Stories by: Stacy Collett

NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center wasn't shooting for the stars when it turned to virtualization to meet its storage needs. IPAC's cash-strapped effort to record images of our universe -- up to 30 million objects captured each night and 42 billion records over the life of the project -- required big storage capabilities, and the engineers needed them fast and at a low cost.

Today's data centers pack more processing power into smaller physical spaces than ever before. But too much of a good thing creates new challenges for next-generation data center design.

About 95 per cent of all online purchases were made with credit cards last year. But that could change as software developers and electronic payment services unveil a variety of new payment options.

After six years of creating awareness of possible Year 2000 glitches as the result of the date rollover from 1999 to 2000, Canadian computer consultant Peter de Jager says his work is nearly done and he's ready to cash in his URL.

Internet browser competition is over, and Microsoft is the winner, with Netscape Communications a distant second, declared Zona Research. The US analyst has issued its final browser study and will no longer follow browser competition. Zona first conducted browser market studies in January 1996, when there were nine players on the browser frontier battling for a slice of a $200 million market.

Hours after Encyclopaedia Britannica announced its new, free Web content yesterday, the site went down.

The hype created more than two years ago over thin-client technology may finally have some weight behind it.

Companies that have finished Y2K testing and remediation are now setting their sights on outsourcing, especially for Internet and intranet management, according to a new report by Input, a Californian market research firm.