Small Business Computing Staff

Online shopping hasn’t put brick and mortar stores out of business yet. But ecommerce is growing, and bringing with it some fundamental changes in consumer behavior. One need only look at the jammed parking lots of malls this holiday season to know that the Web has not put brick and mortar stores out of business. […]

Probably you don’t need anyone to tell you this, but the email security service provider MessageLabs confirms it anyway: email-borne computer viruses are on the rise, as is spam. The company’s annual report on email security threats shows that one in every 212 emails that it monitored in the last year contained a computer virus. […]

Linksys, a manufacturer of broadband, wireless and networking hardware for workgroup, small business and home environments, announced the immediate availability of its EtherFast Instant GigaDrive (EFG80), a network-attached storage (NAS) device that provides file and printer sharing for small office/home office (SOHO) network users. Priced at $549, the “plug-and-play” appliance offers users 80 billion bytes […]

By Pamela Parker Whenever new technologies come to the fore, there’s a natural temptation to jump right in because “everybody’s doing it.” At the recent ClickZ E-Mail Strategies conference in San Francisco, the latest craze was for email with dynamically generated content. Given the dramatic proliferation of spam, it stands to reason marketers would be […]

By Jeanne Jennings One of the most important decisions you’ll ever have to make in email marketing is which company to choose for delivery. Though I’m not going to talk about individual vendors (many, many good ones are out there), I am going to give you some things to consider, questions to ask, and online […]

by Eric Grevstead Last year, Mazda made a pitch to computer-savvy drivers by introducing a car named MP3. Today, BMW could do the same by calling its remodeled British compact not the Mini, but the Small Form Factor. Space-saving, downsized desktops, especially paired with skinny LCD monitors, are catching on in both corporate and home […]

By Robyn Greenspan The high unemployment rate – 5.7 percent for October 2002 in the United States – hasn’t deterred workers from goofing off on the job. Data from Websense Inc. indicates that Internet misuse costs American corporations more than $85 billion annually in lost productivity – an increase of 35 percent since the year […]

By Zachary Rodgers The holiday shopping season is officially out of the starting blocks, and the online advertising and marketing outlook is much improved over last year. Several studies released in November foretold a substantial increase in online spending this season, with merchants experiencing increases of 25 percent or greater during the first two weeks […]

By David Haskin New employees at Hoffman Construction in Portland, Ore., receive a written policy that limits their personal use of the Internet during work hours. The policy says, among other things, that the company can monitor workers’ activities. “They have to sign the policy before they can get access,” said Brian Muir, the company’s […]

Wayne N. Kawamoto Managing Editor, www.smallbusinesscomputing.com Strydent Software announced the availability of InkSaver version 1.2, an upgraded version of the company’s software that’s designed to help consumers and small businesses save money on inkjet printing. InkSaver 1.2 supports an additional 48 printers, including the Epson Stylus Photo series, popular multi-function printer/scanner/copiers, and new inkjets just […]

By Barry Shufeld Once an organization decides to locate all or part of its IT operations offsite in a colocation processing center, choosing which facility best meets its requirements requires considerable analysis. In-house versus outsourcing IT operations and disaster recovery are two hot issues facing CIOs today. Both involve finding the proper balance among control, […]

By Kathleen Goodwin I’ve been in the publishing business a long time, including a stint as an associate publisher for PC Magazine and PC Week. Ever since I started this column, I’ve been stockpiling “think like a publisher” tidbits. Tidbit No. 1: Why Publish an E-Newsletter, Anyway? You may not think of yourself as a […]