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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

In the hours and days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, millions of phone lines went silent, but e-mail and the Web continued to work. For years we’ve been hearing about how the Internet was designed to withstand nuclear attacks. Well, at least we know it can resist terrorist bombardment, as was

Link: Terror technology Link broken? Try the Wayback Machine.

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

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

In an ancient Chinese legend, the emperor offers a reward to the man who has just invented the game of chess. The inventor modestly asks for one grain of rice on the chessboard’s first square, two grains on the next square, four grains on the third, and so on, doubling every square. The emperor, thi

Psssst. A word of warning: Your company is being invaded by a seemingly innocuous consumer technology that could compromise your deepest corporate secrets, render you vulnerable to lawsuits, and adversely affect employee productivity. The name of this Trojan horse? Instant messaging. And it’s your e