Archive

A recent proposal in the U.S. Senate to curb the impact of electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency could enhance privacy for citizens and benefit businesses as well. However, major information technology companies that help the government collect telecom and Internet data s...

Amazon has introduced Amazon Local Register to the mobile payment market, taking on such companies as Square and Paypal Here. The product is a combination of a secure card reader, which sells for $10, and a free mobile app. Together, they offer a platform that allows businesses to accept credit and ...

Yahoo and Google last week announced they'd be teaming up to secure their Web mail systems with encryption by the end of next year. "Our goal is to make end-to-end encryption fully available in 2015," Yahoo Vice President of Information Security Alex Stamos said at the Black Hat hackers' conference ...

California is poised to enact a consumer-friendly law requiring smartphone manufacturers to install "kill switches" -- that is, antitheft technology that would be activated by the carrier when a consumer alerts it that a device has been stolen or lost. The technology not only wipes the device of per...

There's a New Sprint in town. Last week the earth shook twice in Kansas City -- once when Sprint decided to end its pursuit of T-Mobile, and then again when it replaced CEO Dan Hesse with Marcelo Claure. What can we expect next? The first thing is this: Sprint is going to be a very different kind of...

Amazon, which has for some time been locked in a battle with publishing giant Hachette over the pricing of e-books, has broadened the battlefield to take on Disney. It has stopped taking preorders of Disney DVD and Blu-ray discs. Amazon earlier this year stopped taking preorders for Hachette books. ...

U.S. government agencies are struggling to manage the huge amount of data they generate or process, despite the goals of a program designed to operate thousands of data centers more efficiently. The idea behind the FDCCI was to save space, energy and IT costs by consolidating woefully underutilized ...

A rising tide of interest has sparked a series of competitive moves among the widening array of software and technology providers vying for a share of the rapidly expanding IoT market. The enormous promise has driven a growing number of large and small players to rebrand and reposition their product...

Some Barnes & Noble customers in Manhattan, West Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area will be able to get same-day delivery of their purchases through Google Shopping Express, according to media reports that surfaced Thursday. Barnes & Noble CEO Michael Huseby described the teamup as ...

Some Barnes & Noble customers in Manhattan, West Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area will be able to get same-day delivery of their purchases through Google Shopping Express, according to media reports that surfaced Thursday. Barnes & Noble CEO Michael Huseby described the teamup as ...

Google on Wednesday announced that it has begun factoring websites' use of HTTPS into its search rankings, resulting in more favorable results for those that use the security-minded protocol. "Over the past few months we've been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted c...

Google is hosting a conference in Sicily this week simply called the "Camp." This is a different kind of conference. It's not just about business. Attendees are from business, politics and entertainment -- they bring their families. I have been invited to attend many of these types of events over th...

Softbank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son on Tuesday announced sweeping changes for subsidiary Sprint. President and CEO Dan Hesse is being replaced by Marcelo Claure, founder and CEO of Softbank subsidiary Brightstar, effective Aug. 11. Also, Sprint has dropped plans to purchase T-Mobile. Hesse's repl...

BlackBerry -- the "sick man of mobile" -- is poised for better times. That was the sentiment expressed by CEO John Chen in an internal memo distributed to BlackBerry employees last week. BlackBerry has completed its restructuring and the workforce reductions that started three years ago have been co...

The U.S. Department of Transportation is drafting a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, that could restrict consumers' ability to talk on their cellphones during airplane flights. Following last year's Federal Communications Commission proposal to overturn decades-old rules barring in-flight cel...