Dylan Tweney

The Internet disappeared at midnight on Dec. 1 for 850,000 subscribers to AT&T Broadband’s cable modem service. That’s when AT&T’s insolvent broadband partner, ExciteAtHome, officially pulled the plug, cutting off Internet access for AT&T customers as a cost-cutting measure. In the following days, A

Wireless technology has developed ahead of most companies’ ability to keep their networks safe. In principle, wireless networks sound like a great idea: no cabling to pull through the walls and ceilings, no nasty wires tangling themselves up behind your desk, no need for laptop or handheld users to

Switching to a voice-over-IP phone system can cut your interoffice long-distance bills to zero and reduce administrative headaches. So what are you waiting for? For years now, the promised convergence of voice networks and the Internet has failed to materialize. It’s a bit like watching Bullwinkle M

Strong JavaDespite Microsoft’s best efforts, Java is well-established in the enterprise. Can it hold its ground?BY D.F. TWENEY THIS YEAR, the programming language-cum-development platform called Java turned 5. It now stands as one of the world’s most popular computer languages—and it continues to gr

Back to the Future By D. TweneySun first touted Java as a universal client-side platform—and even went so far as to develop brain-dead network computers (NC) that relied on Java for their operating system and on servers for their storage and smarts. But NCs flopped, Java applets on webpages are a dy

So-called Web-services applications will soon talk to each other without human intervention. But first everyone needs to agree on how they’ll communicate. In my last column, I wrote about Web services, which are business applications that share data with other programs over the Internet. Instead of

By: Dylan Tweney Issue: November 2001 Adding foreign language versions of your website can easily pay for itself in fresh leads and revenues. Most websites take a Model T approach to overseas marketing: You can access them in any language you want, as long as it’s English. Eighty-five percent of the

They don’t call it the World Wide Web for nothing. You’ve no doubt heard–too many times–the canard that the Internet will break down national boundaries and usher in a new era of frictionless international commerce. Sadly, that view is about as dated as a 1998-era dot-com business plan. The fact is,

New real-time computing technologies can link manufacturing plants with other divisions of the company — and help stave off supply-chain disasters. During the past decade, corporations have put immense amounts of cash and effort into IT projects with alphabet-soup acronyms, like enterprise resource

The events of the past month have made many companies nervous about their Internet security. It’s about time. If you believe that your computer systems are vulnerable these days, you’re not alone. In the month since the terrorist bombings, many businesses (and individuals) have adopted a heightened

Americans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as being on the leading edge of technology, adopting new gadgets–be they personal digital assistants (PDAs) or PCs–sooner, more enthusiastically, and in greater numbers than the rest of the world. But when it comes to wireless technology, the United

For as long as people have been keeping records, they’ve struggled to find efficient ways to file their work. Ancient Assyrians, who scratched records on clay tablets, stored documents in pigeonholes in the walls of libraries, writing a list of each room’s contents on the wall — a kind of primitive