Archive

Apple and Comcast reportedly are discussing a streaming-TV service that will go through an Apple set-top box. Apple apparently wants the service to be treated as a managed service, meaning it will run on cabling separate from that used for public Internet access. "I seriously doubt Comcast will agre...

Pandora last week said it would increase its monthly charge for new users who sign on to its ad-free service by US$1 a month. Starting in May, the price for users who want to pay month by month will be $4.99. Existing Pandora One monthly subscribers will not experience a price increase at this time ...

Although they previously came to an arrangement regarding stronger broadband service delivery, Netflix and Comcast last week sparred over the issue of Net neutrality in a public forum. Net neutrality -- or "open Internet" -- is the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally by Inter...

Alibaba is putting some skin in the mobile-messaging game with a $215 million investment in Tango. Mobile messaging apps are hot. Facebook recently scooped up WhatsApp for $19 billion, and Japanese e-commerce titan Rakuten recently acquired Viber for $900 million. Tango is a cross-platform app -- An...

IBM on Thursday launched a set of software and consulting services to help fight fraud and financial crime. The so-called smarter counterfraud initiative draws from more than 500 fraud consulting experts, 290 fraud-related research patents, and the $24 billion IBM has invested in its Big Data and an...

Microsoft's tip of a news event next week triggered an avalanche of prophecy that the long-awaited version of Office for the iPad was about to be released. Microsoft is billing the event in San Francisco on March 27 as a "briefing and news focused on the intersection of cloud and mobile computing." ...

There has been quite a bit of media speculation on the loss of Malaysia Flight 370. However, many important questions simply are not being answered yet. One that many people are wondering about is this: Why didn't anyone on board that plane call or text message anyone? During the last week I have ap...

The U.S. government will be a prime target for mobile information technology vendors offering a variety of devices, associated telecom services, and mobile management assistance over the next several years. By 2017, annual federal spending on a wide range of mobile IT capabilities could approach $10...

Google and Viacom have settled a long-running copyright suit, after a federal judge twice threw out the case. "Google and Viacom today jointly announced the resolution of the Viacom vs. YouTube copyright litigation," the companies said in a brief joint statement. "This settlement reflects the growin...

Facing unrelenting pressure to come up with a new killer device, along with strong competition from Android smartphones, Apple on Tuesday unveiled lower-cost versions of its iPhone 5c and 9.7-inch iPad. The company debuted an 8-GB version of the 5c in Europe, and it revived the iPad 4, calling it th...

Alibaba, which controls 80 percent of the e-commerce in China, is going public -- but not in its native land. Alibaba Group on Sunday announced its decision to begin the process of an initial public offering in the United States, saying the move would make it a more global company and enhance its tr...

In a move that has added fuel to the debate over the treatment of women in tech, Julie Ann Horvath, a developer at GitHub, has stormed out of her job, accusing the company of ignoring harassment in the workplace. One of the company's three cofounders and his wife had persistently intimidated her, an...

It appears Amazon is ready to take its brand of gaming to television screens, based on leaked photos of a game controller the company purportedly is working on. The images, which blogger Dave Zatz on Friday reported finding on the website of a Brazilian regulatory authority, show a controller with t...

New compliance guidelines went into effect earlier this year. While e-commerce organizations have until their 2015 audit to transition, the new controls are demanding enough operational and technical changes that smart businesses already have started preparing. If you're wondering where to get start...

Although I've been a proponent of the business benefits of migrating to the "cloud" since before the term was popularized by today's market leaders, I have to admit that the cloud industry is doing a great job of making it increasingly difficult for CIOs and other corporate decision makers to feel c...