Wayne Rash

One of the store managers at a Walmart store in Fairfax, Va., stood next to me as we watched a sales transaction fail—again. This was the third time I’d tried to pay for a phone charger using a debit card equipped with an EMV chip, and for the third time it failed. Each time the […]

The announcement on Feb. 4 by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler that he was proposing that all broadband communications be placed under the FCC’s Title II authority has generated no shortage of comment, much of it by pressure groups that don’t seem to have actually read what has been published so far. In a fact sheet […]

The good news for companies that accept credit cards is that some clarity is beginning to emerge about the transition to a more secure card payment system in the United States. The latest developments include an increasingly growing universe of secure payment cards making their way to customers throughout the country. Other good news may […]

The Federal Communications Commission vote on Jan. 29 to change the definition of broadband to require 25M-bps download speeds is not meeting universal accolades. The previous definition, which the FCC wants to scrap, defined broadband as 4M bps. And those are just the download speeds. Upload speeds would need to be at least 3M bps, […]

HANNOVER, Germany—I ran across professor Martina Zitterbart while visiting a few companies at the CeBIT Press Preview here. This event is designed to give members of the press a brief glance at some of the top exhibits coming for the CeBIT trade show in March. When I stopped by the display for the Karlsruhe Institute […]

Marriott International has told eWEEK that the company has decided to drop its petition for rulemaking that would allow the hotel chain to block personal WiFi hotspots in conference and meeting facilities. “Marriott International has decided to withdraw as a party to the petition seeking direction from the [Federal Communications Commission] on legal WiFi security […]

HANNOVER, Germany—The European economy is weak, especially when compared to the recovering U.S. economy. The difference is so great that it’s beginning to negatively affect the earnings of multinational companies. In fact, those weak earnings, brought on in part by a strong U.S. dollar, caused a 300-point drop in the New York Stock Exchange on […]

You know how annoying it is when you arrive at a business that advertises WiFi for its customers or visitors, but when you try to connect, you can’t, despite a strong signal. Or, perhaps even worse, you can connect, but the connection keeps failing. Just imagine what it’s like when you work in that same […]

Microsoft will release the next full version of Microsoft Office in the second half of 2015, according to a blog entry by Julia White, general manager of product marketing for Office and who is also part of the Office 365 team. This release keeps to Microsoft’s practice of issuing a new version of Office every […]

There’s no question that Microsoft has learned from the pain of getting customers to upgrade from Windows XP and later from Windows 7 to 8. From now on, it never wants to be in the position of having to convince people to buy the next version of Windows. While Microsoft Vice President for Operating Systems […]