Matthew Hicks

About

As an online reporter for eWEEK.com, Matt Hicks covers the fast-changing developments in Internet technologies. His coverage includes the growing field of Web conferencing software and services. With eight years as a business and technology journalist, Matt has gained insight into the market strategies of IT vendors as well as the needs of enterprise IT managers. He joined Ziff Davis in 1999 as a staff writer for the former Strategies section of eWEEK, where he wrote in-depth features about corporate strategies for e-business and enterprise software. In 2002, he moved to the News department at the magazine as a senior writer specializing in coverage of database software and enterprise networking. Later that year Matt started a yearlong fellowship in Washington, DC, after being awarded an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship for Journalist. As a fellow, he spent nine months working on policy issues, including technology policy, in for a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He rejoined Ziff Davis in August 2003 as a reporter dedicated to online coverage for eWEEK.com. Along with Web conferencing, he follows search engines, Web browsers, speech technology and the Internet domain-naming system.

Web Tags Gain Backers at AlwaysOn

PALO ALTO, Calif.—The phenomenon of tagging the Web appears to be gaining more converts, as another online startup embraces the metadata annotations and as even enterprises begin to take note of the trend. During the AlwaysOn Summit being held here this week, technology entrepreneurs and executives repeatedly turned to the topic of tags as an […]

Search Startups Take Up Arms to Challenge Giants

For all the focus on Google, Yahoo and MSN in Web search, another group of upstarts is continuing to tackle open search questions. This week, three startups announced progress in their efforts to take on the big names in search in such areas as multimedia search, comparison shopping and advertising. In multimedia, Blinkx Inc. introduced […]

ICANN Warns of Domain Hijacking

Web sites risk having their Web addresses stolen because of flaws in the way domain names are registered, transferred and tracked, said ICANN officials. During an international meeting of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in Luxembourg last week, officials delivered a report warning of the domain hijacking problem, which followed at least […]

Firefox Flaw Leads to Upgrade Encore

A week after being told to update their browsers to fix security holes, Mozilla Firefox users are facing another upgrade in order to patch what the current version broke. Over the weekend, developers released test builds of Firefox 1.0.6, an upgrade slated to replace a security release introduced last week. Mozilla Foundation officials said Version […]

Yahoo Heads to Berkeley for Internet Research

As it races to keep pace with changes on the Internet, Yahoo is heading back to school. The company that operates the nations most popular Internet site announced on Friday that it has partnered with the University of California at Berkeley to create a joint research lab near the universitys campus. Called Yahoo Research Labs–Berkeley, […]

Movable Type Works to Block Blog Spam

With a focus on adding administrative control and spam-fighting features, the maker of Movable Type is updating the popular Weblog-publishing software. Six Apart Ltd., which also runs the TypePad and Live Journal blogging services, posted a beta release of Movable Type 3.2 late on Wednesday and expects to introduce a general release by the end […]

Domain Hijacking Takes ICANN Spotlight

Web sites both big and small face the risk of having their Web addresses stolen because of flaws in the way domain names are registered, transferred and tracked, a report released this week found. The report, announced Wednesday during an international meeting of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in Luxembourg, followed […]

Mozilla Updates Firefox to Fix Security Gaps

The Mozilla Foundation updated the Firefox Web browser Tuesday in order to patch a series of security vulnerabilities, including widely publicized browser spoofing issue and a frame-injection issue. Mozilla has released Firefox 1.0.5 and plans to follow it with new versions of its Thunderbird e-mail client and namesake browser application suite on Wednesday, said Chris […]

Corel Taps Yahoo-Acquired Startup for E-Mail Application

An upstart e-mail client that largely disappeared after being acquired by Yahoo last year is reappearing—as WordPerfect Mail. Corel Corp., the maker of a productivity application suite that competes with Microsoft Office among small businesses and consumers, plans to launch Tuesday its renamed version of Bloomba 2.0, the e-mail software now owned by Yahoo Inc. […]

Yahoo RSS Search Test Skims the Web

Whether intentionally or not, Yahoo briefly showcased some of its RSS search plans on Friday when Webloggers discovered and then posted screen shots of a Yahoo site for finding syndication feeds. Yahoo Inc. executives previously have hinted at a possible search engine for blogs and feeds, but this weeks sighting indicates that Yahoo is getting […]