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 […]

Affiliate marketing — the practice of allowing thousands of small Web sites to send potential buyers to your e-business site — is entering a renaissance of sorts. I wrote in my previous columnthat new, more sophisticated forms of traffic swapping have earned the moniker “Affiliate Marketing 2.0.” This is a play on the popular Web […]

LAS VEGAS — It seems like everyone is buzzing about “Web 2.0.” This catch-all phrase is usually used to explain fast-growing portals, such as MySpace and YouTube, that rely on visitors to create most or all site content. E-commerce seems to be experiencing its own “version 2.0,” judging from comments by participants in the Affiliate […]

The recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which was held 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 […]

Here’s Part Two of our year-end “Greatest Hits” collection of Executive Tech columns – all readers’ favorites. Happy holidays! IE 7 Unbalances QuickBooks If you install IE 7, according to Intuit executives, it can cause the affected versions of the QuickBooks small-business bookkeeping package to display “page not found” errors and unexpectedly crash. Free Software […]

Here’s a year-end “Greatest Hits” collection of Executive Tech columns. Next week we’ll post another bunch of readers’ favorites. Happy holidays! How to Know When Unsubscribing Isn’t Safe What if unsubscribing from an e-mail newsletter actually prompted the publisher to sell your e-mail address to spammers, who then sent you more spam? Is IE 7 […]

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 […]

It isn’t often that you see a technology — or a Christmas gift — that’s appropriate for pre-teens, retired people, and truck drivers. These groups are all ideal, though, for the Wherifone GPS Locator Phone. This device isn’t a full-featured cell phone but makes phone calls only to a restricted set of numbers. More significantly, […]