Spotlight Features

The past two years have seen several high-profile corporate scandals that illustrate the dramatic consequences of e-mail misuse -- and those are just the ones that have made headlines. In fact, one in five employers has had an e-mail subpoenaed by courts and regulators, and another 13 percent have b...

In a report on the upcoming P2P Litigation Summit, I mentioned "Big Music wants Britanny Chan," which describes how the Big Four are using the RIAA to terrorize a 14-year-old Michigan girl and her mother. Having already failed once to frighten Brittany through her mother, the cartel is now going aft...

This week's column is inspired by my experience last week in Miami where I moderated at AMD's Global Vision Conference. A number of distinguished speakers participated and we spoke at length on the digital home. We chatted about problems with the current market, what needs to be fixed, and what we'...

Some 94 percent of consumers in a recent Harris Interactive survey believe the Internet poses a threat to children. Among the biggest threats perceived by the respondents in the poll -- which was commissioned by San Francisco, California, network security firm Zone Labs, a Check Point company -- wer...

Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's controversial mayor, was in the spotlight again this week as he and his staff contemplated which lucky company will get the rights to provide WiFi access around the city. The real question is, why is government making this choice rather than market forces? To many in t...

In the Wireless LAN (WLAN) market, thin is in. Faced with declining unit growth and falling product prices in the consumer market, vendors have focused on boosting their sales to enterprises. While this strategy has merit, it has meant that they have had to redesign their wares. Consumers are conten...

Two historic events occurred last week that have the potential to change the future of personal computing. The first, and probably the most dramatic, was Palm adopting the Windows Mobile platform for its market-leading Treo communicator. The second, while less dramatic, is nearly as powerful: that...

The 9th Annual Gilder/Forbes Telecom Conference took place this week at Lake Tahoe. Officially, the theme was "the Singularity," an artificial intelligence term denoting the emergence of transformative technological change. But the main meme revolved around a slightly less sexy idea: kiosks. Kiosks...

OPINION

IP Protection Vital to Economic Growth

Recently, I've made several trips to Geneva, Switzerland, the home of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). I've seen firsthand how this once-sleepy organization of patent attorneys and intellectual property technicians has become ground zero for an assault on the economies of the ind...

OPINION

Turning a Blind Eye to Video Game Violence

Take-Two Interactive, the U.S. company that lied about secret animated sex scenes stashed in one of its brutally sadistic "Grand Theft Auto" Rockstar video games, is counting on Bill and the Boyz, a.k.a., Microsoft, for a little extra lift. Next month, Take-Two plans to set an all-in-one, M for Matu...

When Technology Wastes Time

Technology intended to untie the American worker is actually taking a tremendous toll, according to new research from IT analysis firm Basex. The report indicates that technology tools, including e-mail and instant messaging, are the main culprits when it comes to unnecessary interruptions that cost...

Last week's column covered much of the breadth of software inside Windows Vista. The piece addressed some of the features that probably were not widely known and covered likely competitive threats to Apple and Linux. To refresh, Apple is going into the Vista launch weaker and much less differentiat...

With worldwide ringtone sales reaching more than US$4 billion last year, some industry experts have speculated that phone tones will soon outsell CDs. Others, however, speculate that ringtones' success will be shortlived, and that they will eventually go the way of beepers: virtually extinct. The qu...

OPINION

A Capitalist Solution to Freeing China

Chinese officials recently announced they will no longer consider death tolls and other relevant information about natural disasters to be state secrets. On the same day, China Telecom blocked Internet phone service from Skype. That left observers wondering whether freedom is growing or decreasing i...

Heading for an IPTV Revolution

Internet technology is unquestionably poised to transform home entertainment. A quick scan at technology news headlines reveals companies like SBC, Alcatel, Microsoft -- and a host of ancillary service providers -- are gearing up for what some are calling an Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) revolution. T...

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