eWEEK EDITORS

Corporate IT spending is down and your salespeople are telling you that times are tough. What do you say? No matter how you deliver it—and these days a kinder, gentler approach is by far better—the message should be fairly simple: No excuses. Corporate spending has dropped into the single digits (as a percentage of revenue), […]

In 1898, the feds imposed a 3 percent excise tax on telephone calls to help pay for the Spanish-American War. The war ended that same year, but the tax is still with us. It has been repealed and reinstated several times to bolster federal coffers during World Wars I and II, the Depression, Korea and […]

The rumblings from Loudcloud began back in February. “It may seem like weve had frequent contact over the past few weeks, but we want to make sure you receive the right information at the right time,” wrote Loudcloud spokeswoman Jodi Baumann in a Feb. 27 e-mail. Attached were press releases announcing the companys “latest customer […]

Research analysts must tread lightly if theyre downgrading a stock that their investment bank owns—which might explain why Mark DAnnolfo, analyst at Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, used the word “reluctantly” when he recently lowered his rating on DiamondCluster International. Such wording is unusual. Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown makes a market in the common stock of […]

By now, its obvious that the economy and especially the technology industry are in the midst of a significant downturn. But hand-wringing over ever-dropping stock prices, new rounds of layoffs and lowered earnings projections isnt a strategy. Whats needed is a long-term view that embraces new investments in technology. This runs counter to what is […]

Care to buy a hosting center, an integration business or fiber for a telecom network? Be patient, the fire sales likely will start soon. PSINet, the telecom and e-commerce solutions provider, is expected to unload assets to pay off bondholders if it doesnt find a buyer. Meanwhile, MarchFirst is seeking buyers for various parts of […]

Streaming Internet multimedia to millions of people doesnt have to cost millions of dollars anymore. Thats the claim of AllCast, a small company with software that distributes multimedia streams over the Internet or corporate networks in a peer-to-peer fashion — an architecture the company said can save Net broadcasters 70 percent or more in bandwidth […]

Making Internet search engines respond to the way people actually talk is key to improving the usefulness of results. Many searchers can get by on keywords, said David Harris, vice president of marketing at EasyAsk, but business users want to submit long queries and get back relevant results. When voice processing comes to the Internet, […]

An ad last week for dells new Inspirons read “1 GHz now in notebook form.” “So what,” I thought. Another bump up in mobile processor speed isnt news or interesting. Intels been racheting up processors since 1989, when it introduced the 20MHz 386SL, its first mobile processor. And hasnt Dell heard? Since PC processor speeds […]

In the coming years, security breaches wont occur nearly as often inside networks as at users homes. They are much easier targets. Months after I switched from my dial-up line to a cable modem and connected to work via our new virtual private network, I thought nothing of transferring sensitive documents to my home computer. […]

In an effort to boost partners profits and customer retention, Novell is outsourcing its Volume Licensing Agreement (VLA) renewals and upgrade protection to Rainmaker Systems. The deal calls for 5 percent of renewal and upgrade sales to go to channel partners who originally secured the customers. Partners also will receive migration, integration and add-on product […]

We first visited one of Exodus Communications co-location facilities back in April 2000. Back then, we uncovered several potential security concerns. Now were back for a second look. While the buildings remain anonymous, problems remain. A number of spaces in the parking lot have the words “Exodus Customer” spray-painted on the asphalt. So much for […]