Spotlight Features

You don't need Microsoft's high-powered marketing staff or sophisticated statistics to know where the power currently lies in the portable media player market. Very simply, the score reads something like this: Apple's iPod, 100 million units shipped; Microsoft's Zune, 1 million. Yes, the iPod entere...

The growth rate for illegal downloading of copyrighted material via peer-to-peer file sharing services slowed somewhat during 2006, while use of their legal counterparts picked up, according to recent research. Nonetheless, open and walled-off P2P services -- so-called darknets -- remain the primary...

An offer made earlier this month to pay whistle blowers $1 million for reporting companies using unlicensed software has met little or no public outcry, unlike lawsuits initiated by the music industry against illegal music downloaders. The Business Software Alliance, a global organization representi...

It seems like everybody's talking about e-discovery nowadays -- just take a look at any IT trade journal or IT news source and you're likely to see at least one article about what e-discovery is and how to prepare for it. However, despite all this attention, both in IT and legal circles, there are s...

There's no doubt that the technologies have arrived to make it possible for individual citizens to participate in the legislative process. "We've already seen a shift in both software and the media where individual content is key and any one very talented coder or blogger can impact an industry," Am...

This year, the world may see the results of a new experiment in selling online digital music, and major record label EMI is at the center of the testing. Sandwiched between the current market-dominating Apple iTunes music store and the Amazon.com DRM-free digital music store set to launch this fall,...

There's no doubt that terrorist organizations are making full use of the Web today to recruit, train, mobilize, publicize and raise funds, but finding and ultimately prosecuting them is no simple matter. With fleeting URLs and anonymous communications, online terrorist activities are an ever-shiftin...

It's probably safe to say that most Americans, at one time or another, have felt they could do a better job of governing the nation than their elected officials. It may even be safe, in fact, to say that that has never been more true than it is today. "Bush's approval ratings are as low as it's poss...

One decade in and blogging has gone from a prosaic exercise in online journaling to a serious enterprise undertaken by so-called citizen journalists eager to bring stories to light that the mainstream media might otherwise overlook. The dogged determination of these passionate online journalists has...

Some 30 percent of businesses in the UK leave data, some of it sensitive, on their PCs when they dispose of them, according to research findings released this week by computer maker Lenovo. In the survey of 300 businesses commissioned by the UK-Ireland arm of the company, 29 percent of IT managers i...