Stories about: MindSpring

Tens of thousands of e-mails pass through the offices of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group Inc. every month.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Inc. has spent between US$3 million and $3.5 million over the past three years on a storage-area network (SAN) that includes 40TB of storage.

The PC has maintained a dominant position on the desktop and achieved a level of nonsubstitutable infrastructure, making it difficult, if not impossible, to replace. Wintel systems benefit from the image of being the safe choice in many market sectors, with the result being a powerful positive feedback loop. Despite this, it's inevitable that the PC will be replaced, and IT departments need to start thinking about what might come tomorrow. To understand the shift that will occur, understand that nearly all technology shifts take place over time and go through the following five phases:

Windows XP is a major release that will finally unify the Microsoft Windows family under a single core of stable technologies first introduced with Windows NT.

Spam-filtering software from America Online may have overstepped its bounds and blocked e-mail from customers of Internet service provider EarthLink. for more than a week, resulting in potentially more than 1 million messages that were undelivered and lost for good.

An unpatched, buggy version of open-source e-commerce software, combined with a misconfigured hosting server, exposed password files earlier this month for approximately 100 domains hosted by Atlanta-based EarthLink Inc.

Few can deny that the ultimate dream of the application service providers (ASPs) is enticing: Imagine users accessing any of their applications and data whenever, wherever. At the same time, one of the most tedious tasks facing any IT department--installing and supporting applications and managing users' data--disappears. Eager to test this promise, some companies have already started using ASPs in areas such as customer relationship management and supply-chain management. Now a handful of developers have their sights set on applying the ASP model to personal productivity tools--word processors, spreadsheets, presentation packages and the like.

When the CEO of the giant 7-Eleven Inc. convenience store chain recently began using e-mail for high-level, strategic business negotiations with external parties, he was worried about security. His IT staff was directed to find a way to protect the mail from hijackers as it leaves the safe confines of the LAN to travel the treacherous frontier of the Internet.

As agencies embrace electronic government and look to deliver more of their services online, the role of the lowly help desk might easily be overlooked. But it promises to be an increasingly important focus for government's move to the Internet.

In some ways, disparities in the computer workstation market have disappeared. Improvements in processor and graphics technology have allowed systems based on Intel Corp. microprocessors to close the performance gap on their reduced instruction-set computing (RISC)-based Unix cousins.

BOSTON (07/17/2000) - AT&T Wireless Services Inc. will add America Online Inc. e-mail and content to its wireless Web services, the companies announced Monday.