Spotlight Features

For years, the vast majority of purchases made from e-commerce sites have relied on the same technology to keep them safe and protect consumers from identity theft. Secure socket layer, or SSL, has helped complete millions of Web transactions, often working without consumers knowing it. When an SSL ...

The Web analytics market is heating up, as evidenced by at least two recent high-profile business deals in this area. Google entered the picture with a successful US$30 million bid for Urchin last spring, and NetIQ sold WebTrends to a group of company executives for more than $90 million. The name o...

Higher data rates and sophisticated features such as digital cameras, mobile video and advanced gaming mean that more on-the-go functionality is now available to cell phone users. These advances come with a dark side, however, as consumers are struggling to make sure that their phones have enough ba...

Last week, Intel held its Developer Conference, an annual event where the company showcases the changes it plans to make in its next-gen products. With Microsoft's new operating system due to hit the market in a few short months, Intel planned more dramatic changes this year than would typically be ...

The recent news that AT&T made a deal to acquire BellSouth has elicited two reactions: one, an assumption that communications prices will go up; and the other, an assumption that prices will go down. It's always tough to predict exactly what will happen in the marketplace, but the best money w...

Last Friday -- essentially the eleventh hour of a years-long lawsuit -- Research In Motion reached a US$612.5 million settlement with NTP, relieving legions of customers who have come to feel they cannot possibly last very long without their BlackBerries. In this suit, NTP successfully challenged RI...

At first I did not know how to react to the news that AOL and Yahoo were going to be charging companies to guarantee delivery of e-mail. Was I supposed to feel good as a CRM person that a new avenue of message delivery was opening up, or was I supposed to man the barricades as a consumer to protest...

Three bits of news got me thinking about personal computers last week. The first was the "surprise" announcement from Apple that it was getting into speakers and, yawn, building an Intel-based Mac Mini. The second was the HP/Gateway settlement, and the third was the "secret" Microsoft Origami projec...

Some members of Congress want to tax the Internet, and they're trying to do it under the guise of "telecom reform." That's a trick Americans won't like. It's time to send Washington a message, loud and clear: hands off the Internet. During hearings on a government tax and welfare program called the...

Now is the time for all good dads to come to the aid of their Girl Scout daughters and sell, sell, sell cookies. What is reminiscent of the sentence used by many typing teachers to teach that skill has become the battle cry throughout the suburbs of America. What has quickly replaced the length of...