Dan Whipple

James Turner is suing Acme Rent-A-Car in New Haven, Conn., to recoup the $450 he was charged by the company when an on-board telemetry system clocked him going 90 mph. The cops didnt catch Turner; AirIQs global positioning system did — perhaps not the wireless “killer app” that we all had in mind. But Pickering, […]

Studying the spread of virulent computer viruses may prove useful in understanding the spread of disease and the ability of ecosystems to handle disturbances, researchers say. “In terms of computer networks, one of the clear points that comes out of the analysis is that if you have this scale-free network, most transmission can be traced […]

In the digital world, its rare to find a product or service that isnt overhyped the moment it hits the street. Everything arrives with capital letters and exclamation points. XO Communications! Now available! Yahoo! Holy cow! But the relatively subdued arrival of fixed wireless broadband to the scene has the proponents of this promising nascent […]

One of the major promises of fixed wireless broadband is freedom — especially freedom from the phone company. “We want to get away from the local telephone company,” says Noi Sawangsri, network administrator at ComBase Enterprises, a small, family-owned Internet service provider in the Tampa, Fla., suburb of Brandon. He says his company may go […]

Servers, routers, PCs and other high-tech components are voracious consumers of electricity. And as the power shortages in California have demonstrated, rolling electrical blackouts can cause problems ranging from annoying to catastrophic. An emerging solution to this costly constraint on New Economy growth might turn out to be old-fashioned sunshine. For the past year, Web […]

The planets are aligned and all the elements of the wireless zodiac are falling into place. But astrology is a notoriously inexact science, and whether the promise of mobile commerce will descend successfully from outer space to cyberspace is still a question for the sages. “The Holy Grail of m-commerce,” Probe Research analysts say, “is […]

The technology that drives mobile commerce, or m-commerce, offers an Orwellian profusion of potential privacy and security threats. M-commerce players will have to assure users that theyll get the benefits of the technology without the hazards. Those hazards start with the phone youre holding in your hand. By 2004, phones will be equipped with tracking […]

Breakthroughs in the physics of transistors may eventually permit them to be manufactured like rubber stamps, dramatically reducing the cost and investment required for silicon chip production. But not soon. Scientists have looked for years for replacements for the inorganic materials typically used in transistors. Physicists at Lucent Technologies Bell Labs recently announced breakthroughs in […]