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Because they offer users network-access flexibility as they move from place to place, wireless LANs -- often called WLANs -- have gained significant acceptance. While the technology has proven to be a boon to maintenance technicians, salespersons and programmers, it has been a sometimes vexing security problem for IT managers ...

Cell phones are no longer used simply for voice communications; increasingly, they support text messaging, e-mail, Web surfingand even video transmissions. With this transformation has come the need for a more sophisticated mobile operating system. Half a dozen vendors, including Microsoft and Symbian, are trying to deliver it, but a few years will pass before a clear-cut winner emerges...

Crime is turning from a blue-collar to a white-collar profession. Rather than taking out guns and robbing convenience stores, criminals are performing "virtual robberies" where they use computer technology to steal a person's identity. From a criminal perspective, these crimes are simple to commit, they carry lighter sentences and they can be more lucrative than armed robberies...

Driving is a time-consuming activity for many: Salespersons spend hours journeying from customer site to customer site; maintenance technicians weave through traffic as they go from office to office; and families spend time traveling to soccer games, relatives' homes and school activities. Ideally, individuals would like to transform those treks from monotonous, time-consuming events into entertaining or useful exercises, a preference that soon might be realized...

Because the volume of spam has increased from about 10 percent of all e-mail in 2001 to more than 50 percent today, corporations and ISPs have been trying to find ways to keep the junk mail from overwhelming users' inboxes. Filtering products, which rely on several techniques to separate needed messages from unwanted solicitations, have helped cut down on the bulk-mail deluge.

Barcodes, those familiar sets of lines on items from DVDs to refrigerators, eventually may go the way of the typewriter, the black-and-white television and the dodo. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology promises to replace bar coding and make it easier for suppliers, distributors and retailers to track individual items. ...

Instant messaging has become the latest employee productivity tool. A customer-service representative can use it as a quick and easy way to answer an inquiry, whereas a salesperson can inform a busy vice president about a new account. In fact, research firm Gartner estimates 70 percent of corporate employees rely on instant messaging while at work ...

Faster, more flexible, less expensive and more functional has been the telecommunications industry's mantra. As soon as one networking technology takes hold, vendors begin pushing another that promises to deliver more functionality, and such a scenario is now unfolding with wireless wide area networks ...

Passwords are the first line of defense in almost every company's security scheme. But sometimes they are the weakest link because they can be easily guessed, stolen or otherwise compromised. If a firm wants to keep its information secure, then it needs to put additional security checks in place ...

The volume of goods being purchased via the Internet is rising. However, while certain consumers know what they want and feel comfortable making an instant purchase, many have questions about product pricing, availability and quality. Increasingly, the latter group is turning to online comparison-shopping sites for help when making a purchase decision...

The mall's latest fashion trend is not carried at Liz Claiborne, Tommy Hilfiger or J. Crew. Instead, young adults are flocking into Best Buy and Circuit City for the latest accessory: camera phones ...

When the Internet first emerged into the mainstream, companies like Yahoo evolved rapidly from startups into successful corporations by helping users sift though mountains of information to find the data they needed. But as the Internet grew, many of those companies shifted their attention away from pure search technology to become what we now call portals...

Through the years, some malicious computer programs have come to be known as viruses. Dr. Fred Cohen, a principal analyst with market research firm Burton Group, coined the term when he was working as a graduate student at the University of Southern California in the early 1980s. "There was a resemblance in how computer viruses and biological viruses reproduced," he told TechNewsWorld...

A general rule for IT departments is no matter how much bandwidth a network offers, users want more. So as soon as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers completed work on the 802.11b specification, which supports 11 Mbps wireless LAN transmissions, the 802.11 working group began to work on a higher-speed option, 802.11a, which operates at 54 Mbps...

The debate about whether peer-to-peer (P2P) applications, which were first made popular with the Napster file-sharing network, should be legitimate or illegitimate continues to rage ...

Hackers and security vendors are engaged in a never-ending game of leapfrog, with the former constantly devising clever viruses and the latter feverishly trying to concoct antidotes. As a result, through the years hundreds of thousands of malignant programs have infected networks around the world. Most have had minimal impact, but a handful have caused hundreds of millions -- even billions -- of dollars in damage...

Rather than move for an all-out frontal assault, voice over IP (VoIP) service providers are flanking the traditional telecommunications companies. In building their businesses, the VoIP providers -- which develop products that let customers make telephone calls over the Internet -- are not trying to convince every business and consumer that their services are best for every purpose, but instead are focusing on select groups, such as international customers and calling-card users, to gain market traction...

Software constantly evolves, and change often sparks controversy. Such is the case with Zip, a popular file-compression technology that almost every computer user has run into at one time or another. One reason why the technology, developed back in 1986, has gained such widespread acceptance is that customers have been able to mix and match different vendors' Zip products without having to worry about file compatibility. Soon, however, that might change.

The U.S. Postal Service would like to add a new word to the mix of adjectives like "slow" and "inefficient" that have been used to describe it in the past. That new word is "intelligent," and it symbolizes the high-tech spark that is energizing this old-line government agency. ...

Bill fires up his laptop in the hotel lobby and logs on to the corporate network through a wireless Ethernet link in search of an important e-mail. No luck. After attending a morning meeting with a potential customer, he visits the local coffee shop, where he once again taps into the network but does not find the message. A few hours later, in an airline terminal, he checks his messages and finds that he did indeed land a new account...