Intel will buy Texas Instruments' cable modem product line, the company said Monday.
Apple is acknowledging complaints that its new iPad computer has trouble connecting to the Internet.
I use a wireless router at home, but it seems that other people on my block do as well! I can see their access point IDs show up in my list. Can they see mine, too -- and is this a problem? What are some things I need to keep in mind when it comes to wireless home network security?
Cable companies attracted more Internet subscribers than phone companies did in the first quarter, reversing a 3 1/2-year trend, according to a research report Thursday
Apple's AirPort Express Base Station has always been remarkable in that it is networking hardware that people actually seem to get excited about.
In some ways, you've got to feel a little sympathetic for Sony. The company effectively invented the placeshifting concept -- the ability to stream TV programming from your living room to another device via the Internet -- in 2004, only to see it co-opted by smaller upstart Sling Media a year later. The latter company's Slingbox series of products have become the industry leader, popular enough for the start-up to be purchased by Dish Network parent EchoStar for a cool $380 million.
In some ways, you've got to feel a little sympathetic for Sony. The company effectively invented the placeshifting concept -- the ability to stream TV programming from your living room to another device via the Internet -- in 2004, only to see it co-opted by smaller upstart Sling Media a year later.
The Linksys WRT350N with Storage Link router is the next step up from the company's WRT300N router. Based on Draft 2.0 of the 802.11n spec, it's a standard four-port Gigabit Ethernet router that also serves up a USB port for sharing the contents of a USB hard drive or flash drive across the network.
As reader "dechah" wrote in response to our blog covering the announcement of Apple's new iMacs, Apple's is not the first all-in-one desktop with a glossy screen, an ultrathin keyboard, and a trim profile.
Wi-Fi phones were the talk of the town this week.
If you travel for business as much as I do, you probably spend more time looking for a high-speed Internet connection than you do looking for your hotel.
The next generation of wireless networking devices is now arriving in stores, promising faster data transfers and longer-range service, but those new routers and adapters are based on a proposed st...
One year and more than 13 million units later, Nintendo remains the king of the hand-held gaming market with its acclaimed Nintendo DS device, ahead of Sony's PlayStation Portable, which sold a little more than 10 million units.
WiFi is one area where you probably don't have to wait for faster and better technology.
Home is where the Wi-Fi is. and the more Wi-Fi you get in your home, the bigger the business opportunity becomes. With a raft of new Wi-Fi-hungry devices arriving for the holiday season, consumers ...
Computer users in many urban and university areas have come to expect connectivity 24/7. There's a cable modem or DSL at home, a high-speed connection in the office and Wi-Fi for the places in between, from the commute to the coffeehouse.
AS A MUSIC LOVER, I once enjoyed a whole-house stereo system that let me listen to my favorite tunes in the kitchen, the bathroom, or the bedroom, even though the stereo itself was in the living ro...
Web surfers unable to hook up to limited high-speed connections have quietly suffered the pains of clunky, slow Internet service because they had no choice; and they had to stay connected.
A few lucky people actually look forward to the daily commute. Just ask one of about 300 Google employees who regularly go to and from the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., on the company's free...
HOTSPOT FINDER WiFi Seeker Locates a signal before you boot up your laptop. $30; www.pctel.com.
Is your Wi-Fi's WEP turned on? What's the difference between bluejacking and bluesnarfing? Do you know your SSID? Get a handle on the details behind the acronyms and jargon that is wireless technology with this Wi-Fi glossary.
News on a new chip from Intel helped balance out an acquisition by ARM that sent its stock reeling, leaving most technology indexes slightly higher Monday.
Parade, the happily middlebrow magazine that comes with Sunday newspapers, is hardly the place you'd look for technology that is about to rock a $750-billion-a-year industry. Yet on June 6, sandwic...
Ted Larson arrives at geek headquarters smack in the middle of the much-awaited season premiere of UPN's latest Star Trek show, Enterprise. The former chief technical officer at an Internet startup...
