Dennis O Reilly

It sounds too good to be true: free word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation programs that are compatible with their Microsoft Office counterparts and that work in a browser. That's the promise of ThinkFree, a Web service that offers all this, and more.

Several privacy and civil-liberties organizations are mounting a legal challenge to prevent VoIP and other Internet-based communications from being subject to taps from law-enforcement agencies. n

More than half of all Web site visitors contribute to them as much as they take away, whether by providing personal information, taking surveys, or offering feedback in some other way, according to a study cited by Web 2.0 Conference chair John Battelle.

If your work involves using Microsoft Outlook, you probably know that the savvier it becomes, the more productive you can be. Avidian Technologies LLC's US$150 Prophet 2004 can help you get there, by bringing customer relationship management (CRM) techniques to Microsoft Corp.'s ubiquitous e-mail, scheduling, and contact-management app.

Everyone knows the Web boom has gone bust. Everyone except Marc Andreessen, creator of Mosaic, the first graphical Web browser.

Some online search engines are yielding results that are less than you expect. The most prominent findings may surface not because they're the best fit, but because the subjects wrote the biggest checks to the search engine providers, industry participants acknowledge.

Some Internet cookie-management programs nab as soon as a Web site tries to place them on your hard drive. The cost of that total-control approach, however, is a seemingly endless stream of pop-up alert windows.

Video conversion as easy as u-s-b