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Facebook has been battling users, prominent people in the high-tech field, and privacy advocates over the question of privacy for years now, and the problem appears to have intensified. In November 2008, Evan Prodromou -- founder of identi.ca and CEO and lead developer of StatusNet -- published a blog post on autonomo.us in which he argued that we...

The farm has moved to the city in the form of rooftop hydroponic greenhouses, leaving the dirt and pests and pesticides behind in the rural field and going high-tech with a penthouse view from perches atop old buildings. Restaurants, converted factories and warehouses, government facilities, the stores of mass retailers, apartment complexes -- a w...

If I wanted to hack your e-commerce business, I'd have your help. It's a fact that no one runs a business from one location (or one computer) anymore. In today's world, work gets done everywhere -- in offices, in homes, in hotels, at airports, and while sipping mocha and siphoning Internet connectivity at coffee shops Security risks increase when y...

More than ever before, project managers are looking to technology help mitigate the risk of project failure. According to a recent list of Top 10 Project Management Trends, "the implementation of new PPM solutions [in 2010] will soar. Program and project managers, under pressure from senior management to demonstrate project portfolio performance and its impact on the enterprise, will make the pitch for -- and win -- resources to implement project portfolio management solutions."

Dell is talking with Google about the possibility of using the search giant's Chrome OS on its laptop computers, Reuters reported on Monday Dell wants to be a "leader" when it comes to implementing Chrome and Android, Amit Midha, Dell's president for Greater China and South Asia, told Reuters.

France has become the latest country to investigate potential wrongdoing on the part of Google Street View, the hyper-local image service. The cars used to carry cameras to gather images for Street View did indeed capture passwords from private individuals' WiFi transmissions over unencrypted networks, found the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty...

There will be half a billion personal computers sold to U.S. consumers between now and 2015, according to Forrester Research, which includes desktops, notebooks and laptops, tablets and netbooks in the PC category That is a big jump from current levels -- a 52 percent increase -- Forrester noted in its newly released five-year projection for the ma...

Barnes & Noble's on Monday rolled out a new, low-cost Nook device and lowered the price on the existing 3G-compatible version of its e-reader Available this week, the new Nook WiFi device is priced at just US$149. The price on the existing Nook 3G, meanwhile, was slashed from $259 to $199, making it the first under-$200 dedicated e-reader with bot...

Toshiba on Monday unveiled the Libretto W100, a limited-edition ultra-mobile concept PC. It has dual touchscreens and runs Windows 7 ...

Adults are at least as likely as teenagers to text and engage in other distracting behavior behind the wheel, according to a survey released Friday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project Twenty-seven percent of adult survey respondents said they have sent or read text messages while driving. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds reported a texting-while-d...

Recovery point objective (RPO) metrics are commonly defined as how much data a system can afford to lose without endangering business processes. Let's face facts: Some applications require zero-data-loss protection both within one site and between sites. These applications move millions of dollars or potentially company-crashing information in every byte they process, and so justify the complexity and cost of zero-byte RPO. ...

Social networking platforms can be powerful tools. Twitter strikes fear into the hearts of repressive regimes, and Facebook was nearly single-handedly responsible for the revival of Betty White's career. So how can something with that much influence be easy and unintimidating for a small-business owner to use? There's no need to be intimidated, blo...

As a marketer, you need a control panel to make decisions. The world is moving faster and faster every day, enabling literally billions of interactions about your company and products around the globe. What you need is real-time intelligence. The term "real-time" used to only apply to Wall Street and market quotes. Now it applies to marketing, and how its channels can help drive more traffic and improve overall campaign efforts.

If you've been following the BP oil spill, you've seen that things haven't been going well for BP. The cost of the cleanup will likely bankrupt the firm, leaving the U.S. and individuals to pick up the slack. So, rather than assuring that doesn't happen, a bunch of rocket scientists, and I'm being sarcastic, have decided to speed up the bankruptcy by driving a boycott. ...

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to carve out new rights to digital privacy for public sector workers in its 9-0 decision in City of Ontario v. Quon The case revolved around the question of whether the Ontario, Calif., police force had the right to read text messages employees sent using the department's equipment and wireless service.

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to forward what it calls a "third way" toward broadband regulation Following a big legal loss in April, when a federal circuit court ruled that the FCC had no authority to regulate Internet traffic, the agency has been scrambling to find ways to stay relevant on the issue. It has remained adamant tha...

Less than a year after its product launch, Google Commerce Search has arrived at its 2.0 iteration. The most notable change is a new pricing structure that allows retailers with up to 50,000 products in inventory to acquire a license to the hosted solution starting at US$25,000 per year. That's a 50 percent reduction from the previous starting point of $50,000 per year...

Enterprise 2.0 came to Boston this week, and that made me happy because it is one of a very small number of events that I don't fly to. Being a native, it's nice to take the train into the city and to be able to sleep at home. Despite this convenience, I was only able to attend on Tuesday, and I concentrated on the vendor show floor at the expense of missing some very good keynotes and sessions...

Love it or loathe it, there's no arguing that the adult entertainment industry has been at the forefront of technology throughout the growth of the Internet. The adult industry operates on a shoestring and has figured out how to deploy secure and scalable sites on the cheap. We'll take a cue from the system administrators of smut to get five easy lessons on managing uptime, security and lowering TCO (total cost of ownership) -- and all with a G rating.

"Orders for the iPhone 4 Top 600,000, Apple Says," according to a New York Times headline last Wednesday. Now that's a headline guaranteed to grab the nearest Mac fanboy, technology enthusiast and even casual geek by the lapels and slap the caramel mochaccinos right out of them. And if things hadn't fallen apart for Apple and AT&T during the iPhone pre-order process this week, several key groups would have been spinning that breaking news amongst themselves thusly:...