Tech Buzz

Last week's first annual Tech Policy Summit in San Jose, Calif., turned out smaller than expected, but did feature some big names and key insights into tech issues. The biggest surprise was Google's apparent flip-flop on the issue of net neutrality. "None of us want any kind of heavy-handed regulat...

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...

One of the most common security challenges Linux and Unix IT administrators face is how to effectively manage the root or super-user account. In an age of regulatory compliance and data privacy laws -- and as more and more organizations elect to run mission-critical financial, customer relationship ...

The technology world will be changing a lot this year, and I figured this would be a good week to talk about some of the changes going on at a few of the major PC vendors that will make the next few months -- and particularly the second half of the year -- more interesting. Right now, HP is the post...

We've all heard of YouTube and MySpace, but there's a new and exciting social networking site: itLinkz.com. What makes this site unique is that it will contain hundreds of sites that target specific market segments. The sites will allow you to choose and participate in a unique, virtual community. W...

3GSM, the big cell phone show, just wrapped up in Barcelona, Spain, and there were a number of big announcements. We've already seen LG's Prada phone, which launched this month, take aim at the iPhone. At this show, we saw two others -- both of which are capable of doing more that the iPhone does ...

The use of a home network largely as a broadband-sharing mechanism is just the first of several stages in the evolution of connectivity. For example, while we predict that by year-end 2010, nearly 40 million U.S. households -- and an estimated 180 million worldwide households -- will have data netwo...

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...

What do liberal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Christian Coalition have in common? No, it's not a penchant for government-funded jet rides -- it's a misguided belief about Net neutrality. The net neutrality debate is basically a question of whether or not broadband service providers can manage ...

It looks like 2007 is really starting out to be an incredible year for change. Last week was no exception, and with the launch of the new iPod based on the iPhone design followed by at least one potential iPhone-killer product later in the week, this trend will probably continue. We'll talk about mo...