Brian Livingston

In these days of endless network attacks from the Internet, we’re constantly told that we should install the latest fixes from Microsoft and other software vendors as quickly as possible. But we’re also told that we should test these patches before we roll them out to the hundreds or thousands of PCs in our companies, […]

An Adobe PDF file is easy to read, but it’s a pain in the adobe to create. That’s because the free, downloadable Adobe Reader utility makes it simple for almost anyone to open and view a file in PDF (portable document format). But the program that Adobe Systems Inc. promotes for making PDFs — Acrobat […]

If your company has a computing policy that’s at all responsible, you backup your data on a regular basis. That’s just common sense. But a little-known feature of Microsoft’s Group Policy Objects (GPOs) may be making it harder for you to have a sensible backup program. Allow me to explain. Three Basic Types of Backups […]

Imagine that your office building was on fire, and you called the fire department, only to be told, “Please wait there while we invent a new method to fight the kind of fire you have.” You’d be furious! You’d expect the firefighters to rush to your building immediately, ready to fight whatever kind of fire […]

What if you could stop a new virus from zooming through your company — without waiting for antivirus firms to update their programs and without waiting for Microsoft’s latest patches to be installed on all your PCs? One vendor that specializes in helping enterprises patch Windows has developed a method to do just that. It’s […]

I wrote in last week’s Executive Tech that Unicast, a New York-based advertising agency, had developed a new online pop-up format that could evade the “pop-up blockers” used by many companies. The ad firm has designed an innovative series of 30-second, full-motion video commercials for clients such as Pepsi, Honda, and Warner Brothers. When a […]

There’s a war going on between people who want to put pop-up ads on all of your computer screens and those who are determined to stop them. The battle has just escalated to a new level, with the announcement on Jan. 20 of cutting-edge technology that pops up not just ads but 2 MB, 30-second, […]

What’s wrong with this picture: You’ve finally gained an audience with the top executives you sought, and they’ve assembled in their plush, oak-paneled conference room. You’ve started your computerized presentation on the screen, and the sound pouring from the PC’s speakers has faded to a whisper just as you’re about to make your most important […]

Do you sometimes wake up at night from a bad dream of ruthless hackers somehow breaking into your company’s PCs? The nightmare may not actually be coming from outside your enterprise. If your company has PCs that are open to the public to use, or machines that more than a single employee has access to, […]

If you thought spam was a big problem last year, wait until you see the spam problems you’ll have now that Congress has passed the CAN-SPAM Act. That’s partly because the act may allow a lot more spamming. The bill, as signed into law last month by President Bush, doesn’t actually ban unsolicited bulk e-mail […]