Spotlight Features

It's now a well-known fact that on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog, but when it comes to Internet telephony, the bigger concern is that no one might know where you are either. Dial 911 for emergency assistance, and you could be out of luck, as some well-publicized lawsuits have shown. Voice ...

Security experts, malware ninjas and hackers of all shades packed the hallways of the Palace Tower conference area at Caesar's Palace last week for the 11th Annual Black Hat conference. The event provides security pros with a venue for outlining the latest flaws, both technological and human, in tod...

Shoshanna Berman, an intern in New York City, is happily dating her ideal future husband: a nice, young -- and tall -- Orthodox Jewish man who is also outgoing and easygoing. On date two, they bonded while scalping tickets at a Knicks game. Date ten, she remembers, was an all-night drive to Philadel...

Summer is typically a quiet time, as the industry takes a breath prior to the back-to-school rush. This year was a bit of an exception, with the launch of the Apple iPhone, which may get credit for revolutionizing much of the tech and consumer electronics industry. While sales are well below expecta...

The number of consumers downloading music from authorized sites could exceed that of peer-to-peer, or P2P, users this year, according to research conducted by the NPD Group. The growth rate of downloading of copyrighted material via file-sharing services may have slowed down last year to around 8 pe...

Is Zune Dead?

You don't need Microsoft's high-powered marketing staff or sophisticated statistics to know where the power currently lies in the portable media player market. Very simply, the score reads something like this: Apple's iPod, 100 million units shipped; Microsoft's Zune, 1 million. Yes, the iPod entere...

The growth rate for illegal downloading of copyrighted material via peer-to-peer file sharing services slowed somewhat during 2006, while use of their legal counterparts picked up, according to recent research. Nonetheless, open and walled-off P2P services -- so-called darknets -- remain the primary...

An offer made earlier this month to pay whistle blowers $1 million for reporting companies using unlicensed software has met little or no public outcry, unlike lawsuits initiated by the music industry against illegal music downloaders. The Business Software Alliance, a global organization representi...

WEEKEND FEATURE

Dumping DRM: Will iTunes’ Rivals Follow Suit?

This year, the world may see the results of a new experiment in selling online digital music, and major record label EMI is at the center of the testing. Sandwiched between the current market-dominating Apple iTunes music store and the Amazon.com DRM-free digital music store set to launch this fall,...

There's no doubt that terrorist organizations are making full use of the Web today to recruit, train, mobilize, publicize and raise funds, but finding and ultimately prosecuting them is no simple matter. With fleeting URLs and anonymous communications, online terrorist activities are an ever-shiftin...

OPINION

Bloggers’ Greatest Hits, Volume 2

One decade in and blogging has gone from a prosaic exercise in online journaling to a serious enterprise undertaken by so-called citizen journalists eager to bring stories to light that the mainstream media might otherwise overlook. The dogged determination of these passionate online journalists has...

There's no denying that the Internet has changed the world for both good and bad, but few elements of its dark side inspire more fear than its use by terrorists. Observers around the world were horrified when a video of the 2002 beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl was disseminated on the W...

Network connectivity has quickly and quietly become necessary -- and is sometimes even taken for granted -- in today's high-tech, instant-communications environment. With the emergence of next-generation networks has come the need to comply with new, more stringent information security regulations a...

Game personalization, or soft modding, has been a hobby among hardcore gamers for at least a decade. In recent years, however, the underground pastime has been gaining popularity, so much so that the art of creating a personalized version of a video game is even being taught at summer cyber camps. I...

OPINION

Bloggers’ Greatest Hits, Volume 1

Since they hit the Web in the mid-1990s, Web logs, more commonly known as "blogs," have matured from simple journal entries cataloging the day-to-day goings-on in the lives of Net dwellers to, in some cases, serious enterprises. Today, corporations, political parties and their partisans, the media a...

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