It's an ordinary Saturday afternoon: You're in the bedroom sending e-mails from your laptop when your wife, who's in the kitchen, picks up her Pocket PC and swoops into your hard drive to copy the ...
Setting up a wireless network at home allows everyone in the family--and maybe even your neighbors too!--to share your high-speed Internet connection. No longer tied to a desk, teenagers can use l...
Wi-Fi is already huge--and it's only going to get bigger. Wireless hotspots are sprouting up in airports, hotels, and cafes, while many new laptops come straight from the factory with Wi-Fi capabil...
When I look into my tech crystal ball to Year Four of what Bill Gates has dubbed the "digital decade," I see a dance floor so crowded that everyone steps on everyone else's toes. Telephone companie...
John Chambers could do no wrong. At least, that was the guiding belief of Cisco's 4.5 million shareholders, who during the Internet bubble seemed to buy stock on the congenitally upbeat CEO's every...
In spring 2000, as the Nasdaq plunged 2,000 points, two vastly different companies quietly embarked on programs to offer their employees a whiz-bang new technology called 802.11b, or Wi-Fi--wireles...
My office has a microwave oven, an 802.11b wireless Wi-Fi computer network, and a cordless phone system. All three devices use the unlicensed 2.4-gigahertz radio frequency, and from time to time th...
"I'm home," you announce to your house, as you stroll through the door like the Tom Cruise character in the futuristic thriller Minority Report. Your house, smart as a whip, responds warmly by swit...
Because the lawyers hate SONICblue's new ReplayTV 4000-series digital video recorder, I was predisposed to like it even before I figured out that it could fundamentally change the way I watch TV. A...
Even for a time of bitter harvests in Silicon Valley, longtime tech executive Eric Benhamou has had a particularly frustrating year. Benhamou is chairman of 3Com, a producer of data-networking gear...
With all the GameCube/Xbox hype, you might think civilization has reached the zenith of 3-D gaming. But to a fanatic, the consoles can't touch a fire-breathing, tail-kicking, supermodified PC. So, ...
HANDHELDS
It's just a fact of life That no ones cares to mention She wasn't good But she had good intentions. --Lyle Lovett
In more innocent times, people often left their front doors unlocked. The odds of a burglar trying the front door on any given day were small, especially in rural communities.
SOUND CHOICE Watching a movie on a PC can be unsatisfying: Tiny speakers and a small monitor isn't the way DVDs were meant to be seen. But Dell's done something about it: the THX-Certified Dimensio...
When I wanted to set up a network for my home office, my wife thrilled to the prospect of my drilling holes in the wall and dragging wires through them. We're still, um, talking about it. Wired net...
The hottest entry in the race to build faster, more robust phone networks is--surprise--Ethernet, a 25-year-old computer standard developed for linking PCs in office networks. Don't yawn. A handful...
Turn the clock to zero, boss The river's wide, we'll swim across We're starting up a brand new day --Sting, "Brand New Day"
You need a new computer. But maybe you don't need a new computer. The online stores are selling machines twice as fast as your current one, and for half the price you paid for yours, but you may be...
What could be worse than a slow Internet connection in Rapid City? Business travelers have grown accustomed to their high-speed Net access in hotel rooms in high-speed cities like New York or San F...
For a lot of small companies, a fast connection to the Internet is no longer a luxury. Many business owners routinely browse the Net for news, for intelligence about the marketplace, and for the on...
In this era of insane stock valuations, how can you ever tell when a company's technology is really worth the multiple that investors are paying? One obvious way, it would seem, is to look at the c...
Way back in 1994 a bunch of computer programmers created a little software application called Netscape, which brought graphics and pictures to the newly created World Wide Web.
There's an old saying at the poker table that if you don't know who the sucker is, it's you. Well, there are more than a few suckers out there betting on broadband, you can be sure. The world is ju...
The poor slob is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the airport waiting lounge, still sweating from his dash through the triple-digit Texas heat. He's balancing his laptop on one knee, and a phon...
Broadband. Short for "broad bandwidth," as in a high-speed network able to carry video as well as voice. Bandwidth describes the throughput of a network per unit of time, measured in kilobits, mega...
