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It's official: Web services technology has gone mainstream. The technology -- which consists mainly of software designed to let business systems communicate with each other across the Internet without human intervention -- is already making a huge impact on how companies share information and conduct business online In December of last year, 52 per...

A curious change has come over the image of computer security in the last few years. Whereas headlines once screamed the exploits of allegedly evil hackers, the story now is all about bad code -- unpatched software, poorly secured firewalls and computer passwords left in plain sight. The hackers are not the real culprits; the security holes are It ...

IBM hopes to hit it big with its new Business Integration Game (BIG) technology, which is a software system designed to throw third-party e-commerce and communication into the latest online role-playing and multiplayer video games The BIG framework, which uses open standards such as SOAP and J2EE, lets game developers use standard Web services to b...

Intel has revealed plans to extend the number of transistors the company can put on chips with existing equipment. The next-generation technique includes a 65-nanometer process that the company said will help develop more capable processors and larger, more cost-effective 300-nanometer wafers, which are used for processors and other semiconductor manufacturing products...

In a move that could dampen the tech sector's unbridled enthusiasm for low-cost outsourcing, Dell said it would stop routing some customer-support requests to call centers in India after customers complained about the quality of service Dell said it had received some complaints about the technical support through the overseas support center, with o...

Apple Computer lured millions of PC users into its online music store when it released a version of its popular iTunes software for Windows, but it also attracted a less savory element -- hackers Just 10 days after the release of "WinTunes," a crafty codesman at Trinity College began distributing MyTunes, a program that turns the Apple software int...

As homeowners begin scaling their ladders to put up holiday lights and brick-and-mortar store managers start dusting off their reindeer and snowflake decorations, thoughts of revenue sugarplums doubtless are dancing in e-tailers' heads This year, after all, analysts are predicting robust growth in online spending as the gift-buying season gathers s...

Incessant, unsolicited e-mail brought out the worst of a Sunnyvale, California programmer who is now charged with 11 federal counts of illegal interstate communications after he graphically threatened to harm, torture and kill the alleged spammer in a series of e-mails and telephone messages As it turns out, 44-year-old Charles Booher -- who faces ...

I spent several days at Comdex last week. If you were there -- and you work as a systems builder, a parts vendor or an analyst -- Comdex was a great show. If you work as an IT executive, you were probably disappointed because the show set IT expectations that it didn't fulfill. As usual, rumors were flying around that this would be the last Comdex. But with a reported 50 thousand people at the event, it seems a shame to throw the baby out with the bath water...

Hewlett-Packard unveiled a line of low-cost servers aimed at the small- and medium-sized business market, saying it would sell the products for as much as 50 percent less than similar offerings from competitors HP said the server-storage products are part of its larger smart-office push to attract more nonenterprise business customers, an initiativ...

Considering that e-business as a concept was not part of most people's vocabularies before the 1990s, the number of technologies and processes that have been developed since then is staggering. Some, such as Amazon.com's "1-Click" checkout procedure, have revolutionized the way people buy products, while others, such as smart cards, have changed both enterprise and e-commerce transactions...

Computer chip king Intel has committed to producing a 4-GHz processor by the end of next year as it adopts an aggressive push toward smaller, faster 90-nanometer chips that cost less for the company to make The official announcement of plans to hit the 4-GHz mark in 2004 might be less significant than the Santa Clara, California-based company's que...

Despite an expected spike in the amount of IT services outsourcing to offshore firms, the impact likely will be mitigated by solid services-industry growth in the United States, researcher IDC said in reporting the results of a recent survey. While offshore hiring likely will spread across a wider range of IT services going forward, an economic up...

Computer Associates is not your average software developer. This US$5 billion company -- one of the largest in the industry -- designs software to help businesses manage critical aspects of their IT operations and to help programmers automate their daily work. The company's software products, which work with almost every commercially available hardware platform and all types of common software operating systems, focus on six main areas: enterprise management, security, storage, application lifecycle management, application development and business intelligence...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and a handful of other law enforcement agencies have charged 125 people with a host of Internet-related crimes, ranging from identity theft and software piracy to auction fraud and hacking. The FBI said those arrested so far in Operation Cyber Sweep are responsible for bilking at least 125,000 victims out of mor...

In part 1 of this story, the E-Commerce Times looked at how Web sites are gearing up for the holiday buying season by beefing up staff, servers and warehouse operations Most strikingly, Ritz Interactive CEO Fred Lerner told the E-Commerce Times that this year, the company gave most of its employees pagers and put them on call. If there is a problem...

In a move described by at least one industry observer as something the Baby Bell had to do, SBC Communications has introduced Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) -- a technology that will let customers conduct conversations using the Internet rather than telephone systems SBC said the "powerful new service options" are just the beginning of its IP ...

AMD has announced groundbreaking on a new manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany, that will help the company keep up with what it claims is growing demand for 64-bit chips The Sunnyvale, California-based chipmaker, which announced a significant deal to put its 64-bit Opteron processors in Sun servers earlier this week, said the fabrication faci...

While watching CNN last week, I suffered one of those brain spasms that leave you holding an idea you can neither rationally assess nor forget about. I still can't assess the idea -- and I'm about to ask you for help on that -- but my attempts to do something with it did give me a deeper insight into the forces that made the Linux development process so successful...

Posting its best overall quarter since merging with Compaq more than a year ago, Hewlett-Packard outpaced earnings and revenue estimates in the third quarter and said all five of its business segments operated in the black. The company said it brought in revenue of US$19.85 billion during the quarter ended October 31st, up from $18.05 billion a ye...