Sean Michael Kerner

If statistics are to be believed, the amazing growth rate of the Internet is still blazing along, more than 10 years after the Web began to emerge beyond the Internet. According to data published this week by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC), as of January 2005 there were 317.6 million Internet hosts with an assigned […]

Community based Linux distribution Debian got a boost from China and Japan, thanks to a deal involving Sun Wah Linux and VA Linux Systems Japan. The Tokyo-based VA Linux Systems and Nanjing, China-based Sun Wah Linux plan to promote and jointly develop Debian’s Linux OS for Chinese and Japanese markets. Both companies have almost five […]

Jef Raskin, one of the men credited with creating the Apple Macintosh, died of pancreatic cancer on Saturday at the age of 61. For the majority of computer users today, the graphical user interface is the primary method of interface, though before Apple’s Macintosh took the stage in 1984, that wasn’t the case. Though he […]

If you’re a Mozilla Firefox user, there’s another reason for you to update to the latest version of the upstart browser released last week. Buried in the list of Firefox security updates is a critical heap overflow issue that hit the public disclosure lists officially just today. Security firm iDefense issued a public advisory today […]

Phishing attacks , which use bogus e-mails and Web sites to dupe users into revealing personal data, jumped 42 percent from December to January, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). There were 12,845 new, unique phishing e-mails reported to the APWG last month. And the number of phishing Web sites supporting these messages reached […]

Google has it, Yahoo has it, Ask Jeeves has it, and now AOL has local search too. AOL yesterday launched AOL Local Search, which aggregates local content from AOL CityGuide, Yellow Pages, MapQuest and Moviefone. Beyond just address information, AOL’s CityGuide feature adds editorial reviews for local hot spots. The Moviefone feature allows local searchers […]

Another shopping search engine is joining the fray in an effort to provide searchers with more relevant search queries. Become.com is the brainchild of Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun, the same pair that founded online comparison shopping pioneer mySimon and later sold it to CNET Networks. “After MySimon was acquired by CNET in early 2000 […]

MySQL AB is a company on the way up. It leads the open source database world and continues to extend its reach further and further into the enterprise. The company recently unveiled a new Network subscription model already supported by a long list of major industry players. Leading MySQL as it enters the next stage […]

Sony officially announced yesterday that it was ending production of its CLIE PDA product in Japan. According to Gartner analyst Todd Kort, the end of Sony’s PDA production in Japan was a forgone conclusion once the company withdrew it from all other geographies last June. Gartner estimates the Japanese PDA market accounts for fewer than […]

U.S. retail e-commerce sales continued their meteoric rise in 2004, according to fourth-quarter stats released by the Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce today. On a non-adjusted basis, e-commerce sales reached $21.4 billion for the fourth quarter of 2004, a 22 percent increase over the same quarter a year ago. The Census Bureau reported […]

The Linux world is bracing for the final release of the new Linux 2.6.11 kernel, which will include a long list of driver updates and patches, with InfiniBand support perhaps being one of most interesting new additions. Late last night, Linux creator Linus Torvalds issued the fifth release candidate for the 2.6.11 kernel. The first […]

A new potential phishing attack vector was revealed this week that might put Microsoft Internet Explorer users at risk if they’re not careful. The Microsoft Internet Explorer Pop-up Window Title Bar Spoofing Weakness has been rated as less critical by security firm Secunia and has been assigned the CVE reference of CAN-2005-0500. The potential vulnerability […]