After Marc Andreessen and his University of Illinois cohorts invented Mosaic, the browser that first opened up the Web to millions of people, he co-founded Netscape, the company that helped launch ...
"Bandwidth is kind of like a drug," says Dana Waldman. "The more you get, the more you want." As CEO and founder of a private communications startup that's building a potent new way to deliver this...
To get an idea of just how hungry--and how fickle--the market is for broadband stocks, check out Corvis Corp. The optical-networking company, based in Columbia, Md., more than doubled the asking pr...
Three years ago when I worked at AT&T Laboratories, I wrote an essay called "The Rise of the Stupid Network," which analyzed how new technology would reshape the telecommunications industry. In the...
Confused by "set-top boxes" yet? I am, and by this fall, you will be too. Walk into Best Buy, Circuit City, or any other major consumer electronics retailer, and you'll see the first manifestations...
Once every couple of weeks Matthew Cwieka marches out of his parents' house in Chicopee, Mass., with his computer teetering on top of his skinny arms. He piles his equipment into the car and heads ...
A year or so ago, when the term "broadband" first entered the tech vernacular, there were three competing strategies--cable modems, DSL (through existing phone lines), and satellites. That meant th...
Edward E. Whitacre Jr., the plain-talking CEO of SBC Communications, is in his headquarters in San Antonio, telling how much he likes the Internet. He volunteers that he has used his home computer ...
Broadband. It's an obsession on Wall Street, in Web chat rooms, for Valley gurus, and no doubt for your retired Uncle Leo in Phoenix. The one thing everyone agrees on, it seems, is that the revolut...
You might have heard about information appliances. In the computer industry we've been chatting them up something fierce over the past few months. And some of that has probably even leaked into the...
If you live in one of America's 20 million multicomputer homes, creating your own local area network makes a lot of sense. Your family can share one color printer and high-speed modem, exchange fil...
It's sometimes said that a man can be judged by the enemies he has made. The same might be said of a company, especially if those enemies are the competition. The louder they complain, the better t...
On May 29, 1996, Tom Engibous was awakened by a call in the middle of the night. Getting out of bed, Engibous, then head of Texas Instruments' semiconductor division, learned the terrible news that...
By now everyone knows that the rules for getting really, really rich aren't quite what they used to be. No longer is it necessary to spend years ascending the craggy rungs of a corporate ladder. Do...
FREMONT, Calif. (Reuters)--Sunday, Jan. 23, 2004. A large contingent of National Guard troops arrived here today to bolster Fremont's local police force after violence erupted in a dispute over cab...
Imagine a world where you no longer have to wait to get on the Internet. Where you can play a computer game with an opponent in Hong Kong in real time. Where it's quicker to look up a telephone num...
Has the time come, at long last, for a home network? A few years ago, the idea of a LAN running from the den to the bedroom was just a techie's fantasy. But now even some regular folks have an ince...
In the earlier ages of audio, video, and motion pictures, the real winners turned out to be not those who made vacuum tubes or microphones or film, but those who produced or distributed radio, TV, ...
Three years ago, when communications-chip dynamo Broadcom was a private company, Emery Chang, an employee in the finance department, predicted that when Broadcom went public, its stock would nearly...
Computers nowadays come in a dizzying array of sizes, shapes, colors (thanks, iMac) and brands. Prices too: You can buy a machine for much less than $1,000 and get the kind of performance and featu...
We're witnessing the Information Age equivalent of pigs being swallowed by snakes: Fat chunks of the conventional telecom business are getting absorbed by the Internet and new digital long-distance...
It's 6 A.M., and you've just popped a mug of water into the microwave for tea. While you wait for it to boil, you check up-to-the-minute stock quotes--from the front panel of your Internet-connecte...
Of course Microsoft and Intel are monopolies. Together the two companies are the force that IBM used to be, setting the computer industry's direction and pace. But they aren't nearly as dominant as...
hq: bedford, mass. founded: 1986 sales: $6 million employees: 91 stock: awre; nasdaq web address: www.aware.com
In the multimedia lab at 3Com's Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters, rows of desktop computers showcase the video and audio capabilities of networks run on 3Com products. Some monitors display wildli...
