Stories by Bruce Gain

Tell your boss: Play video games, work smarter

It's safe to say that employers generally frown on workers who play video games during work time. As common sense dictates, you're obviously not working when trying to win virtual gold by playing World of Warcraft or stealthily assassinating the enem...

Toshiba self-encrypting hard drive has promise

Toshiba has introduced a series of self-encrypting hard drives that come with what the company says is a unique self-diagnostic feature that blocks access to data if the drive doesn't recognize the host, in case it is lost or stolen.

Look out for the 256GB thumb drive and the 128GB tablet

How much money would you be willing to pay for a 128GB thumb drive or a 512GB solid-state hard disk? What about paying half the amount that you would have to spend today? Intel and Micron Technology say the scenario should become a reality next year.

Why you may not need Facebook to sell stuff

Facebook is often touted as a must-have tool for small businesses as a means to boost their brand awareness and to reach existing and potential customers. However, the social network does not necessarily translate into more sales if you are an e-tail...

What Microsoft's IE9 moves mean for you

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has created some ripples in the browser sector lately, which could have implications regardless of whether you are in the Microsoft Internet Explorer camp.

Can RIM's Cloud push recapture BlackBerry magic?

RIMs BlackBerry has been steadily losing share in the smart phone market, but RIM hopes it could use the cloud computing space to offer something new and exciting like it did when it came out with its then-revolutionary push e-mail service over a dec...

Salesforce Service Cloud 3 adds customer social networking

I was pleasantly surprised during an online presentation about Salesforce.com's Service Cloud 3. At first glance, it looks like a simple and powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool that takes advantage of social networking to help connec...

BlackBerry gets the gist for contacts apps

Over a decade ago, before becoming a mainstream phenomenon and about when "smartphone" first started to become a word, the BlackBerry was a novel device for those of us who were out of the office a lot but wanted to make it seem that we were at our d...

Why you shouldn't worry so much about IPv6

A critical juncture in history arrived this week as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigned the last IPv4 addresses to the five regions of the world's Regional Internet Registries.

AMD's Fusion Packs More Graphics Punch in Netbooks

Deciding how much graphics power is required when purchasing a PC has never been easy. Investing in a standalone graphics processor from AMD or Nvidia is more often than not overkill for many office applications. However, graphics processors integrat...