Archive

I won't say I don't receive pitches for the occasional mortgage discount or Vegas vacation, the latest performance-enhancing elixir or anatomical wonder pills. Somehow those untidy and still slightly amusing offenders still wriggle past my defenses. In general, though, I've had good results with a b...

No doubt the Internet scams U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is targeting are a threat to living happily ever after on the Web. No doubt they're far more than just a nuisance. But this is feel-good law enforcement -- the equivalent of rounding up street-level drug dealers while the Colombian cart...

Hewlett-Packard turned in an impressive second quarter, beating targets for revenue and profits, but said it will continue aggressively cutting costs in the wake of its merger with Compaq by laying off another 3,500 workers by the end of this year. HP said revenue totaled $18 billion in the quarter ...

By all indications, Windows Server 2003 is engineered to be more secure than its predecessors. Microsoft has adopted a two-pronged approach to achieving this goal: The company has added several new features intended to boost security, and it has altered the operating system's out-of-the-box settings...

The U.S. Congress is filling up with laws designed to fight spam, and the jail holding mobster Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, who's serving a 12-year sentence for racketeering in New York, soon could be filling up with spammers. In fact, there are so many anti-spam acts flying around Washington that so...

In an effort to boost corporate IT spending by tapping a previously underserved segment of the market, IBM has rolled out an e-mail offering geared toward so-called deskless workers. Big Blue's product, which was developed by the company's Lotus unit and can cost as little as $1 per user per month, ...

When HP merged with Compaq just over a year ago, the combined company surpassed Dell in PC sales -- but with continued yearly growth rates of more than 20 percent, Dell had regained the top spot by the first quarter of 2003. Just last week, Dell reported its worldwide shipments had increased by near...

In a potential blow to the growth and profit strategies of some key Internet companies, a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project says broadband adoption soared in the United States last year but will be unable to sustain rapid growth going forward. In the survey, conducted start...

Call it the CTO's top 10 list. Every week, Keynote Systems releases a list of the top-performing Web sites in terms of load times, separating the lightning-quick from the sadly sluggish. It is little wonder that IT departments are focused on speeding up page load times -- a quick response can make t...

Computer maker Dell continued its strong recent performance, recording a 31 percent increase in profitability powered by sales growth in certain product lines and in overseas markets. Dell said revenue rose 18 percent for the three months ending April in its first quarter to US$9.5 billion, clearin...

When e-commerce first became popular, it was not long before affiliate marketing sprung up as a way for small-site Davids to drive traffic toward e-tail Goliaths -- and make some change in the process. However, many affiliate programs were structured so that the house always won, and minor players w...

It has now been more than a year since Hewlett-Packard and Compaq merged. It's been nearly two years since the idea of the deal was made public. Neither time frame is particularly long in the grand scheme of things, but for impatient observers, it's a lifetime. People want to know right now whether ...

After a short run as a buzz phrase during the dot-com surge, business-to-business (B2B) exchanges have fallen below most people's radar screens. However, the truth is that B2B is quietly trucking along. The only difference between the vision of yesteryear and the reality of today is that instead of ...

Governments and private enterprises, particularly outside the United States, are stepping up efforts to find alternatives to computer networks that rely on Microsoft products, according to a report from Gartner. The research firm said several issues, ranging from changing licensing agreements to a s...

It is a scene that retailers have seen since the world's first bazaar opened: the slow sales period, complete with idle clerks, empty aisles and languishing goods. E-tailers have come to know these stretches -- the low-revenue valleys that lie between peak shopping times -- well. Despite the now-pre...