Articles by Paul Hartsock

Handset makers are gathering in Barcelona this week for the Mobile World Congress, a conference where the market's biggest players show you why that top-dollar phone you picked up two weeks ago will be obsolete by Labor Day Some of the biggest news coming out of the show focused on the multitude of mobile platforms emerging. Prototype devices sport...

My limited experience with online games has been nothing but nasty, brutish and short A few online rounds of "Halo 2" at a friend's house showed me just how vicious gamers can be when they smell fresh meat. I could barely run 20 feet before getting cut down. The insults and taunts flew thick and fast. These gamers, they have no mercy....

Sony's had a huge Friday. It's made a smart move by growing out of DRM in its music division (at least a little, at least reportedly), and it's scored a decent victory on the Blu-ray side in getting Warner Bros. to commit to its hi-definition DVD format All on the Friday before CES. Nicely done....

For advertisers, the mobile Web is full of possibilities -- and problems U.S. adoption of the mobile Web lags behind European and Asian countries. Closed systems have hindered application development, as has the field's wide array of competing standards, platforms and browsers. Small screens necessitate an alternative approach to the standard banne...

Buying sponsored links on a major search engine isn't cheap. Getting to the top of the search engine pile without paying your way requires mastery of search engine optimization -- a craft that often seems to fall somewhere between advanced calculus and alchemy However, for small businesses catering to a local community -- a pizza restaurant, for in...

For a small business that serves a local area -- a restaurant or gardening service, for example -- word of mouth can quickly make or break a reputation. When the conversation happens online in organized and professionally managed forums like Citysearch and YellowPages.com, reputations can be made and broken even faster At the Interactive Local Medi...

It's no secret that an awful lot of TV shows and movies can be found on file-sharing networks like BitTorrent and Kazaa. It's also no secret that the producers of those shows really, really hate it when people share them without permission Is there a way for content makers to cash in on what is a clear consumer desire? Two main draws of using file-...

As colleges and universities nationwide began installing broadband access to their dorm rooms and apartments years ago, they gave students convenient, at-home access to unprecedented amounts of information. The trend also played a significant role in opening the door to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, which were and are often used as a means to freely trade copyrighted material like music and movies...

Virtualization rootkits, Web application security and Voice over IP (VoIP) attack vectors topped Gerhard Eschelbeck's list of the top three biggest issues at this month's Black Hat USA conference, held Aug. 1 and 2 in Las Vegas Eschelbeck is chief technical officer and senior vice president of security vendor Webroot Software. Shortly after the eve...

Security experts, malware ninjas and hackers of all shades packed the hallways of the Palace Tower conference area at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas Aug. 1 and 2 for the 11th AnnualBlack Hat Briefings USA conference.The event provides security pros with a venue for outlining the latest flaws, both technological and human, in today's digital defenses ...