Christopher Lindquist
Education for the Nation
I ATTENDED THE Association of Computing Machinery's 2001 conference (www.acm.org/acm1) a couple weeks ago and was surprised by what I saw. I'm not talking about the cool Web-enabled robots, the ultra-thin LED screens, or the...
Gelernter simplifies your search
AFTER SPENDING MORE THAN a decade getting used to the "desktop metaphor," with its ubiquitous folders and files, I'm about ready for a change. Finding the information I want has long been the result of a seemingly endless series of...
Still Growing Strong
THE YEAR 2000 was a banner time for IT spending and staff workloads, according to the "2001 Worldwide IT Benchmark and Trends Report" from Stamford, Conn.-based Meta Group. And even economic slowdowns and dotcom heart failures won't...
Online advertising down but not out
If you thought all those dotcom deaths were going to reduce the number of annoying ads you see on the sites you visit, you're only partly right. A new report from Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research indicates that the current...
Net Markets Mature
Online exchanges, Net marketplaces -- call them what you will; the B2B bubble has popped. But while some companies have evaporated in the aftermath, others are in the process of trying to change into something different
Cable-free LANs bring new decisions
IT'S THE WIRELESS AGE. Prices continue to drop on the latest IEEE 802.11b-compatible wireless LAN devices. And new HiperLAN 20Mbps products are just over the horizon. Given these facts, it's easy to understand how the temptation to...
Bye-Bye PBX
ACCORDING TO A JULY 2000 REPORT by Cahners In-Stat Group, a lot of corporate Private Branch eXchanges (PBXs) may be shown the door in the next few years. The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based research company predicts that more general-purpose...
Online Transactions Mobilize
BY 2004, 74 million people -- or one-third of wireless users -- will have access to the wireless Web, according to a report by Boston-based Aberdeen Group. That growth presents a tremendous opportunity for enterprises looking to take...
Five Uneasy Pieces
The TrendlineLike TV, radio and the printing press before it, the Web has provoked a sea of change in communications. Geographic and geopolitical boundaries have evaporated. An individual in Tokyo with a Pokemon card to sell can...
Paying the Bills
Those piles of invoices could start to shrink, according to a study by the Aberdeen Group in Boston. The report, "Internet Bill Presentment and Payment: E-Business Solutions for Improved Customer Service and Cash Flow," predicts that...
Predictions: Networking
GIGABIT ETHERNET IS GROWING FAST, and 10Gb Ethernet will soon follow, according to a recent report by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Cahners In-Stat. According to the report, "Gigabit Ethernet and the Power of Ten," gigabit Ethernet sales...
Phones Still Don't Listen
IF LIFE HAD ANY LOGIC to it, computers would have been developed by the telephone industry. Instead they grew up everywhere but. First they were in the military, then in universities and finally in internal business applications such...
You've Got (Dirty) Mail
It was business as usual at Union, N.J.-based shipping company CaroTrans International Inc. until a mail-borne virus -- too new to be caught by the company's virus scanner -- snuck through the company's Microsoft Exchange Server. The...
Laptops: The Princes and the Paupers
Spend a little. Spend a lot. Sometimes you don't have any leeway for how much you can afford to pay for your laptops. But whether this year's budget has room for the latest portable power tool or a merely serviceable model, you have...