Monthly round-up: June

The big news in the IT world this month was Bill Gates leaving Microsoft to work full-time at his charitable organisation. Love him or loath him, Gates was arguably the most influential technology figure of the last thirty years, responsible for the operating system which you are very likely to be using if you are a PC owner.

A lot of IT PRO readers feel very strongly about the man, and we also dedicated a pictorial tribute to the most famous geek of them all.

Microsoft is going through a tricky time at the moment as it tries to keep pace with online leader Google, and the news that Yahoo has tied up an advertising deal has blown its projected Microsoft-Yahoo tie-up completely out of the water.

July 11th will see the UK debut of the Apple iPhone, with IT PRO covering Apple's announcement of its latest foray into the mobile market and the incredible hype that came with it.

More work for the hype machine this month, as June also saw the final release of Mozilla Firefox 3, with a heavy advertising campaign leading to 8.3 million downloads the first week, which of course crashed the server.

Hacking was back in the news this month as it was revealed that the Cotton Traders website was hacked, with the alleged theft of 38,000 details. Our very own editor Chris Green revealed that he was one of those affected, and from the response of IT PRO editorial the biggest concern was that it took almost six months for people to be informed.

Gary McKinnon was fighting to avoid extradition to the US after being accused of hacking into military and NASA computer systems. Whatever you think his punishment should be, it wasn't the first big hack and it won't be the last.