Archive

We in IT love inflection points -- events that somehow amalgamate past events and/or indicate how and why the future will be significantly different. The world of personal computing is entering, if not an inflection point, then an inflection process. This is due to the confluence of two converging t...

A two-year FTC probe into Google could be coming to an end. The Federal Trade Commission may close its investigation into the search giant as early as this week, and it appears that Google will avoid a consent decree, according to reports. This would mean Google would not have to agree to any formal...

Google avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting close to $10 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company. Bermuda, along with a handful of other locales, is notorious for providing offshore solutions to multinationals eager to structure cash flow operations to thei...

Those delectable M&M's characters seen in commercials are making their way to the iPhone. An advergame app titled "M&M's Brand Chocolate Factory" recently became available on iTunes for $0.99. While many M&M's commercials involve the six characters in social situations trying to avoid be...

Those delectable M&M's characters seen in commercials are making their way to the iPhone. An advergame app titled "M&M's Brand Chocolate Factory" recently became available on iTunes for $0.99. While many M&M's commercials involve the six characters in social situations trying to avoid be...

AOL is shifting toward decentralization of its marketing efforts. The online company this week named Allie Savarino Kline as chief marketing officer of its Advertising.com unit. In the newly created position, she will have global oversight of Advertising.com and will handle marketing strategy for th...

Google has come up with a way to reduce the number of accidental clicks that occur when "fat fingers" meet the small screen. These unintentional clicks are the bane of mobile advertising, causing advertisers, publishers and consumers grief. Google's new confirmed click feature kicks in when a user t...

SolarCity enjoyed a much better IPO than some of its green industry peers have had in recent months. Its stock rose 47 percent on Thursday, netting about $92 million for the day. SolarCity opened at $8, skyrocketed to about $15, and closed at $11.79 per share. The stock continued to perform well on ...

SaaS has become an accepted alternative to traditional on-premises enterprise applications, and a broader set of cloud services is becoming a viable option for businesses seeking more flexible, economical computing capabilities. Adoption of these services is accelerating rapidly, because they are de...

Sprint Nextel has made a $2.1 billion offer for the shares of Clearwire that it doesn't already own, according to a regulatory filing. The news comes after rumors surfaced earlier this week that the company was in talks with Intel and Comcast to buy out their stakes. The offer, which works out to $2...

RIM is getting some positive government attention for the yet-to-be-released BlackBerry 10 platform. Just months after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it would abandon its longstanding use of the BlackBerry system and give its employees iPhones instead, the agency has decided to g...

The Federal Communications Commission approved a proposal from the Dish Network that would allow it to convert spectrum currently allocated for satellite service into airwaves that could support a land-based wireless network. Dish did not lay out specific plans for its next step with the spectrum, s...

Whether you want to or not, you are a player in the industry analyst game. The reason is simple. Industry analysts, for better or for worse, are very influential. If you do a good job, you can positively influence their opinions. If you don't -- or if you are not playing -- then you often suffer. Ei...

Microsoft is putting its Surface RT tablet on more shelves just in time for the holiday season. The recently released tablet will be available at more retail outlets, including Staples and Microsoft's seasonal stores, in a matter of days. The company had been planning to increase Surface retail avai...

Apple may get more mindshare from consumers, but Samsung currently holds the lead when it comes to market share. The connected device market, which includes PCs, tablets and smartphones, grew 27.1 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2012. In that time Samsung maintained the top position w...