Spotlight Features

For decades, U.S. cell carriers have crippled the American mobile ecosystem. Their nickel-and-dime mentality has hobbled user and device manufacturer alike. RIM's BlackBerry nearly didn't get off the ground simply because carriers couldn't see a need to push email nor a way to squeeze more money out...

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- enacted in the waning days of the 20th century -- contains provisions designed to make it evolve over time. The idea was that as technology fostered new ways of creating and distributing copyrighted material such as music, movies and software programs, the law...

Many a techie is looking at the cloud and seeing the shape of the future -- but that shape is often starkly defined by the data center, leaving little room for visions of mobile. Yet the cloud will undoubtedly shape-shift mobile devices in fascinating and often unexpected ways. "The cloud is the per...

A $30 billion information technology market is hard to pass up. That's why the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' program to invest that huge amount of money in health records technology has received a lot of attention in the IT vendor community. That's normal. It is decidedly unusual, ho...

The U.S. government's $642-million program to encourage the use of electronic health records through federally created Regional Extension Centers will involve a two-tiered effort featuring customer relationship management technology. The REC program is one of several federal initiatives promoting el...

Many businesses have begun to use some form of user-generated content on their sites, and while this content can help to build a brand and develop a community, there is some risk involved. Some of the issues requiring management and moderation include abusive language, spam attacks, dilution of keyw...

In an economy where automobiles are essential, information about car performance and cost is readily available. With a few computer keystrokes a prospective buyer shopping the "previously owned" car market can trace the history of a vehicle through multiple owners and across state lines. Now there i...

Until recently, a phone was just a phone. Sure, it got cooler when it lost the rotary dial, the cord, the wire and its voice-only restrictions. Still, it was just a phone. Businesses knew that the sound of its ring usually meant money (for what company with silent phones is profitable?) -- but few w...

U.S. broadband providers have gotten away with shoddy speeds and restricted access because Americans consumers are pretty clueless about what they're actually buying. A whopping 80 percent of broadband users in the United States do not know the speed of their own broadband connection, a Federal Comm...

Every year since 2001 has been hailed as the year of mobile. But after years of hype and over-revved anticipation, the year of mobile may never come to be. Instead, it looks as though this is the year mobile will morph into something else entirely. In the years after the mobile generation, content w...