High-Speed Households in 2002 (eMarketer, December 23rd)
The FCC reports that there were 14 million residence and small business broadband lines in the US as of June 2002, rising by roughly 3 million from the end of 2001. eMarketer's estimate of 16.8 million broadband households this year is right in line with the FCC findings.

I'd Like to Teach the World to SMS (eMarketer, December 19th)
Telephia and Harris report that 35% of US cellphone owners, age 18 to 24, are SMS users, while Amárach says 50% of Irish cellphone owners, age 12 to 14, use text messages primarily to communicate with friends.

The World According to Google (MSNBC, December 16th)
What if you had a magic tool that let you find out almost anything in less than a second? Millions of people already have it - and it's changing the way we live.

Product Review: ViewSonic Pocket PC V35 (CNET, December 16th)
Long known for its monitors, ViewSonic has taken the plunge into the handheld market with its new Pocket PC, the V35. Small and light, the V35 has equal parts of fast performance and affordable price. Is this the Pocket PC that can do it all? Find out in CNET's review.

Net Filters: Solution or Censorship? (eMarketer, December 13th)
Sure, 91% of porn sites are blocked by the most restrictive net filter settings - reports the Kaiser Foundation - but so are 24% of health websites. What could this mean for young people online?

Global Broadband Growth in Q3 (eMarketer, December 12th)
Both the number of DSL lines and the number of cable modem shipments worldwide grew by nearly 20% in Q3, according to Point-Topic and Gartner.

Darpa Puts Thought Into Cognitive Computing (EE Times, December 10th)
A program that may push cognitive technology to a new level is being launched by the Department of Defense. The DOD, a longtime supporter and user of artificial-intelligence systems, aims to build what it is calling an "enduring personalized cognitive assistant," or Epca.

Gateway to Offer Grid Computing Service (InfoWorld.com, December 10th)
Gateway has found a use for the showroom PCs occupying space in its stores around the U.S. beyond checking out the latest version of the game Unreal Tournament. The company will offer a grid computing service to businesses interested in processing computing jobs that would ordinarily require the power of an expensive supercomputer.

AMD Details its Future Chips (internet.com, December 10th)
Advanced Micro Devices Monday revealed a little-known fact about the company - its R&D designers are into heavy metal. While its archrival Intel claims silicon will continue to be the dominant catalyst for chips, AMD said it is looking at alternatives to polysilicon, such as nickel, as a way to create better transistors and memory in computers.

Eden Offers Taste of Rural Broadband (BBC News, December 10th)
BBC News Online looks at how one woman is trying to turn the promise of fast internet access into reality in a rural area of northwest England.

New Plan for Spammers: Charge 'Em (Wired News, December 10th)
Imagine if you could charge people for wasting your time. An IBM researcher has hatched a plan to make it possible. In "Selling interrupt rights: A way to control unwanted e-mail and telephone calls," a paper published last week in IBM's Systems Journal, Scott Fahlman argues that spammers should be charged each time they trespass your inbox, and he proposes a system that could bring such a notion to reality. Meanwhile, an innovative anti-spam plan that was announced on Net-Ads several months ago which avoids the holes present in spam-banning legislation by turning spam into a copyright-infringement case is continuing to gain traction, as this article demonstrates.

Replay It Again, Sam (Salon.com, December 9th)
Personal video recorders already have Hollywood running scared. Now Microsoft is pushing a new computer that will make trading TV shows as easy as using... Napster.

Intel Moves Closer to Mobile Phones with Manitoba (IDG.net, December 9th)
Intel Corp. wants to bring its advanced chip-making technologies into the fast-growing market for mobile phones and PDAs, building on the company's core strength in desktop processors.

Study Debunks E-mail Overload Myth (ElectricNews.net, December 9th)
Contrary to the perception that workers are flooded with e-mail, most workers are happy with their e-mail levels and believe that it helps them in their work. eMarketer has also taken a look at the study, while delving constructively into what the data actually says, within this article.

Review: Dude, You're Getting a So-So Handheld (TechNews.com, December 8th)
Dell didn't get big enough to kick around all the other computer manufacturers by blithely jumping on every new trend. So for it to ship its first handheld organizer must mean something.

TabletPC Seen Helping eBook Adoption (internet.com, December 6th)
Could the new TabletPC be the form factor that finally ushers in wider acceptance of e-books?

XML Body Creates Global E-Gov Forum (vnunet.com, December 6th)
A global extensible markup language standards body has set up a committee to agree standards for e-government - but analysts have expressed doubts that it will deliver.

Saving Your Bits for Posterity (Wired News, December 6th)
Someday, long after you're dead, your descendents will rummage through the minutiae of your life, eavesdropping on long-ago phone conversations, reading private e-mail exchanges and watching the video highlights of your existence. That's the idea behind MyLifeBits, a new Microsoft research project that aims to record the essence of a person's life on computer disks: every photograph snapped, home movie filmed, Web page browsed, e-mail scribbled, phone call made or bill paid.

Paying and Viewing Bills Online (eMarketer, December 5th)
This year, 13% of US consumers are paying bills online and 20% are viewing bills online - up from just 2% and 1%, respectively, in 1998, reports TowerGroup. Meanwhile, Pew reports that 79% of the 37 million people banking online in the US say they switched to online banking because it's convenient. For more on that, see this additional article from eMarketer.

Screenage Wasteland? (Salon.com, December 5th)
When video games look as good as action films, commercials are more fun than cartoons, and everything screams "Buy!" it's easy to lose your bearings.

