Eric Lundquist

Note: These steps are drawn from the Federal Trade Commissions advice on avoiding being caught by “pretexting,” or acquiring personal information under false pretenses. Ive presented the FTCs advice and added a comment of my own along with each point. 1. FTC advice: Dont give out personal information on the phone, through the mail or […]

Is using phone records garnered by contractors through false representation unethical? Yes. Is it illegal? Maybe. Will it result in a large black mark for a company that champions privacy and consumer protection? It sure looks that way. The current dispute among the Hewlett-Packard board includes sufficient allegations, finger pointings and mishaps on both sides […]

This is the tale of two IT executives. One runs an outsourced data center for organizations such as hospitals that want to outsource their data center processing rather than worry about uptime, network transport speeds and never-ending data storage upgrades. The other exec is now in Hong Kong after spending a few years in the […]

If you want to build a successful high-tech company, build a bridge between two giants. In the past, you became a success by pledging allegiance to one company and then riding on that companys coattails. Maybe you bought into the Microsoft .Net programming language and became a Microsoft software developer. Or you liked the IBM […]

The biggest technology roadblock to building the $100 laptop championed by Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child organization, is close to resolution. That roadblock has been developing a display that is rugged, inexpensive and readable in a wide variety of conditions from low light to bright sunlight. Displays are a […]

In August 1981, IBM introduced the IBM 5150, ushering in the corporate personal computing age. This month has seen lots of nostalgic recaps of favorite PCs. Ive seen too many lists outlining the top 25 PCs (Apple seems to win a lot of these), rambling memories of lugging Compaq computers along airport corridors and tributes […]

As a kid, when I would go to the racetrack with my dad, the tout sheet vendors would always try to sell me their sheets in the parking lot as I walked in. If I was walking in for the start of the third race, they would have a tipsheet that showed they had picked […]

Recently the intrepid analysts at eWEEK Labs took on the task of identifying the 25 most important technology products of the past 25 years. You can check out their slide show to see if you agree with the selections. I thought Id take a stab at something less ambitious, but more immediate. With the year […]

Last week among the casualties of the California heat wave was MySpace.com, which conked out for about 12 hours. While there were certainly aspects of the heat wave that were more severe (and, in some cases, deadly), the downing of the most popular social networking site in the United States should make technology managers go […]

Is Web 2.0 a bubble about to burst? And was there ever a Web 2.0 in the first place? These are the questions that are taking up an awful lot of keystrokes in the blogosphere (a term that I wholeheartedly wish would disappear) and which hold some import for the business-to-business marketplace. I think that, […]

The opening of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston on July 11 was delayed as attendees were caught in a traffic jam due to a Big Dig crisis. The crisis was tragic (resulting in one death), as some huge chunks of concrete crashed from the ceiling to the roadway in one of the access […]

Data center managers, is there a flywheel in your future? Maybe. I met recently with Mark McGough, the president of Pentadyne Power, based in Chatsworth, Calif. That company is introducing a new upgrade to its flywheel-based power backup system for data centers. Flywheels? You mean those things whizzing at about 50,000 rpm that were supposed […]