Spotlight Features

It's been said that the meek shall inherit the Earth, but in the cutthroat world of technology, only the bold survive. Some of the biggest names in the high-tech and media sectors launched initiatives in the last year that have changed the landscape -- perhaps permanently. All of their innovations -...

Lost in the furious run-up to the November elections was a Kentucky court ruling that could unravel a long-established legal argument supporting basic e-commerce activity: namely, that local or state governments cannot extend their reach into cyberspace to impose their own laws on a Web site. Becaus...

For those who are hungry for some good economic news, venture capitalists apparently are seeing green in clean technology. Indeed, so-called green technology -- everything from eco-friendly auto parts to alternative fuels to smart buildings to streamlined manufacturing processes -- appears to be blo...

Anyone who's used popular P2P applications such as BitTorrent, Gnutella or Limewire has probably been plagued by network slowdowns that make sharing heavy media files a time-consuming endeavor. However, a consortium of technologists at the Distributed Computing Industry Association has found a way t...

Immigration is becoming as nettlesome to high-tech companies as it has long been in the agriculture and construction businesses. Although technology firms don't reach into the same labor pool as do ag comglomerates or building contractors, their problems are converging. The challenge, advocates of i...

"[R]ailhead may actually degrade the ability to provide intelligence data for use in the consolidated terrorist watch list," according to the U.S. House subcommittee report. This massive government IT project is failing -- and it's not an isolated case. Large IT projects in agencies from the FBI to ...

Things are changing at eBay. eBay says it is evolving to adapt to changes in the larger market, but it's not clear how the auction giant will fare against an emerging army of specialized competitors, and it's far from clear whether sellers will warm to its new internal price structure. Changing the ...

Another front may be opening in the battle for mobile platform supremacy. Microsoft is rumored to be planning to launch its own mobile application store. If the buzz is true, Microsoft may not be as late to the party as some would think. Android hasn't yet debuted. Apple, for its part, is facing pus...

Internet radio station operators are concerned that skyrocketing royalty fees could zap an industry that's still in its infancy. However, technology may be bringing some solutions to the vexing problem of paying artists a royalty fee each time a listener hears a song. It just may take some time -- a...

Some two weeks after the FCC rebuked Comcast for its network management practices, the government agency has spelled out details of the cable provider's marching orders in a 67-page supplement. Within the next 30 days, Comcast must make a full disclosure to the FCC of the behavior that lowered the r...

I was once in the middle of an anchor dispute. Consultant-led mediation helped, but the best advice came from an older, wiser anchor who told me to keep smiling, be patient and wait for my coanchor to implode. Of course, all this was before the rise of computer hacking, spyware and keylogging device...

Heading the company with perhaps the most recognized acronym in the information security field and following in the footsteps of lightning-rod figure Phil Zimmerman must have both its charms and its challenges. PGP CEO Phil Dunkelberger, however, ranges far and wide in his reflections on how data --...

If you told Rhett Frandsen 10 years ago he'd end up being a professional widget-maker, he probably would have called you crazy. "Back then, widgets were only something you read about in your economics book," Frandsen laughed. "Until Apple coined the phrase, everybody had sort of agreed upon the fact...

Money talks. So it's important for voters to know how candidates get their money, who gives it to them, and what they do with it. This information used to be buried in obscure volumes and government reports, but digital databases have changed all that. Anyone with a Web connection and the desire to...

A troubling up-tick in the frequency of Internet fraud attempts and the growing use of more sophisticated botnets and crimeware is leading a growing number of organizations to enlist the services of specialized Internet anti-fraud security services. Operating in a digital realm beyond the reach of l...