Matthew Hicks

A month after a federal courts ruling raised concerns over the privacy of e-mail, federal legislators are proposing tougher restrictions on the interception of messages. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., along with three colleagues in the U.S. House, last week introduced a bill to protect e-mail messages from snooping while in transit as well as to […]

DoubleClick Inc. suffered a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack Tuesday that knocked out its popular online ad-serving service and its own corporate Web site for several hours, the company has confirmed. The DDoS attack targeted DoubleClicks DNS (domain name system) and interrupted its ability to serve online ads to its 900 customers from about […]

BERKELEY, Calif.—Webloggers and businesses are increasingly shaking each others hands and putting a more human face on corporations in the process, say bloggers and their proponents. The inaugural BlogOn 2004 conference held here on Friday focused on the growing intersection between blogging and business. A series of panels explored how the collaborative form of online […]

PALO ALTO, Calif.—While visiting the center of Silicon Valley on Thursday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans focused little on specific technology issues and more on rallying the crowd around the economy. Speaking at Hewlett-Packard Co.s headquarters here, Evans credited sound fiscal policy and a series of federal tax cuts for helping the economy recover from […]

Macintosh users waiting for the release of Microsoft Corp.s Virtual PC for Mac Version 7 will have to wait until early October. Thats when the software maker said the update of its Windows emulation program will be available, following a series of delays. The timing is tied to the release of Service Pack 2 of […]

The next generation of the Internet Protocol got a boost this week as the overseer of the domain name system took technical steps to support it. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced Tuesday that it had begun adding IPv6 addresses to the DNS root server system, which maintains the master list […]

To search startup Blinkx Inc., keywords are passé. The future of search lies instead with bigger concepts. Blinkx, which last month quietly launched a beta of its desktop search application, is getting ready to take on the increasingly competitive Web search market. On Friday, it plans to formally launch the company and its new approach […]

Microsoft and Apple are being sued for patent infringement over the use of Web-based software-updating technology. London-based intellectual-property company BTG Plc. announced Tuesday that it has filed suit against the companies in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. BTG alleges that Apples and Microsofts operating systems, as well as Microsofts Office […]

Microsoft Corp. and Lindows Inc. have reached a $20 million settlement in their ongoing trademark feud, with Lindows agreeing to changes its name globally and Microsoft licensing digital media technology. The settlement, reached on Friday, ends a series of trademark infringement lawsuits that Microsoft had brought against Lindows in which it alleged that the Lindows […]

Macromedia Inc. on Monday delved deeper into enterprise Web publishing by combining separate publishing tools aimed at business users and Web developers into a single system. The San Francisco-based company launched the Macromedia Web Publishing System with the goal of offering a more comprehensive way for organizations to build and manage Web sites and intranets. […]

MSN continues to delve deeper into search with the acquisition of a 6-month-old startup focused on desktop search. Microsoft Corp.s Internet division announced late Thursday that it has bought Lookout Software LLC, the maker of a software add-on to Microsoft Outlook that indexes and searches e-mail as well as desktop files. Terms of the acquisition […]

Developers behind the XML syndication format called Atom have moved forward with their work to create a Web standard through the Internet Engineering Task Force. Atom supporters turned down earlier overtures from the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) to create a standards working group through that standards body, opting instead to stick with IETF, Atom […]