Tech Buzz

Winter slowly drifted into Silicon Valley last week. In the aftermath of what appeared to many of us to be a largely politically motivated "scandal" surrounding HP, not only was HP's business largely unaffected but federal laws regarding the practice of pretexting were left in limbo. Meanwhile, I wa...

For years, Microsoft has come under heavy fire for not making its systems secure enough. Now, with the upcoming release of its new operating system, Windows Vista, the company is being unfairly attacked by self-interested competitors for adding more security to protect consumers. Back in 2002, when...

I visited two of the greatest cities in the United States last week. First, I was in San Francisco where Intel made a credible attempt to show that it intends to stay the market leader despite anything rival AMD has done. Then I went to New York to talk to folks about Hewlett-Packard's congressiona...

This week, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announced that his mouse brain-mapping project has finally been completed. This major undertaking arrives in tandem with other advances in medical technologies that will soon force political leaders to face difficult policy questions. Mapping a mouse's bra...

One of the original leaders of the open source movement, Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, kicked off a blogosphere firestorm in late May by sending a cease-and-desist letter over the use of the term "Web 2.0," as his technical conference is trademarked by that name. The complaint has since been withd...

As technology and business align closer to an open, Internet-driven world, the current security mechanisms that protect business information are not matching the increasing demands for protection of business transactions and data. A new generation of criminals is exploiting the very connectivity th...

As we move into fall and approach the Intel Developer Forum this week, things show no sign of slowing down. Last week AMD fired an early volley at Intel by broadening an initiative designed to unite the entire slate of remaining non-Intel chip companies, making me wonder, had this happened earlier...

A decade ago, Microsoft thought it could ignore bureaucratic rumblings with little or no fallout. That attitude led to the historic Microsoft antitrust trial and the realization that bureaucrats can indeed wield bigtime impact. Google is now learning a similar lesson, albeit in a different way. In...

What makes e-mail trustworthy? There are at least two factors at play here: e-mail authentication, as described in a recent article, ensures that outbound e-mail really comes from the purported sending domain. That doesn't tell you whether the sender is a highly-reputable institution or a spammer, ...

Last week we saw the two big guys go at it: First Apple showed off product updates for the iPod and iTunes, and then Microsoft had the coming-out party for Zune -- its so-called iPod killer. I'd like to talk about all this first and end up discussing products I think do the best job in the media sp...