Spotlight Features

If you're buying anything online anytime soon, you better charge it. MasterCard, Visa, American Express -- take your pick -- but don't hit the virtual checkout lane without your bank-protected plastic in hand. "Use a credit card for maximum protection against money theft online," attorney Mari Frank...

No call should strike more fear into the heart of an online business than a call from a customer saying, "Your site won't let me do what I want to do." Chilling words, because only a tiny percentage of online consumers will actually pick up the phone to alert businesses to a problem. By the time tha...

Ten percent of Caucasian American men but less than one percent of women are estimated to have some form of colorblindness. Colorblind people represent a significant but often neglected talent pool and consumer segment. Identifying opportunities to make products usable by as many people as possible,...

The definitions or descriptions of newly minted terms and acronyms have been flying around this past year. To add to this, I'll contribute another one: Rich Enterprise Application or REA. To be clear from the start, REA is an evolution of Rich Internet Applications or RIA, and not an entirely new ca...

There are two guilty pleasures I've developed of late. One is reading "Mini-Microsoft," which is an unauthorized blog by a Microsoft employee that probably does more to provide a glimpse inside the company and humanize it than anything the firm is officially doing. The other is "The Secret Diary of...

Approximately 10 million Americans fall victim to identity theft each year, a statistic that is expected to increase despite the diligent efforts of government and institutions to turn the tide. Leading IT security providers are arguably in the best position to understand the nature and scale of the...

It's open season on Windows Vista for hackers, crackers and virus and malware propagators. As any IT manager will recall, malware incursions and zero-day exploits of Windows, Internet Explorer and Office applications were all too common in 2006. Therefore, security providers and IT staff across orga...

Traditionally, preparation for board meetings has involved an enormous amount of time, expense, and stress. There are always last-minute items that have to be incorporated into the board book -- that heavy package that goes to board members and their support staff before a meeting. A great deal of e...

Six to eight weeks. That's about what it seems to take to get an on-demand solution up and running these days. This information comes from an analysis of nine on-demand vendors that we surveyed for our annual WizKids report which will be out this week. What's good about that time interval is that ...

The networked home -- complete with "smart" appliances and a range of security and entertainment options -- is becoming increasingly common. Many new homes come equipped with centrally controlled entertainment, security and climate systems, and more existing homes are being retrofitted with home the...