As the Internet transcends its geeky beginnings, phone companies that would use it to turbocharge their growth have been rethinking their strategies, often widening their circle of acquaintances in...
Setting up an office at home once involved buying furniture, plugging in a telephone, buying a calculator and typewriter, and making sure you had plenty of filing cabinets. You'll still need the fu...
The world of digital technology is famous for its rapid pace of innovation, and the language that describes it changes just as quickly. Because the computer industry is constantly spinning out new ...
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS (TXN) NYSE, $102.75; 0.6% YIELD
When Motorola's plant in Mansfield, Mass., got the green light to roll out cable modems last year, the good news came with a catch: The operation had to be up and running in six weeks. The tight de...
It's enough to make you run away screaming: Ascend Communications, down from $80 a share to $49; Cascade Communications, down from $91 to $25; even Cisco Systems, the king of networking--a company ...
I am fascinated with a new product just announced by AT&T. The company has developed it in great secrecy over the past three years under the code name "Project Angel." To be accurate, AT&T is calli...
Cable modems are a fantasy. Unfortunately, an entire industry is enjoying the fantasy.
Tuesday, November 5, was a historic day for me: I spent the evening with my 14-year-old second daughter, Katharine, not watching television. Not only that, but she was not on the telephone with her...
John Doerr and William Randolph Hearst III could barely contain their enthusiasm. It was a Saturday morning in Palo Alto early last year when Doerr, arguably Silicon Valley's top venture capitalist...
You're lounging on the sofa in the den, remote control in hand. That familiar thwickety-thwack bass riff signals a commercial break in Seinfeld, and another of those unbearable battery ads takes ov...
Like peddling pickaxes during the Gold Rush, the best way to cash in on the Internet is to outfit hopeful prospectors with the proper hardware. Thus the networking infrastructure industry, which ti...
Even though it's a glorious Saturday morning and he's coasting downhill astride his jet-black bicycle, Intel Corp. CEO Andy Grove is hard at work. As usual, he's lagging far behind his more athleti...
HIS COMPANY'S most famous products include military satellites, space shuttles, and B-1 bombers, but Rockwell International Chairman Donald R. Beall insists that running such an enterprise is not r...
SOON AFTER you switch on a new computer, it starts to sprout cables like branches and peripherals like leaves. Time-lapse photography would show how quickly the typical personal computer can strang...
MEGAHERTZ The three founders of this modem manufacturer have a lot in common. CEO Spencer Kirk and executive vice presidents David Spafford and Stephen Aldous, all 32, were childhood friends and at...
SCENES from a life on-line: It is 7 a.m. in New York City as a typical pajama- clad American columnist sits down to the personal computer in his study. Programmed to cater to its master's whims, th...
CUSTOM CHROME Has Nace Panzica changed much since he brought Custom Chrome public 18 months ago? The CEO points to the tie and business suit he is wearing and bursts out laughing. He and most of Cu...
The stock market's recent stumble is a jolting reminder of just how feeble this economic recovery is -- and how vulnerable stocks are to nasty surprises. So how do you avoid the pitfalls and find s...
SBARRO In 1959, three years after arriving in the U.S. from Naples, the Sbarro family opened an Italian deli store in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York. In 1985, when the company compri...
You've just finished renegotiating a complicated international merger, and now you're on the way home to report to the management committee. You're sitting in the cabin of the corporate Gulfstream ...
Microcom Inc. -- No high-tech company took a less deserved drubbing in the stock market crash than Microcom, which dominates the business for high-speed modems linking computer workstations and has...
| Six months sooner than IBM had planned and more than a year after everyone else had expected, Big Blue introduced its local area network -- the wiring and circuit boards that allow computers to c...
COMPLEX NEW technologies can be intimidating, particularly when they burst forth in a variety of incompatible makes and designs. Customers rarely step in to impose order, preferring to wait until t...

