If you’re like me, you’ve gotten many e-mail messages lately cajoling you to buy anti-virus software. “YOUR COMPUTER IS AT RISK!” shouted one in all capital letters. “PROTECT YOUR COMPUTER,” implored another. If you don’t already have anti-virus software or need an update, these offers may sound enticing. After all, to anyone who’s connected to …

Whether you’ve created a sophisticated business Web site or a homegrown site for the family, you undoubtedly can do more with it. Just don’t do too much. Striking a healthy balance between making a Web site quick to navigate and enhancing it with bells and whistles has always been a key challenge with Web design. …

How much would you pay for what you’re reading right now? Publishers are continually wrestling with questions about whether to charge readers, what prices to use, and how to balance newsstand and subscription revenue with advertising revenue. For Web publishers, these questions are of utmost importance as a result of the meltdown in the online …

Until the middle of 2000, the Internet economy was flying high, elevating the larger economy, not to mention the stock market and the portfolios of millions of investors. Then the bottom caved in. During the first quarter of 2001, in the middle of the implosion, 164 Internet companies declared bankruptcy or shut down completely. This …

Joe, a computer programmer, is talking with his psychotherapist. “You’ve got to help me,” he says. “I’ve fallen in love with my computer, but I know I can never marry her.” “Well, it’s good you haven’t totally lost touch with reality,” notes the therapist. “Oh, it could never work,” Joe replies. “She wants a career.” …

E-mail is a hugely successful phenomenon, letting us communicate with far more people using far less effort than any previous communications medium. But this facility has its dark side–the incessant bombardment of e-mail in-boxes with ads for illegal “Make Money Fast” pyramid schemes, pornographic Web sites, quack healthcare remedies, and other come-ons. As a result, …

What’s hot these days in PC technology? What’s merely hyped? With the caveat that this is at least somewhat subjective, here’s a rundown of some of the latest and greatest gadgets, gizmos, and gewgaws, along with a recommendation of which are worth opening your wallet for. Superfast CPUs A superfast central processing unit can speed …

The only constant with computer technology is change. No matter how comfortable you are with your current PC, at some point you’ll need to move on to a new one.   Perhaps you want to use programs that won’t run on your old PC. Perhaps you’ve run out of hard disk space and memory. You …

“If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.” Shakespeare’s words are just as wise today, but this hasn’t stopped people from trying to divine the future.   The latest future-oriented computing issue goes by the overly broad moniker “Web services,” …

Speed has played a key role with computers since the inception of the digital age in the 1940s. The very raison d’être of electronic machines is their ability to carry out computational procedures faster than humans. But speed is not always what it’s cracked up to be. On the other hand, speed is sometimes given …