Second Life chief steps down

Earlier this month, the San Francisco company that manages the online community Second Life announced a restructuring that trimmed 30% of its workforce, says The Wall Street Journal.

Linden Lab chief executive Mark Kingdon has stepped down, and founder Philip Rosedale - who was succeeded by Kingdon as CEO about two years ago, but remained chairman - has returned as interim chief executive.

Kingdon had signalled two key focuses for the future: creating a browser-based virtual world experience, eliminating the need to download software to explore that avatar-based environment, and melding Second Life with popular social networks.

An investigation that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is driving into Twitter's allegedly lax security practices, following two high profile hacking incidents last year, has been settled, states Cnet News.

In January and April 2009, Twitter was subjected to first a hack that targeted celebrities' accounts and then a data breach that made private information (including internal Twitter documents) accessible to the attackers.

Yesterday, the FTC explained that Twitter will form an "independently audited information security programme" as a result of the settlement, which must be assessed by a third party every other year, and that for 20 years, it's barred "from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of non-public consumer information".

Apple's latest device went on sale on Wednesday, with hundreds of people queuing outside Apple's flagship store in central London for the rollout, reports BBC News.

However, an issue that relates to the mobile phone signal, with users reporting a drop in signal strength when the phone is held, has been reported.

However, it is not yet clear whether the problem affects all phones, or if the signal deteriorates when the phone is making a call or only when held in standby mode.

Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, along with the recent release of Office 2010, is helping drive a tech refresh in the enterprise, according to Dell CEO Michael Dell, states eWeek.

However, while Dell sees that refresh starting now, it's likely to take two years for large businesses to fully convert a PC fleet to Windows 7.

“If you're talking about a client refresh, these companies are not likely to replace all their PCs next week or even next quarter,” says Dell. “It requires a whole deployment plan and that is typically a two-year process.”