Kate Stoodley

Moments before Hurricane Katrina crashed ashore, some people in Southern Louisiana accessed warnings on WeatherBug.com and sought shelter, prior even to hearing local hurricane warnings go off. And as Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, thousands of people across the nation and around the world were able to watch real-time streaming videos of the devastating storm. […]

When Jim Hochstatter started working at Ulster Savings Bank in October, 2004, the bank ran two separate networks. One was tied into the Internet — the other handled most of the bank’s workings. ”The strategy was if it didn’t touch us, the Internet couldn’t hurt us,” says Hochstatter, vice president of technology at the Kingston, […]

Before a global consulting firm integrated new software into its 5-terabyte database, the company’s IT staff spent so much time cleaning up their information that bigger projects had to take a back seat. IT workers at Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting and outsourcing company based in Lincolnshire, Il., had gotten used to spending many […]

Lavasoft Inc.’s Ad-Aware SE Professional Edition won over users in Datamation’s 2005 Product of the Year contest, receiving just enough votes to claim first place in the new category of Malware Removal. Safer Networking’s Spybot Search and Destroy, grabbed the second-place spot in a very tight race. Other finalists in this category were Webroot Software, […]

Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry 7100 claimed a decisive first place in the Handheld Category in Datamation’s Product of the Year 2005 reader survey. The Treo 650 by Palm came in a distant second place, followed by PalmOne Tungsten T5 by PalmOne, MyPal A 730W by Asus and HP’s iPaq 6315. Industry analysts say Datamation […]

Phishing attacks are the fastest growing type of Internet scam out there today. And industry analysts say this nasty scheme shows no signs of slowing down. Phishing scams are increasingly intelligent and targeted, posing a more harmful threat than ever before. Phishing is one of the latest online financial scams plagueing online users. Emails claiming […]

Little yellow sticky notes cling to computer screens throughout American offices, displaying users’ passwords for coworkers, bosses… and possibly hackers to see. The passwords, generally as simple as a relative’s birthday or a pet’s name, have long been too easy to steal, and they’re just not working anymore, analysts say. What’s the solution? Biometrics and […]

Phishers proved to be the IT security manager’s biggest threat this year. And analysts say the growth of online organized crime will make it even worse for 2005. Analysts also say the security threats IT managers wrestled with in 2004 are morphing into bigger, more damaging, problems for the coming year. This past year, IT […]

Back in 1978, when the thing we now all think of as annoying, unsolicited, inbox-clogging email was just the canned, spongy sandwich meat, one man sent an email to 400 people, marketing his company’s new product. With that one fateful move, email spam was born. Gary Thuerk, now in sales at computer giant Hewlett-Packard Co., […]

As the flood of U.S. IT work continues to flow toward foreign shores, some analysts are watching a trickle of jobs starting to move back in this direction. And they’re starting to speculate if these incoming jobs actually could help compensate for the high-paying, high-tech jobs that are being offshored, leaving behind a troubled IT […]