEK, we have gathered ideas on what enterprises should consider regarding the iPad, and what should be on their Apple security wish list.

Researchers have produced a mobile phone that could be a boon for prying bosses wanting to keep tabs on the movements of their staff.

Japanese phone giant KDDI Corporation has developed technology that tracks even the tiniest movement of the user and beams the information back to HQ.

It works by analysing the movement of accelerometers, found in many handsets.

Activities such as walking, climbing stairs or even cleaning can be identified, the researchers say.

The company plans to sell the service to clients such as managers, foremen and employment agencies.

Microsoft warned of a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6 and IE 7 that has been targeted in attacks, and released fixes for eight holes in Windows and Office as part of Patch Tuesday.

The company issued Security Advisory 981374, which addresses a privately disclosed vulnerability. The hole could allow an attacker to take control of a machine if a user visited a malicious Web site, Microsoft said.

There are some features that could mitigate the effects of an attack. For instance, all supported versions of Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Windows Mail open HTML e-mail messages in the Restricted sites zone by default, the company said.

Google's up to its old tricks again, extending software tentacles in new directions to capture or subvert entire markets: This time it's aiming at business software by launching Google Apps Marketplace, which does clever cloud-connecting stuff.

Digging through Google's slightly obfuscating explanation in its blog post on the news, it seems that the App Marketplace has been conceived to make it super-easy for "Google Apps administrators" to find, enable, and distribute to their users all of the apps sitting in Google's cloud storefront. The word "efficiency" is used in there too, since Google's trying to point out that by having all of this stuff in one place, user's "daily workflows" in Gmail, Calendar, Contacts are streamlined, and the system lets everybody share data between the apps and each other for collaborative working.

There's the usual Google emphasis on open standards, meaning it's easy for app developers to quickly build hooks for your data into and out of other apps. And there's mention of the Google Apps userbase of some 25 million people, to tantalize and tempt developers to write more apps.

Microsoft is specifying a real date on which business users will be able to get their hands on Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010: May 12.

Consumers will have to wait until June to buy the product online and at retail, Microsoft officials said on March 5, via a post to the Microsoft Office 2010 Engineering blog.

Microsoft officials have been saying for the past few months that the company planned to make the final Office 2010 bits available by June of this year. A near-final Release Candidate (RC) test build of the product is being tested by a select group, with the release-to-manufacturing expected any time during the coming weeks.

Agencies find that fusing webs of remote sensors with geospatial management systems is the next best thing to being there

Last year, the southern African nation of Namibia experienced its worst flooding in decades as the Zambesi and other rain-swollen rivers rose more than 25 feet and inundated several regions of the continent. The flooding caused large-scale destruction to homes, schools, health facilities, mahangu and maize fields, and infrastructure.

A result of heavy rains in neighboring Angola and parts of Zambia’s Western Province, the flood also displaced more than 300,000 people and contributed to cholera and other disease outbreaks. The disaster in March 2009 followed a similar season of flooding in 2008.

This year, Namibian officials hope to get a head start against catastrophic weather situations. Their approach is to create a geospatial application that taps satellite imagery and river-height sensors and get an early read on when and where the flood waters are coming — helping them decide where to deploy the right resources. An international team of experts, including representatives from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are contributing their expertise in satellite mapping and sensor technology.

The 75 Microsoft and third-party patch events each year are a burden most users can't bear, says Secunia

The typical home user running Windows faces the "unreasonable" task of patching software an average of every five days, a security and vulnerability research company said today.

"It's completely unreasonable to expect users to master so many different patch mechanisms and spend so much time patching," said Thomas Kristensen, the chief security officer of Secunia. The result is that few consumers devote the time and attention necessary to stay atop the patching job, which leaves them open to attack.

According to Secunia, of the users who ran the company's Personal Software Inspector (PSI) the last week of January, half had 66 or more programs from 22 or more different vendors on their machines. PSI is a free tool that scans PCs to produce a list of vulnerable software, but does not itself initiate updates. Instead, users are directed to the approprite vendor patch site. Nearly 2 million copies of the tool have been downloaded since Secunia debuted it in 2007.