David Coursey

The FCC has done the right thing by forcing Vonage and other new-age carriers to quickly remove a potentially fatal flaw in their VOIP networks. If youve been following this, you know that when I say “fatal flaw,” Im talking about the flaw being fatal to the user, rather than merely the product itself dying. […]

Intel says it wants to be a platform company. The statement sounds odd to me because Ive always thought that Intel was a platform company. However, we live in a brand-conscious world, and Intel has been very successful giving catchy names to the microprocessor sets it sells to its hardware OEMs and, eventually, to you […]

Most people dont think of fun and spam as residing in the same universe. But if you cant beat it, I say, why not have fun with it? OK, youre right; maybe I have been spending too much time in front of the computer lately. But if spam is going to show up despite my […]

So you think your buying a VOIP telephone system for your company was really smart? You certainly have reason to: Your users love the tight integration between the phone system, their e-mail, and other PC features. And the chief financial officer loves the “deal” you got on long-distance rates. Everyone agrees: Youre a hero. Not […]

It is tempting to read too much into Adobes decision, effective June 3, to close its online content store. Neither Adobe nor online content seem any worse for the companys experience in selling electronic books, but they dont seem very much better for it, either. Despite Adobes efforts—and they have a big stake in this—electronic […]

While the cash-for-old-content crowd was gathered in New York for the Digital Asset Management Symposium this week, I was sitting here in my office thinking about a very different, but related topic. This is digital asset management gone wrong, to which I am applying the term “digital asset manglement.” Here are 10 ways digital asset […]

Microsoft is releasing Windows Mobile 5.0 this week, an operating system the best feature of which it amazes me they are just now introducing: non-volatile memory. Devices using the new OS, due this summer, will have persistent memory, meaning your Microsoft PDA or smart phone wont go brain-dead when the battery dies. Actually, the old […]

Apple has a great operating system in its new Mac OS X 10.4, aka “Tiger.” And the company offers a great hardware platform, too. But from its actions heading into Tigers release, and now reading the troublesome list of missing-in-action applications and compatibility issues, I have to question the companys aspirations to be a player […]

Identity theft and fraud are, perhaps, the two most serious problems facing the Internet. Direct economic losses in the United States totaled over $574 million in 2004, according to the Federal Trade Commission. If not curbed, these crimes have the potential to make the Internet so untrustworthy that electronic commerce might slow considerably. All the […]

And the moral of this story is: Encrypt your backup data. That way, when your data storage vendor loses your tapes, you still have a reasonable defense mechanism in place. All those whose personal data has been lost will sleep better and youll look like a pretty smart person as you collect the big bonus […]