Articles by Meryl K. Evans

The newest hot property in the wireless communications race is the "electronic leash." Employees often joke that their offices keep them on a leash by providing BlackBerries, cell phones and laptops for anytime, anywhere communication Now the concept has spread to parenting: Parents have several options for keeping an electronic eye on their young ...

As the trend toward outsourcing grows, companies are gradually turning to "smartsourcing" to make the practice work for optimum effect "When a company is smartsourcing, it is leveraging its strengths and managing its 'weaknesses' -- so to speak -- through strategic partnering," said Carl Frappaolo, Delphi Group executive vice president. Outsourcin...

MySpace claimed almost 5 million registered users in 2005, and that number has grown to exceed 70 million today. Though currently the most popular, MySpace is only one of a number ofsocial networking sites online, and their attractiveness to teens and pre-teens has spawned worry over a growing Internet menace One in five kids ages 10 to 17 have rec...

Buyers winning name brand merchandise on an auction site for a great price may not get the real deal -- and that can be a big deal in terms of costs to the companies, the auction sites and the duped consumers Anyone buying products with brand names like Microsoft, Gucci, Nike, Canon, Nokia, Louis Vuitton, Gameboy and Disney -- to name just a few --...

Google has released Google SketchUp, a 3D modeling program that it acquired last month with the purchase of @Last Software. The tool lets users design and build three-dimensional models of a dream home, a car, a skyscraper -- and just about anything else that might come to mind Google SketchUp is a free application that targets hobbyists. Based on ...

Microsoft has expanded its Genuine Software Initiative (GSI), a pilot program to notify users of non-genuine Windows operating systems (OSes) that their copies of the software are illegal The software giant is using the "Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notifications" tool -- a virtual equivalent of the exploding dye that banks use to mark stolen cu...

The New York Department of Education took Toquir Choudhri to the City's Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, which presides over disciplinary cases from almost every city agency Choudhri, an employee for 14 years, had disobeyed a supervisor's order to stop surfing on the Internet, and Administrative Law Judge John Spooner ruled that the su...

The human tongue could lead to the creation of the super soldier of the future Scientists at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition have found a way to use the tongue to give soldiers extrasensory abilities. A device known as "Brain Port" provides users with owl-like 360-degree vision at night. It gives Navy SEALs whale-like sonar ca...

Meet Mapusaurus roseae, the largest carnivore on Earth recorded to date. Paleontologists working in the Patagonian wilderness in Argentina who found the remains of the 41-foot long and 15,000-pound dinosaur species said it roamed Earth 100 million years ago and was far bigger than Tyrannosaurus rex "This is the fourth species of carnivorous dinosau...

Nintendo this week released an American version of Japan's No. 1 brain training game, "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day," for the Nintendo DS Japanese neurologist Ryuta Kawashima, who maintains that regularly doing easy and fast-paced mental activities can keep brains young, strong and sharp, worked with Nintendo to create the brain exe...

NASA won't release its 70-page report on why the DART (Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology) spacecraft didn't complete its mission last year because of its sensitive content, the agency said "The official DART Mishap Investigation Report will not be publicly released because it contains information that is protected by U.S. Internati...

People who have had "near-death experiences" (NDEs) often report seeing a light at the end of a dark tunnel. TV shows, movies and books drill this crossing-over concept into viewers' minds. However, a study published in Neurology, a scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology, finds that these events have a biological explanation A near...

Last November, a European probe took off on a 250-million mile trip to visit Earth's nearest neighbor, Venus. The European Space Agency (ESA) Venus Express team is now standing by as it waits for the probe to touch down tomorrow The mission's first, and most important, objective is the Venus Orbit Insertion (VOI) maneuver. This task involves a seri...

Archaeologists have learned that a pre-Hispanic pyramid recently found in a low-income, high-crime area about 30 miles north of Mexico City is 1,500 years old. They've been digging on the Iztapalapa hillside, known as the Hill of the Star, which is used for the annual re-enactment of Christ's crucifixion prior to Easter The people who constructed t...

Based on interviews with 40,000 American residents, the Department of Justice (DoJ) has reported that 3.6 million -- or about 3 out of every 100 -- households were victimized by perpetrators of identity theft between July and December 2004. The numbers differ from earlier research findings and suggest that the incidence of identity theft might be lower than what has been reported in the past...

IBM and 3Com have announced an agreement to complement 3Com's VCX IP telephony with System i, IBM's all-in-one mid-market computing platform. The partnership allows businesses with 100 to 2,000 users to have an integrated VoIP and systems solution complete with hardware, software, storage and security The IP telephony system can run on a single Lin...

Microsoft has announced the repackaging of four hosted solutions from FrontBridge Technologies, a company that it bought in August 2005, as well as a new licensing model and road map for Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services (EHS) The rebranding comes as no surprise, said Joe Wilcox, senior analyst with JupiterResearch. Microsoft "wants to protect its...