Features

It looks like the image of a woman throwing up after inadvertently viewing pornography was too controversial for Microsoft.

China did a sudden about-face late yesterday and decided to delay its controversial requirement that all computers sold after July 1 must come with Web filtering software.

Moblin is an Intel-created open-source operating system for netbooks and, specifically, the kind of people who use them.

There's something special about installing what is arguably one of the fastest, most sophisticated solid-state disk (SSD) drives in your average Dell laptop. It's a little like stuffing a big-block V8 into a Chevy Chevette -- you get amazing performance, but no matter how hard you try, you can't justify the cash you just shelled out in order to go really fast.

Signifying a formless haze of computing power and storage that is somewhere "out there," computerdom's current buzzword is as difficult to get one's arms around as a real cloud. A seemingly limitless pool of processors and memory and disk space, and you just scoop out what you need. Sounds great, doesn't it?

In the past eight months, Ask.com has unfurled a set of changes to its search engine that the IAC unit calls a success, although its share of U.S. search queries has actually shrunk during that time period.

The tantalizing question about William Gibson's ideas in his novel Neuromancer involves their relationship with the course that the Web took and continues to take as Neuromancer's publication date--July 1, 1984, 25 years ago today--recedes farther into the past. In his afterword to the 2000 re-release of the book, novelist Jack Womack suggests that Neuromancer may have directly influenced the way the Web developed--that it may have provided a blueprint that developers who grew up with the book consciously or subconsciously followed. Womack asks "what if the act of writing it down, in fact, brought it about?"

Have you heard the news? Microsoft's Bing is taking a bite out of Google, boasting first-month market share gains while the competition's stronghold slips away! At least, that's what some headlines around the Web might lead you to believe this week.

The Sony Walkman turns 30 today, amazing as much for the passage of time as it is for the fact that the Walkman brand persists today in digital audio players and cell phones.

Today more than ever, good network security is vital to businesses of all sizes. Cybercriminals, equipped with sophisticated software that automates the task of seeking out vulnerabilities, aren't focusing on large enterprises alone; any easy target will do. Fortunately, however, good security isn't as expensive or as complicated to implement as it used to be.

With all the outrage over The Pirate Bay going legit, I think it's time to reconsider the merits of illegally media sharing. The world has changed since Napster introduced peer-to-peer file sharing in 1999, and the culture that made the practice seem necessary has transformed.

2009 is the Year of the Mobile App Store. Apple started the movement with the launch of its hugely successful iTunes App Store for the iPhone in 2008, then all the handset heavies followed suit. Today, Nokia operates the Ovi Store; Microsoft's got the upcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile; Google runs Android Marketplace; and Research In Motion (RIM) runs BlackBerry App World.

With Microsoft's recent addition of Bing to the search landscape, the spotlight is again shining on who has the best engine for finding anything and everything on the Internet. The debate over who has the best search likely will go on into eternity with a focus on the big three: Google,Yahoo and Microsoft. But there are countless other search engines out there focused on zeroing users in on the data they want or need. Here is a look at five that are offering some slick service.

The U.S. White House is determined to follow through on its efforts to make cybersecurity a top priority, despite earlier government efforts that have fallen flat, a top official said Wednesday.