Articles by Jennifer LeClaire

A new company focused on protecting computer users and businesses against zero-day attacks before exploits hit users' hard drives launched a test version of its first product on Monday Exploit Prevention Labs introduced a beta edition of a security application dubbed SocketShield. The software intends to protect Internet users against the growing t...

Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed software designed to enable people to share their high-speed wireless connections without sacrificing security or privacy. Researchers believe the software can improve Internet connectivity in residential areas at no additional cost A typical residential user acces...

Nintendo has revealed that it will call its next-generation gaming console simply "Wii." The system will go head to head with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 Nintendo revealed the new identity of the much-anticipated video game console, previously code-named Revolution, on Thursday. With Wii, pronounced "we," the firm said it...

Internet telephone company Vonage on Wednesday struck a deal with European WiFi network operator The Cloud. The partnership gives Vonage customers access to its VoIP service over The Cloud's UK wireless broadband network Vonage customers equipped with its WiFi handset will be able to make VoIP calls from The Cloud's WiFi hotspots as part of the sta...

Skype on Wednesday announced license agreements for worldwide distribution rights to potentially hundreds of thousands of musical works as ringtones for its Internet telephony service The eBay subsidiary inked deals with three major music publishing companies -- EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Warner/Chappell Music -- as well as...

Linspire on Monday announced plans to offer a no-cost version of the firm's operating system called Freespire. Kevin Carmony, Linspire's President and CEO, unveiled the Freespire project in his keynote address at the 4th Annual Desktop Linux Summit in San Diego In his remarks, Carmony explained how Freespire is a community driven and developed proj...

At the National Association of Broadcasters 2006 convention in Las Vegas on Monday, Microsoft and Universal Pictures announced a collaboration on the release of next-generation HD DVD discs The discs use VC-1, the video compression standard recently approved by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and one of the mandatory codecs i...

In the wake of yet another poor earnings report, Sun Microsystems on Monday announced that Scott McNealy is stepping down as the company's CEO Effective immediately, Sun President Jonathan Schwartz will succeed him as CEO and will also retain the title of president. McNealy will continue serving as chairman of the board....

Microsoft and AOL on Monday joined forces with the United Kingdom's new Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Center. The alliance could see photographs of convicted pedophiles posted on the Internet The organization will bring together law enforcement officers, specialists from children's charities and industry to focus on high-risk, hig...

VMware and a group of hardware, software and service providers on Monday announced the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance to build joint virtual desktop products together. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, NEC, and Sun Microsystems are among the more than 20 companies that make up the new alliance Virtualization is a technique for deploying techn...

The United States is still the top spam-relaying country, but Asia could soon dethrone it as the spam king, a new study says Sophos' latest "Dirty Dozen" report on the top 12 spam-relaying countries during the first quarter of 2006 concludes that the United States is still sending more spam than any other nation despite its aggressive regulatory ef...

Opera Software on Thursday announced the first public Beta of Opera 9. Opera has been testing the free browser software since last October The Norwegian software company's latest version includes widgets, small Web programs that run in their own windows on users' desktops. The Opera 9 Beta also features support for BitTorrent, a popular file downlo...

Apple v. Does -- a case with broad implications for bloggers and journalists and their right to protect the confidentiality of their sources -- began on Thursday before a San Jose, Calif., appeals court Apple Computer has sued several unnamed individuals, called "Does," for allegedly leaking information to online reporters, in this case, bloggers, ...

A group of technology industry leaders on Wednesday launched The Green Grid, an effort to help reduce growing power and cooling demands in enterprise datacenters AMD, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and IBM are the founding sponsors of the organization whose goals are supported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Alliance to Save...

Riding on the back of the second annual E-mail Authentication Summit in Chicago, Microsoft on Tuesday claimed rapid adoption of its Sender ID framework for e-mail authentication to fight spam. It also launched improved postmaster services for consumers There has been a threefold increase in Sender ID adoption among Fortune 500 companies, increasing...

Personal computers may dominate Internet usage today, but mobile phones are poised to invade that territory with wireless browsing capabilities, a new study says Internet access via the mobile phone actually outpaces wireless access from a notebook PC in many of areas of the world -- a statistic driven largely by the massive install base of mobile ...

Technology is all around us. We work on computers, listen to MP3 players, talk on smartphones, snap photos with digital cameras and, well, you get the picture. Technology makes every day life easier -- when it works. What about when it doesn't, or at least when you can't figure out how it does? Many consumers are overwhelmed by the headache of figu...

Microsoft's latest series of patches is brewing trouble for some customers While the MS06-015 patch was designed to fix a flaw in Windows Explorer, it is also causing plenty of problems for people who use Hewlett-Packard printers, scanners and digital cameras. Those who use Sunbelt Software's Kerio Personal Firewall are also experiencing difficulti...

The number of malicious programs is on the rise, according to McAfee's Avert Labs, with exponential increases in rootkits and Windows-based stealth components In the first quarter of 2006, the number of rootkits increased by 700 percent over the year-ago period, according to McAfee. Meanwhile, the number of Windows-based stealth components dominate...

In a move to reducesoftware piracy in China, Beijing has banned the sale of so-called "naked" computers, that is, personal computers sold without software, according to an announcement on Friday The timing could be a political move to coincide with Chinese President Hu Jintao's upcoming visit to the United States. The U.S. has urged a crackdown oni...