Coop's Corner (CNET)

From the counterintutive files: IT demand is...up?

The headlines are dreary but parts of the country actually are reporting upticks in demand for IT products and services.

I know. Sounds crazy. What with more than a few on Wall Street ready to contemplate ritual hara-kiri as the economy goes from bad to worse, this sounds implausible. But paging through the Federal Reserve's district-by-district review of current economic conditions, a couple of counterintuitive nuggets suggest that there remain pockets of strength. Consider the following:

• IT companies serving the districts around Kansas City and Minneapolis describe conditions as "stable to up."

The Minneapolis region particularly benefited more

Even an SaaS conclave is discounting rates

So much for finding safe refuge from the storm. Even a conference targeted at the quasi-esoteric world of software as a service is finding it tough to fill up the seats these days.

The SaaS Summit 2009 conference, slated to get underway next week in San Francisco, has chopped the price of its "full conference pass" to $495 from $1,195.

In a note, conference sponsor OpSource said it had reduced the cost because it "believes so strongly in the value and industry energy that will be created by bringing together the SaaS, Web, and cloud communities at SaaS Summit more

Green tech's plea: Show me the money--fast, please

Like a lot of green-technology companies, Tendril is waiting for the federal stimulus money to start flowing.

"I think it will act like a massive accelerator," said CEO Adrian Tuck, whose company makes sensors that consumers can use to monitor and control their consumption of energy.

But echoing a common concern, Tuck also hopes that Tendril and other green-tech start-ups will not need to wait too long before the spigots open.

You know the cliche about time being of the essence? It's a refrain I heard again and again during the course of interviewing CEOs as part of a more

Spotify's latest music dirge: We've been hacked

Hackers were able to penetrate Spotify's computer network, potentially exposing the personal information and passwords of some of the music service's users.

In a company blog announcement, Spotify did not get specific about the extent of the breach. Here's part of the post:

Along with passwords, registration information such as your email address, birth date, gender, postal code and billing receipt details were potentially exposed. Credit card numbers are not stored by us and were not at risk. All payment data is handled by a secure 3rd party provider.

If you have an account that was created

Despite layoffs, Microsoft holding firm on H-1Bs

In the 18th century, the epistolary novel was all the rage in France and England. Now, it seems, the tit-for-tat style of opposing letters has become a preferred method of dialogue between Iowa Senator Charles Grassley and Microsoft.

In late February, Grassley urged Microsoft to rethink the use of "H-1B or other work visa program employees over qualified American workers." Grassley issued his letter after Microsoft announced its first across-the-board layoffs.

"I encourage Microsoft to ensure that Americans are given priority in job retention. Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these

HP to execs: Bye-bye to plane perks

Add Hewlett-Packard to the list of companies reining in the number of corporate perquisites that once defined the high life in Silicon Valley. In a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it had changed its policy covering personal use of corporate aircraft.

Here's the fine print:

HP will no longer provide its executive officers with a gross-up to cover the individual income tax incurred when corporate aircraft are used for personal purposes (including spousal travel on business trips).

Previously, the policy provided that the chief executive officer would receive a gross-up for the tax

Facebook as an enterprise cloud platform?

On the surface, it sounds like an odd couple: Facebook, one of the most recognizable successes in the Web 2.0 firmament, and Zuora, a start-up with a suite of subscription commerce products based on the software as a service model.

But Zuora is betting on a computing trend: that as more applications move to the cloud in coming years, the natural corollary is that developers will follow the money and necessarily move in the same direction.

Even on Facebook.

"There are 140 new applications a day on Facebook because it's so easy and so viral a platform," Zuora more

Q&A: Tiversa co-founder talks about P2P leak

Updated at 3 p.m. PST: An earlier version of this report misidentified Sam Hopkins' position at the company. He is chief technology officer and a co-founder.

Earlier this weekend, I pointed to a report that a Pittsburgh area Internet security firm had discovered a file containing government blueprints and avionics for President Obama's helicopter on an IP address in Tehran.

During a traffic analysis, the company, Tiversa, headquartered in Cranberry Township, found that one particular file was actively being shared via a P2P protocol. On Sunday, I spoke by phone with the more

Suddenly, Twitter's the rage with D.C. politicos

Did Missouri's U.S. senator, Claire McCaskill, just use Twitter to blab the timing of President Barack Obama's choice to run the Department of Health and Human Services?

On Saturday afternoon, McCaskill left this post on the microblogging site: "A little anxious about the announcement of HHS Sec. Hopeful that my pal Gov of Kansas will get the call. It should happen today or tomorrow."

Obama's initial choice for the post, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, withdrew his candidacy after he acknowledged failing to pay $140,000 in taxes and more

Investigative journalism: First casualty of the Net?

I'm spending Saturday in an auditorium somewhere in the bowels of Microsoft's Mountain View, Calif., campus. The occasion: a series of panels co-sponsored by Microsoft, Google, the Computer History Museum, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, probing "the impact of information technology on society."

That's quite a mouthful, not to mention quite an ambitious subject to tackle, but a very timely conclave. To their credit, the hosts have assembled a collection of very big brains up for the task.

The day started off with a rocking presentation by Joshua Cohen, a Stanford professor of political more