Jason Brooks

Heralded with great fanfare during the last few years as the wireless communications technology that would network our ever-smaller and more mobile world of computing devices, Bluetooth products are finally beginning to emerge in the market—albeit at a much slower pace than Bluetooths marketing folks have had us believe. As a short-distance, low-power wireless connectivity […]

Ive predicted that 2002 will bring with it more usable brands of desktop Linux, thanks in part to KDE 3.0 and GNOME 2.0 desktop environment releases. After putting the initial beta release of KDE 3.0 through its paces, Im feeling secure with my prognostication. Most of the differences in the feel and operation of KDE […]

Handspring Inc. is shifting its focus from PDAs for the masses toward more profitable higher-end handheld devices with integrated cell phone capabilities. Judging from eWEEK Labs tests of the GSM-based Treo 180 communicator, Handspring has not only taken a solid first step in the smart-phone direction, but also has gotten the jump on future competitors […]

The blockbuster MacWorld keynote address of Apples Steve Jobs is a few days behind us now, and Im feeling rather disappointed. Although Id pretty much abandoned any expectation of an exciting new handheld computer from The Steve and Co., I must admit that Apples preshow hype stoked a sort of guarded hope in me. Lets […]

Evolution 1.0, an e-mail client and personal information management application from Ximian Inc., is one of the slickest open-source products eWEEK Labs has reviewed, providing companies running Linux- or Unix-based desktops and workstations with a compelling analogue to Microsoft Corp.s Outlook groupware product. However, Evolution, which began shipping in December, is just as notable for […]

Recently Nokia has been talking about the mobile operating system developed and marketed by Symbian, a consortium of mobile device makers of which Nokia is a member. Nokias Symbian-powered 9290 Communicator is set to ship in early 2002, and the mobile phone firm is touting an upcoming set of development tools for Symbian. Its nice […]

By the time these words are published, the Bluetooth Developers Conference will have come and gone. After three days of vendors predicting a bright wire-free future while conducting jaw-dropping demos with circuit boards in clear plastic enclosures, the persistent Bluetooth question will remain: Is this stuff ever going to break out of show-floor captivity and […]

Release 2.2.2 of KDE brings Linux and the other Unix-family operating systems another step closer to parity with Windows and Mac OS in the desktop space. The update, available for free at www.kde.org, comprises primarily performance and security upgrades, many of which benefit KDEs all-purpose file manager and Web browser, Konqueror. Most striking in this […]

SAN FRANCISCO—The third annual Bluetooth Developers Conference is less about what the nascent cable replacement technology can do than about what remains to be done. The sorts of products on display on the expo floor—Bluetooth modules packaged in CompactFlash and PC Cards, USB dongles and headsets—have for the most part made their debuts at previous […]

With transmission speeds that rival digital subscriber line and cable modem connections, third-generation wireless data networks are intended to bring mobile users the same rich multimedia applications now available across wired links. However, while many of the details of 3G and beyond remain unclear, U.S. carriers are beginning to offer wireless data services that deliver […]

When Bostons transportation department set out to create a video database of the citys assets, they found in Xiotech Corp.s Magnitude SAN product the reliable, low-maintenance storage system they needed to house the 600GB of footage. eWeek Labs recently toured the project—called the Virtual City of Boston System—with Technology and Transportation Planner Tom Kadzis and […]

Ive been critical of Windows XPs dumbed-down design, but Microsofts just-released suite of PowerToys for Windows XP goes a long way toward giving me a desktop I can look forward to using. Microsoft has released sets of freely downloadable but unsupported Windows-tweaking utilities for every version of Windows since 95, but the XP version is […]