Brian Livingston

Like most e-mail users, you probably get a ton of unsolicited messages, and you may be getting more and more every month. Filtering software can help you sort out the obvious spam, but it still takes time to examine all the e-mails a spam filter puts into the in-between category of “it may be spam, […]

Viruses. Worms. Spam. Identity theft. What do all these things have in common (besides the fact that you hate them)? The people behind these crimes dont want to be discovered. Indeed, they remain at large because the Internet allows perpetrators to spew out malware incognito. Unchecked, the rapid rise of assaults like these will grow […]

Google.com is such a sacred cow in the search business that I hate to be anything other than worshipful. But its beginning to appear that Googles results pages have developed a problem with relevance, based on my experiences and those of my readers. In coming to this conclusion, Im most indebted to John Meyer, the […]

Wouldnt it be great if you could get rid of the lions share of your e-mail but still get a coherent flow of the information you need? Some companies are implementing pilot programs with that goal in mind. Sparking such projects is the aim of new releases called NewsGator 2.0 and NewsGator Online Services. NewsGator […]

Remember ASPs? Providing applications remotely to enterprises, usually over the Internet, was once a hot business model, but it cooled off fast. Survivors are emerging, though, and its beginning to look like it might be safe once again to partake of hosted applications. “The companies that survived were the ones that were built from the […]

A year from now, your company could be making long-distance telephone calls without paying per-minute charges to any telephone carrier. The reason? A little-known telecommunications service that has quietly begun operating in New York. The service—the first to provide switching for independent digital telephone traffic—is called the Voice Peering Fabric. Its operated by Stealth Communications, […]

Windows XP has a problem writing to Windows 2000 and NT servers under certain conditions, according to two developers of mission-critical applications. The problem has led to maddening errors, and these companies are challenging Microsoft to solve it. The clash is a bit like two ants taking on an elephant. However, the ants in this […]

Wouldnt it be great if vendors always got their standards together before shipping products? Sometimes this happens; sometimes it doesnt. When it does, as with USB 1.0 and 2.0, adoption is rapid. You can hardly buy a PC or laptop these days without finding a couple of USB ports. When it doesnt, it can create […]

The “Patch-A-Month Club” was to have made life simpler for Microsoft customers. Instead, its life as before—which leaves much to be desired. In moving to a monthly schedule for routine patches, Microsoft intended to make it easier for customers to maintain stable and secure systems. But in the weeks the program has been in effect, […]

Reader David Plaut has a ready response to my recent Known Issues columns about Microsoft security patches and the bandwidth they consume. “Theres already a mechanism in place that doesnt use any bandwidth to distribute large files,” Plaut writes. “Microsoft should partner with Time Warner to publish large patches on those ubiquitous America Online CDs.” […]