Spotlight Features

This month America's first baby boomer, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, signed up for the Social Security benefits she will start to collect in January. The new phase of life that she and her generation are entering is creating demand for new industries that affect everyone, one of which involves "brain ...

Virtual Private Networks, a staple in enterprise settings, are starting to gather momentum as a way to connect remote users and branch offices securely to the networks of small and medium-sized businesses. Smaller companies are finding VPNs cheaper to operate than more costly dedicated T1 phone line...

There's been a bioterrorism attack in Chicago. You must find a way to administer medicine to roughly 3 million people in less than 48 hours. You need to set up points of dispensing, create makeshift care facilities, obtain refrigerated trucks and create morgue space -- not to mention handle crowd co...

We are on final countdown to the launch of Mac OS X Leopard. You'll see lots of feature head-to-head pieces start to ramp up, but the real difference is that Vista is from an engineering-driven company while Leopard is from a marketing-driven company -- and that is worth exploring this week. Last we...

The third version of the GNU General Public License version 3, released last summer, is on the slow road to acceptance. The new licensing conditions usher in numerous changes in how open source software developers regulate what users of their freely distributed programming code are legally able and ...

They have been making their lists and checking them twice. As a result, consumers will soon learn which retailers have been naughty or nice in planning for their most important part of their year: the holiday rush. "So much of retailers' business rides on the holiday season that they want to be sure...

Virtual private networks are common in enterprise settings as a way to connect remote users and branch offices securely to the corporate network. VPNs extend a corporation's reach to support worldwide locations. The same usefulness is gaining the attention of small and medium-sized businesses. Small...

The music industry switched gears last week in its legal campaign to squash piracy of its intellectual property and filed a lawsuit against Usenet.com which it calls "a haven for those seeking pirated content." In recent months, the industry, through its trade organization, the Recording Industry As...

Radio frequency identification technology vendors are now seeing demand from a wider range of end users for a broader range of applications -- from ID and access control to asset tracking, traceability and supply chain management. Vendors and developers are looking forward to the day when process im...

There are many reasons why a company might opt to conduct virtual meetings rather than face-to-face ones. Cost is one, particularly with fuel costs soaring; having a widely dispersed base of employees, clients or partners is another common one. An increasing number of companies are also meeting up i...