eWEEK EDITORS

Now that the aftershocks of the market shakeout are starting to subside, its time to take a hard look at where your business has been and where its going. As senior editor David Hakala pointed out in a recent “Mile-High View” column, its not necessarily the big players who will benefit from the coming upturn. […]

The browser may have brought Microsoft and America Online to the bargaining table in January, but its the fate of Windows XP, digital media, instant messaging and a new generation of Internet services thats kept the giants jostling for the last six months. Its also left some industry observers predicting that RealNetworks, which pioneered audio […]

Two developments last week showed that peer-to-peer computing is becoming a significant part of the Internets fabric: Napsters pact with three major record companies and Microsofts announcement that the next version of Windows will include a unified client that would allow computers to talk directly to each other. Napster inked a conditional deal with MusicNet, […]

E-SERVICESThe next big thing: Field service Recognizing that success means keeping customers happy even after theyve bought your product, companies are increasingly emphasizing customer and field service. The Yankee Group Inc., in Boston, estimates that revenues of field service software vendors will reach $515 million by 2004, up from $250 million this year. According to […]

Microsoft Corp. last week announced the inclusion of its reworked real-time communications technology, Windows Messenger, in the forthcoming Windows XP operating system. While core technical XP beta testers will get the first look at the repackaged Windows Messenger technology in an interim release, Windows Messenger will be broadly available to all testers when the first […]

CORPORATE PARTNERS.Net Meets Real World Microsoft chairman and chief software Architect Bill Gates (above) met with eWeeks Corporate Partners last week at the company campus in Redmond, Wash. Gates and the Corporate Partners discussed Microsofts .Net initiative, XML Web services and their business potential. The CPs also met with product managers for Windows XP, Windows […]

No company in its right business-model mind would choose to be in B2B right now. E-marketplaces, in particular, are in tumult. But if any company can make sense of the whole B2B mess, its IBM, which just emerged relatively unscathed from a hellish first quarter. As the history books will tell, Q1 provided the first […]

Twenty-five percent of PC users admit to slapping, punching, kicking and even hurling their computers, says British manufacturer Nova Tech. The company received more than 4,200 responses to its survey, which explored peoples relationships with their machines. “We were surprised by the number of people who confessed to physically attacking their computers,” the company says. […]

Ever since Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer identified Linux as the biggest threat to Windows back in January, Redmonds marketing and PR offensive against the open-source software (OSS) development model has gone into overdrive. By now, few in the industry are unaware of Microsofts more outrageous attacks, such as Windows Platform Group VP Jim Allchins sly […]

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has embarked on the high-performance world of multiprocessing systems with the launch of its first dual-processor Athlon systems and the related AMD-760 MP chip set. While the Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker has proved a strong competitor to giant Intel Corp. in the consumer PC market, AMD has yet to break its […]

In October 2000, Microsoft discovered that someone had broken into its internal network, evidently using a Trojan horse program to commandeer the PC of an employee who was working remotely. The widely reported intrusion wasnt just bad publicity for Microsoft. It was a wake-up call to the rest of the industry with a clear message: […]

A network address translation (NAT) device increases security, making it more difficult for hackers to find your clients network. Couple NAT with a stateful inspection firewall (with a properly configured rule set), and youve got a sturdy defense in the making. NAT, however, is not a universal panacea and takes a bite out of functionality. […]