Brian Livingston

If you switch to Outlook 2007 from some earlier Microsoft e-mail program — such as Outlook 2003 or Outlook Express — many of the messages you receive will start looking very weird. That’s because Outlook 2007 no longer uses the HTML rendering capabilities of Internet Explorer, which by and large has a very good command […]

Rechargeable batteries are a great idea. Who wouldn’t want to use batteries that would last years and years, with a few periodic rechargings? Up until now, however, rechargeables haven’t been a perfect solution for gadget users on the go. One of the most irritating things about rechargeable batteries is that they aren’t charged when you […]

Most of us don’t carry a laptop projector with us when we travel — but that might change with the emergence of new technology that allows projectors to weigh under 1 pound and literally fit into a pocket. I wrote in my Jan. 17 column that some of the most remarkable gadgets I saw at […]

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas earlier this month focused enormous media attention on really BIG subjects, like which vendor was displaying the largest flat-panel television set. So it’s odd that one of the most intriguing items I saw announced at the show was the very smallest. That device is the MoGo Dapter. […]

Screaming headlines in the past few days have proclaimed that unsolicited bulk e-mail — known universally as spam — has broken all known records. But is this really the case, or does it just seem like it? “Spam Doubles,” proclaimed the New York Times in an article on Dec. 6 (free registration required). Much of […]

Most of the time, I urge my readers to be cautious and frugal. But now it’s the Christmas shopping season, so that advice has to go right out the window. This is the time of year that you’re expected to buy something for everyone in your immediate family as well as your extended circle of […]

A major U.S. Internet service provider (ISP) plans to offer a novel security technology to its millions of customers within the next month. EarthLink, based in Atlanta, will add “behavior blocking” software provided by Sana Security of San Mateo, Calif., to the ISP’s Protection Control Center, a security suite that’s currently in use by 1.2 […]

There are some simple steps your company can take to demonstrate that the e-mails you’re sending aren’t spam. If you’re not taking them, many recipients are now ready and willing to filter your messages into the trash. Large corporations have adopted new forms of “authenticated e-mail” at an astonishing rate. About 75 percent of Fortune […]

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University, working with federal grant monies, have discovered that phishing e-mails are decidedly different from most other spam — so much so that the fraudulent messages can almost entirely be detected and filtered out. CMU researchers state that their analysis catches 92.65 percent of phishing attempts. Only 0.12 percent of legitimate […]

Once upon a time, different Web browsers supported different forms of HTML markup or “tags.” It was difficult or impossible to make a Web site look good in different browsers. Beginning a few years ago, fortunately, browsers started adopting some common markup styles, loosely known as “Web standards.” Web sites now look roughly the same […]

Click fraud has become so large that it’s setting records, and not in a good way. “We’ve seen indications that the overall losses due to click fraud could equal more than $1 billion” each year, according to a financial expert quoted Feb. 27 in Business Week. That figure is “larger than the total magnitude of […]

A small company will ship next month a tiny device that clips onto any phone line, offering unlimited long-distance calls to any number in the U.S. and Canada for only $9.95 per month. Best of all, the device uses VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), but doesn’t require broadband access — or any kind of computer […]