A STRONG east wind swept through here on the weekend, whipping the fir trees around and scouring the leftover dead leaves off the ground, up and away into a brilliant blue sky.

Even stronger financial winds blowing out of the US through the world's economy threaten to push prosperity into a ditch, and the IT industry with it, from which it might not recover.

A continent further to the east in Washington DC, a failed and despised US President Bush, together with his sneering puppet-master and most of the venal and incompetent satraps of their disastrous administration, packed up and left the White House and US federal offices.

The administration's last White House press conference had been held last week in front of a smattering of bored traditional media stenographers, with many empty seats occupied at the last minute by interns pressed in to fill them for the television cameras.

Then Dubya stumbled through his last speech as President, just as smirking and shifty-eyed in his moronic cluelessness as he was upon entering office eight long nightmare years ago. He mouthed a few of the same tired lies for a few minutes, then shambled off to the nearly universal relief of everyone who bothered to watch, his failed presidency hanging upon him like an albatross, while the multiple catastrophes he created lingered like a bad smell.

Over the weekend, as near-hurricane force winds swept the city here in the Northwest, the crews of cleaners and painters moved through the White House, opening the windows and working to prepare the mansion for its next family, that of President-Elect Barack Obama.

The US federal government all but shut down last weekend and through yesterday's holiday, held to celebrate the birthday of the martyred black civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jnr.

And at long last today, before a jubilant crowd gathered before the steps of the US Congress and expected to number in the millions, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.

This day has been a long time, far too long, in coming, and for the US, and for all the rest of the world as well, it will not be regarded as a moment too soon.

So at noon today, US Eastern Standard Time, the entire IT industry should simply stop for a moment to appreciate that US President Barack Obama's inauguration at last presents us with hope for policy changes and other actions that might lead to economic recovery.

Lavasoft is pleased to introduce a new version of their Ad-Aware product - Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition. Building on 10 years of malware experience - and from a decade of listening to customers' security wants and needs - Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition provides radically improved performance and efficiency with minimal strain on resources, along with comprehensive malware protection.
Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition for both Ad-Aware Plus and Ad-Aware Pro provides advanced threat protection and is significantly lighter and faster than previous editions. Ad-Aware anniversary edition is launching January 20, 2009.

 NEW FEATURES:

• Behavior-based heuristical detection;
• Ad_Aware Live! integrated real-time protection;
• Radically improved resourse efficiency;
• Customizable profile scans;
• External drive scanning;
• Pin-point scanning;
• Toolbox;
• Full integration with Windows Security Center;
• Automatic pulse updates;
• Free technical support;
• Rootkit removal system;
• Network drive scanning;
• Direction, removal and clean-up.