Spotlight Features

Ten percent of Caucasian American men but less than one percent of women are estimated to have some form of colorblindness. Colorblind people represent a significant but often neglected talent pool and consumer segment. Identifying opportunities to make products usable by as many people as possible,...

There are two guilty pleasures I've developed of late. One is reading "Mini-Microsoft," which is an unauthorized blog by a Microsoft employee that probably does more to provide a glimpse inside the company and humanize it than anything the firm is officially doing. The other is "The Secret Diary of...

It's open season on Windows Vista for hackers, crackers and virus and malware propagators. As any IT manager will recall, malware incursions and zero-day exploits of Windows, Internet Explorer and Office applications were all too common in 2006. Therefore, security providers and IT staff across orga...

The networked home -- complete with "smart" appliances and a range of security and entertainment options -- is becoming increasingly common. Many new homes come equipped with centrally controlled entertainment, security and climate systems, and more existing homes are being retrofitted with home the...

Staying Safe in a WiMax World

Because WiMax promises to deliver 70 million bits per second of bandwidth at prices lower than current 1M bps connections, the new wireless network option is gaining interest among telecommunications providers. As this occurs, questions are arising about its security functions. "Security is typicall...

Millions are choosing to build smart homes from scratch each year, while many others are adding networking features to their existing homes. For example, home-builder Lennar recently began offering a networked home option for buyers. From the living room, where the PC is capable of becoming an enter...

Industry participants and observers are looking for big things to happen in the smartphone space this year. A bevy of emergent technical standards and formats constrain the distribution of content that should be available to smartphone users -- for example, more and varied information, communication...

Unless you were sleeping last week, you saw Bill Gates get really upset when asked about the Mac vs. PC campaign that Apple is putting on. I'm not sure it is wise to piss off someone like Bill personally in this way, and the campaign does seem to over-stereotype both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. In a...

The March of the Smartphones

2006 was a pivotal year for the smartphone industry, with significant developments in areas both technological and in terms of industry practices and operation. As handset manufacturers continued to accessorize the smartphone and churned out a seemingly limitless variety of models and styles, substa...

In the coming weeks, the $100 laptop developed by the One Laptop Per Child foundation will go into wide-scale production. From there, the laptops will be sent by the thousands to emerging economies in Africa, South Asia and South America. Meanwhile, in the United States, PC makers, private foundatio...

If Henry Ford were alive today, his jaw might very well drop to the floor. Though Ford's cars were innovative for the time, the automaker probably never could have imagined that the company that bears his name would one day ink a deal with Microsoft for hands-free Bluetooth technology in-vehicle ope...

OPINION

Second Life Tax Man?

Late last year, a congressional committee began examining the idea of taxing property inside digital worlds such as Second Life. If that happens, a digital Boston Tea Party should break out, perhaps making it the only place in America where a real revolution could still happen. Over the holidays, an...

The average person spends nearly an hour a day driving to and from work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. So-called "extreme commuters" spend four hours or more -- that's the equivalent of spending over a month per year sitting in a car. Long commute times are one factor driving the demand for t...

Making New Year predictions about technology requires a very polished crystal ball. Eric Openshaw, principal and leader of Deloitte Consulting's technology, media, and telecommunications practice in the U.S., offers some sobering insights into the world of consumer technology, providing details abou...

Indications are that 2007 will be a bumper year for the solar power and renewable energy industry, as was noted in Part 1 of this two-part series. As an increasing number of state governments are introducing renewable power and energy standards and incentives, Washington, D.C., lawmakers at the clos...

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