Intel, IBM Team With AT&T To Push Nationwide Wi-Fi (internet.com, December 5th)
AT&T, Intel and IBM, with investment partners Apax Partners and 3i, are pulling together a new company which will offer nationwide wholesale, broadband, wireless Internet access. More on this may be found at The Seattle Times.

Internet Speed Zone Ahead (NewsFactor, December 5th)
Though voice over IP and video may drive future speed increases, the real drain on future network bandwidth will be HDTV, which requires about 19 Mbps.

SMS, Ten Years Later (InstantMessagingPlanet, December 5th)
A decade after its inauguration, 'texting' has achieved burgeoning acceptance, but now faces new challenges.

Verisign Secures Content Delivery (InfoWorld.com, December 5th)
Companies selling software and antivirus products will soon be able to secure products they distribute to customers online, according to an announcement Thursday by digital authentication company VeriSign.

China Blocks News Not Porn Online (BBC News, December 4th)
Chinese internet surfers have almost unfettered access to pornography, but news, health and education sites are routinely blocked, US researchers have found.

The Best, the Worst, and the Ugliest: 2002 (HardwareCentral, December 4th)
Duck and cover -- Hardware Central's annual look at the PC industry's winners, losers, best products, and biggest letdowns is back. This year's honorees and/or targets range from Hyper-Threading and Hammer to Tablet PCs and Apple imitators, and from irresistible consumer gadgets to ill-equipped consumer desktops.

Energy Requirements May Stall Quantum Computers (Nanoelectronics Planet, December 4th)
The energy required to create an accurate quantum computer may limit the ability of scientists to make such devices small, fast, inexpensive and efficient, according to a University of Arkansas researcher.

Wi-Fi on the Verge of Mass Market Impact (internet.com, December 4th)
A standards group Tuesday said the wireless technology known as 802.11 or Wi-Fi should completely enter the mainstream by 2004 and has the potential to equal the sales of the most successful name brand consumer goods.

Server Computing and the Network Edge (ServerWatch, December 4th)
Edge computing involves pushing data and computing power away from a centralized point to the logical extremes of a network. Find out why this new topology is growing in popularity and what changes may be in store for some servers.

ADSL, the Next Generation (ISP Planet, December 4th)
ADSL2 is inching closing to being a working reality. Clearly, the new standard offers some nice improvements to the design and development of ADSL equipment. But will it challenge VDSL services?

Tablet PC Laptops (RedHerring, December 4th)
Pen computing is great - as long as you have a keyboard.

Bahrain Big on the Net (CyberAtlas, December 4th)
More than 22 percent of the small Middle Eastern nation's 650,000 citizens are connected, with projections of another 10 percent by 2005.

Internet Abuse Drains Time and Money (CyberAtlas, December 3rd)
Fun, games, shopping, and porn are costing American corporations billions in lost productivity.

E-Government: Are You Safe? (eMarketer, December 2nd)
The ‘War on Terror’ may be scaring away internet users from government websites. Most citizens around the world perceive their country's online hubs as unsafe.

Total Info System Totally Touchy (Wired News, December 2nd)
A plan to develop a pervasive database containing information concerning all manner of transactions conducted by American citizens and residents may have won the support of Washington, but it's having a tough time winning over the tech-set. The Information Awareness Office, which won a green light through the approval of the Homeland Security Act, has been rejected by all manner of information systems and data management professionals who see the system as excessively invasive and fatally flawed beyond the potential offered on the upside. As such, many said techies have flat-out refused to be assosiated with the system. Further discussion concerning the Total Information Awareness may be found on Geek/Talk.

IBM Takes On Demand Push to Mobile Apps (internet.com, December 2nd)
IBM drove its endeavor to bundle its autonomic and on-demand computing forays across its many divisions forward Monday when it unveiled infrastructure software that makes advanced computing away from the PC possible.

IBM to 'Verticalize' Management Dashboards (InfoWorld.com, December 2nd)
Building off technology gained in its acquisition of Holosofx, IBM next year will begin customizing a set of management consoles that let users in vertical industries monitor business processes pertinent to them.

Hollywood, Tech Become Wary Partners Against Piracy (The Seattle Times, December 2nd)
Technology that allows consumers to copy and pass around music, videos and other forms of content has created a cultural phenomenon and given the entertainment industry major heartburn. Record labels and other copyright holders have tried to beat piracy in the courts, with limited success. Now, they're attempting to team up with technology heads to find a mutual solution.

What Will AOL And MSN Tell Uncle Sam? (Forbes.com, December 2nd)
When he signed the Homeland Security bill on Monday, President George W. Bush effectively drafted corporate America to serve in the war against terrorism - with Internet service providers among those on the front line.

Internet Hate-Speech Ban Called 'Chilling' (PC World, December 2nd)
As European leaders move to ban Internet hate speech and seek support from the United States, civil liberties groups charge that the proposal would violate free-speech rights.

Napster Meets 7-Eleven (australia.internet.com, December 2nd)
An Adelaide-based company has plans to develop a franchise system where CD burning kiosks would be installed in a range of venues including convenience stores. But Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) has other ideas. This month, the anti-piracy watchdog placed on injunction on rollout of the machines.

Xerox Hopes Small Technology Copies Innovations of the Past (Nanotech Planet, December 2nd)
Xerox has a long history of ground-breaking technological innovation, and its next generation of goodies could come courtesy of nanotechnology and MEMS.