Articles by Katherine Noyes

Small to medium-sized e-commerce companies can go a long way toward marketing themselves online by doing some simple search engine optimization (SEO) and taking the time to foster some inbound links to their site Both can be done without an advanced degree in computer science, and both can cost little or no money....

A software problem at Skype left many users of the popular VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service unable to log in or make calls Thursday, and with little hope for relief until Friday, the company said "Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype," the company wrote on its support blog at about 2 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time, or about 10...

Anonymous Wikipedia editors who seek to alter articles for less-than-honorable purposes can no longer hide behind their cloak of anonymity: A new scanner tool now makes it relatively easy to figure out where they came from WikiScanner, developed by California Institute of Technology graduate student Virgil Griffith, traces the IP addresses that get...

Clunky old batteries may soon be a thing of the past thanks to a new energy-storage device that looks and feels like a scrap of paper Developed by a team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), the nanoengineered battery is 90 percent cellulose, made up of the same plant cells used in nearly every type of paper. Infused in that pa...

One of the hard realizations that most new e-commerce companies must make sooner or later is that simply creating a Web site does not mean customers will visit it Sure, there are hundreds of millions of potential customers online, but there are also billions of other Web sites competing for their attention. "The odds of people finding you accidenta...

The release of a beta version of the BBC's new iPlayer late last month has reportedly drawn the ire of UK Internet service providers upset over the media player's bandwidth requirements and added more fuel to the fire in the net neutrality debate Broadband providers including Tiscali UK have charged that downloads via iPlayer require so much bandwi...

The casual gaming industry appears to be passing "Go" and preparing to collect its figurative US$200 with a new partnership announced Friday by Electronic Arts (EA) and Hasbro to create digital versions of many of the classic board games generations have grown up on The agreement grants EA the exclusive worldwide rights to create digital games base...

President Bush signed into law Thursday the America Competes Act, designed to boost research and education in math and the sciences through a funding package of about US$42 billion Formally dubbed the "America Creating Opportunities To Meaningfully Promote Excellence In Technology, Education And Science Act" (America COMPETES), the bill aims to bol...

Microsoft, Google and other members of the White Spaces Coalition received a blow last week when the Federal Communications Commission rejected the device they proposed to allow wireless Internet transmissions over unused TV spectrum Known as a "white space device," the technology is intended to tap into unlicensed and unused airwaves, with the pot...

New York Times blogger Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of the bestseller Freakonomics, might get more than he bargained for in response to a questionhe posted on Wednesday: "If you were a terrorist, how would you attack?" Posed in the spirit of "public service," Levitt writes, the question is meant to get readers' best ideas "out in the open" so that te...

It's now a well-known fact that on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog, but when it comes to Internet telephony, the bigger concern is that no one might know where you are either. Dial 911 for emergency assistance, and you could be out of luck, as some well-publicized lawsuits have shown Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a rapidly expan...

Mission Specialist Barbara Morgan, the teacher-turned-astronaut who is embarking her first space flight Wednesday, is capturing much of the world's attention as the space shuttle Endeavour is readied for launch Morgan served as the backup to Christa McAuliffe under the NASA Teacher in Space program between September 1985 and January 1986, training ...

A California state law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors was declared unconstitutional Monday by U.S. District Judge Ronald Whyte on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment The law, which was signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 but had not yet been implemented because of a suit brought by video game makers, wou...

The Bush administration upheld the U.S. International Trade Commission's ban on the import of cell phones containing Qualcomm chips Monday, prompting the vendor to announce it will appeal and renew its request for a stay on the ban "I have decided to permit the limited exclusion order and cease and desist order ... to become final," said U.S. Trad...

Jack McClellan, the self-professed pedophile who has attracted international attention for his Web site with pictures of kids and tips for other pedophiles, is now barred from coming closer than 30 feet of any minor in California Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Melvin Sandvig on Friday placed a temporary restraining order against McClellan, who ad...

President Bush on Sunday afternoon signed into law a controversial measure giving U.S. government officials increased authority to listen in on international communications without first obtaining a warrant S. 1927, also known as the "Protect America Act," updates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by permitting warrantless surveillan...

Microsoft is launching a pilot program to test a free, advertising-funded version of Microsoft Works, the company confirmed Friday Dubbed "Microsoft Works SE 9," the ad-supported version of the entry-level software will be distributed preinstalled on computers manufactured by a select group of participating OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) s...

A federal grand jury in San Diego has indicted 18 people involved in an Internet pharmacy that took in US$126 million from the illegal sale of prescription drugs, Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California Karen Hewitt announced Thursday Among those charged in the 313-c...

American Airlines will begin offering high-speed, in-flight Internet access on select airplanes next year, the company announced Thursday Through an agreement with AirCell, the airline will provide on a test basis high-speed broadband connectivity on its Boeing 767-200 aircraft, which fly primarily transcontinental routes, the company said. Passeng...

After a special court made a secret ruling sometime in the last few months limiting the government's authority to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails, the Bush administration and Congressional Democrats are now at odds on how best to protect the privacy of Americans while maintaining national security Citing a heightened terrorist threat, Presiden...