Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Well, I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to read that popular House Representatives are so overwhelmed by their “heavy” e-mail loads—as many as 8,000 messages a month—that many messages are being deleted without being read. Gosh, I get about 4,000 messages a month myself. And while I surely dont read all of those, I […]

We know our work at Sm@rt Partner,/I> is popular well beyond our intended audience of xSPs, integrators, resellers and so on. And weve got the letters from CEOs, CIOs, corporate lawyers and internal IT staffers to prove it. Still, even we were surprised to find my column on why free services are a path to […]

With most business-grade Linux distributions, you already have every software package a small business could ever use. Putting them all together, though, could be tough. If you know Linux well, its not a problem. If you dont, you should consider putting the small-business Linux software suites into the field. The best known of these is […]

First, let me say I dont own a single share in any technology company. Thats part of being a real journalist; you dont profit from investing in what you cover. Now, with that out of the way, let me just say this: Would you idiots insisting on treating all technology stocks like they have hoof-and-mouth […]

Believe it or not, despite the publics hunger for broadband, DSL CLECs continue to fail at a horrifying pace. Never has a technology so popular created such failure among its providers. Need convincing? On Feb. 28, Teligent posted an EBITDA loss of $435.9 million for its 2000 fiscal year compared with a loss of $381.8 […]

You probably dont think of your lawyer in his three-piece suit and Harvard tie chasing technology contracts. Think again. Attorneys arent going to be the ones installing extranets, document management systems or dragging coaxial cable—but their IT staffers already are doing exactly that. Your law firm may be well on its way to becoming either […]

When we talk extranet, we typically mean any TCP/IP network between two or more companies with secure communications. Law firms start there and typically narrow it down to knowledge-based extranets with a database at its heart. In its most basic form, legal extranets are made up of a legal document collection. That is maintained on […]

Not averse to developing open-source software, but you dont have the in-house talent yourself and youre none too sure of hiring contract programmers? Youre an open-source developer who wants to turn your talent into dollars but dont want a 9-to-5 job? Consider the SourceXchange alternative. SourceXchange is a managed software project-development site. Customers—sponsors in SourceXchange […]

Do you want to develop software for Linux, but youre haunted by the thought that those slight differences among Linux distributions will prove the end of you? Worry no longer. Linuxcare, now part of TurboLinux, brings you Deltabase (www.linuxcare.com/profsvcs/deltabase/index.epl). With this subscription-based, secure Web site, you can quickly drill down to the subtleties among the […]

Whether youre part of the opensource movement or not, youd be wise to check out some of its development methods. Simply put, the open-source movement has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can develop great software with dozens of developers using collaborative work techniques. From the world-beating by programs like Apache, Linux […]

Last Aug. 14, I predicted in our cover story “Linux Slugfest” that Caldera and Red Hat would be the only major Linux distributors left standing. Anyone still want a piece of that bet? I didnt think so. Since then, SuSE has nearly abandoned the North American business market. There will still be an English language […]

In computings mainstream, middleware, along with client/server computing, has always been fundamentally about small boxes working vertically with bigger boxes, or servers. Historically, there was always another choice: peer-to-peer (P2P) computing. P2P, the mainstay of such once-popular low-end networks as Artisofts LANtastic and Novells Personal NetWare, fell into disuse, as the greater speed, security and […]