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.

Yahoo Expands Mobile Search with Text Messaging

Yahoo on Thursday is launching more ways for users to retrieve search results from their mobile phones. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company is introducing an SMS (Short Message Service) option in which users can send a text message to grab specific search results in areas such as weather, stock quotes and local business information. It also […]

Google Plans to Release Firefox-Ready Tool Bar

After years of offering its browser tool bar only for Internet Explorer, Google is planning to join its competitors in supporting the open-source Mozilla Firefox browser. But the search companys Firefox embrace isnt stopping there. Google Inc. also is readying a pair of software extensions to Firefox to let users send Web-page text to mobile […]

AOL, Plaxo Forge Contact Management Deal

In its continuing push to put AOL Instant Messenger service at the center of its communications strategy, America Online Inc. is adding contact management capabilities to AIM through a partnership with Plaxo Inc. AOL and Plaxo Inc. on Wednesday announced that they are working together to integrate Plaxos ability to import, export and synchronize contacts […]

Search Engines Dive into Premium Content

Even as the major search engines have expanded their indexes of the Web to as many as 8 billion documents, they are increasingly acknowledging that much of the worlds information is nowhere to be found in search results. To combat that problem, search companies as large as Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. and as small […]

AOL Makes Video Search Play

AOL tuned into video search on Thursday with the launch of a service for finding and playing back streaming video. To power its video search results, America Online Inc. is tapping into an index of millions of Web video clips from Singingfish, a company AOL acquired in 2003. But AOL Video Search goes beyond Singingfishs […]

Google, Yahoo Woo Developers to Online Maps

Google and Yahoo have opened a new front in their online mapping battle: winning over developers. Both companies on Wednesday released APIs into their respective online mapping services as they attempt to attract other Web sites to use their maps. While they are focusing on how developers can overlay information on maps, the companies are […]

Microsoft Draws Cheers, Jeers over RSS in Longhorn

SEATTLE—Microsofts vision for tying RSS directly into the next release of Windows drew cheers and jeers among the syndication-feed enthusiasts gathered here Friday. It drew accolades for its potential to smooth some of the user kinks in discovering and managing feed subscriptions, while it awakened fears that the Redmond, Wash., software maker is attempting to […]

WebEx Builds Compliance into Web Conferencing

Compliance issues are moving beyond e-mail as providers of other collaboration technologies begin to address the growing need for companies to store and track online communication. This week, Web conferencing was the latest to join the compliance fray. WebEx Communications Inc. on Wednesday launched a new option for its online meeting applications that allows companies […]

VOIP Regulations Enter a Perfect Storm

SAN FRANCISCO—Upcoming legislative action and an impending Supreme Court decision are reawakening the prospect of Internet regulation, and this time around, policy experts are warning that applications such as voice over IP could get caught in the crosshairs. During a policy panel here at the Supernova conference Wednesday, representatives from the telecommunications and Internet industries […]

Google CEO Confirms Work on Online Payment Service

Googles top executive confirmed on Tuesday that the company is planning to expand into broader online payment services but said it will not compete with a PayPal-like service. In a company-issued statement, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company does not plan to offer what he called a “person-to-person stored-value payments system.” One of the […]