Dylan Tweney

To do business on the Web, you need an application server. Too bad you’re probably paying too much for it. In e-business, an application server is the functional equivalent of the guy who stands on a shipping dock loading and unloading boxes all day long. It’s not a glamorous job, but it is totally

Many companies try to mine their mountains of data for new marketing ventures and better customer information. But are they finding gold in there — or garbage? Information is power, as the saying goes, and if that’s true, bad information is worse than no information at all. Bad information tricks yo

In the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, a sentient (if ultimately haywire) shipboard computer named HAL 9000 converses with astronauts. Computers today aren’t smart enough to second-guess our actions (thankfully) or to carry on long, rambling discussions. But speech recognition software has gotten g

When it comes to network security, your corporate IT department probably has the company’s computers locked up in the technological equivalent of a medieval fortress. Your systems are likely ensconced behind a firewall, with antivirus monitoring software patrolling the perimeters and an array of add

So you’ve just finished the big website redesign. Your designers and engineers have put in hundreds of hours, you’ve quelled three rebellions in the IT department, and you’ve put the site through extensive QA testing. Now you’re ready to switch on the site and pop open the bubbly, right? Not so fast

Integrating online and offline business Harder than it looks, but you really have no alternative. My latest column for Business 2.0 looks at the lessons to be learned from Webvan’s collapse — and its smarter competitor, U.K.-based Tesco.

Microsoft suffocating the software-development ecosystem? Software giant removes Java support from Windows XP. Author and developer Clay Shirky asks PC manufacturers to resist Redmond by installing Java on their PCs anyway. Columnist Dan Gillmor is a supporter.

FBI busts Russian programmer For cracking Adobe’s weak PDF encryption scheme. Free-speech activists retaliate Boycott Adobe / Free Dmitri campaign, clever logo

Hope for the future: A couple of recent news stories point to the incredible resourcefulness — and speedy learning — of young people encountering the Internet for the first time. The Financial Times reported late last week on Indian street children discovering free Internet terminals placed on the s

eCompany Now is now Business 2.0, and they’ve debuted a new site design under the new URL. My work as the “Defogger” continues under the magazine’s new name, with a weekly Web column and a monthly print column. This week’s column on slimming down your home page leads the new site’s lineup today.

Good news for California citizens: Now you can be notified by pager when your neighborhood is scheduled for a rolling blackout. “Oh goody,” millions of power-hungry Californians are no doubt thinking. “Now I can plan ahead for those enforced hours of idleness and darkness when the power cuts out.” P

Do you know how much your website’s home page weighs? The question may sound ridiculous: How can something composed of evanescent electrons and photons “weigh” anything? But in the parlance of Web design, “weight” is shorthand for how big a webpage is, in kilobytes. A “heavy” Webpage will take a lon