Stories by Paul McNamara

What online news looked like on 9/11

With Twitter, Facebook and YouTube yet to come, newspapers and TV sites played pivotal role.

Torvalds talks about his brand new blog

We tend to think that everybody who's anybody in the tech world has a blog, right? Well, Linus Torvalds didn't have a blog, at least not until dipping his toe into the waters with this one -- "Linus' Blog" -- which launched last Thursday.

Almost half of Google products -- including 4-year-old Gmail -- remain in beta: Why?

The question has been kicked around by the technology press for some time now: Why does Google keep products in beta for so long?

Fooling Google News is this easy

I did it yesterday. Not that I was trying, mind you -- honestly, I wasn't. I did, however, predict it would happen, so I'm going to take this opportunity to gloat about that.

Firewall pioneer wanted a 'super-secure' blogging service ... so he's built his own

Bill Cheswick -- best known for writing "Firewalls and Internet Security" in 1994 and his earlier work at Bell Labs -- doesn't want to let commercial blogging software within hacking distance of his hardened Web server. A self-described Apple fanboy, Cheswick does want to host his own blogs, however, one about his job as lead member of the technical staff at AT&T Research and another about personal stuff, "if I can tell the difference."

'I have a lost laptop horror story for you'

The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow: Russ Jones tells a tale of woe that isn't particularly dramatic -- or rare -- and yet it's exactly the kind of story that worries me enough to ignore my better judgment and buy identity-theft protection from my insurance provider.

Is Google News scapegoating technology to cover up its inherent flaw?

Well, the company is citing a technical problem as the reason that the Google News front page was an hour later than other online media outlets in reporting the death of NBC's Tim Russert.

The real sticking point with Microsoft/Yahoo!

Microsoft's desperate struggle to acquire all or part of Yahoo! has gotten hung up not on disagreement over a fair price for the latter's online advertising operations, sources say, but rather the value of Yahoo!'s iconic exclamation point.

Worst of the lot for two years running: PCConnection and PCMall

That's the uncomfortable verdict for these two Web outlets rendered by the recently released "ForeSee Results Top 100 Online Retail Satisfaction Index." PCMall and PCConnection not only bring up the rear among computer and electronics sites, they bring up the rear, period.