Brian Livingston

I wrote last week that the drone from PC fans is getting so loud in some offices that it’s a serious work distraction. But a specialty manufacturing company announced a new kind of computer case in January that eliminates the need for fans and thereby eliminates almost all PC noise. That company is Zalman Tech […]

Workers! If your office space sounds like the inside of a wind tunnel from the incessant hum of all the PCs surrounding you, lend me your ears. A small manufacturing company recently started shipping a new kind of PC case that emits almost no audible noise whatsoever. Its components stay cool without the need for […]

Businesses that offer poor search features — or none at all — may be missing out on more than they think. In the last three months of 2005, visitors to e-commerce sites who used those sites’ search boxes were 2.7 times more likely to buy something than average visitors, according to a study released in […]

Giant search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, get almost all the publicity these days. But the big news soon to come, I predict, will be in “personalized” search engines that offer results tailored to your needs. One of the best examples of this new trend is called a “swicki” — a search wiki. Experienced […]

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 […]

In the next few weeks, a service that’s been methodically testing Web sites for spyware, spam, and other problems will be gearing up for a big launch. Does your company’s Internet presence measure up to a “good” or a “bad” rating, as determined by this kind of examination? The service calls itself SiteAdvisor.com. Despite its […]

Can you trust a major corporation to keep your e-mail address out of spammers’ hands after you fill out the company’s unsubscribe form? Not always, according to a service that tracks what happens when addresses are submitted to unsubscribe mechanisms on the Web. I wrote last week that a service called Lashback LLC has tested […]

E-mail newsletters like mine — the ones that are sent by legitimate publishers, anyway — proudly proclaim, “You can unsubscribe at any time!” But how do you know that for sure? 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? […]

Spammers, who are everyone’s least-favorite Internet users, are cranking up their output every day. But antispammers are gaining more tools to defeat them. I wrote on Jan. 3 that you can close off a “back door” that many companies leave wide open on their mail servers. There are some other tricks that antispammers would like […]

We have a love/hate relationship with batteries. In all the mobile devices we carry around, the batteries are either wearing out, being replaced, or being recharged. This “can’t-live-with-’em, can’t-live-without-’em” dynamic has spawned a desperate competition among battery makers for your consumer dollar. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, held in Las Vegas Jan. 5-8, for […]