Archive

In the years since thin client computing arrived on the IT scene, it has been pronounced dead, only to arise again more often than Jason in the "Friday the 13th" film franchise. That's not due to any quality of its underlying architecture. In fact, thin client engineering is often elegant in the ext...

Sony will lay off 10,000 workers, or about 6 percent of its global workforce, as part of an overall corporate restructuring plan, according to a report. The cutbacks are set to take place over the next two fiscal years. It's unclear when the Japanese company will start slashing jobs or which divisio...

Microsoft has agreed to buy more than 800 patents from AOL for over $1 billion. The deal gives AOL a cross-license to the patents it's selling to Microsoft, a source close to Microsoft confirmed. Further, Microsoft will get a non-exclusive license for the remaining 300+ patents and patent applicatio...

Twitter has taken its battle against spammers to the courtroom. It's sued groups it says are responsible for dumping fast numbers of junk tweets into its network. The suit goes after five of what Twitter called the network's "most aggressive tool providers and spammers." Defendants include the maker...

Riding the wave of technology change these days is a bit like surfing. The ocean and waves often change much faster than our ability to stay out in front of the transformation. Now another current is approaching the wireless world as mobile commerce curls to challenge conventional e-commerce. This a...

Google CEO Larry Page issued a public dispatch on the state of the company Thursday, enthusiastically promoting the Android platform and next-generation search techniques. Page took over as CEO of the company about a year ago. His open letter Thursday, a "2012 Update From the CEO," revealed few surp...

If your friendly sock puppet is made of recyclable materials, use it now to write a check! The Internet boom is back, but in an interesting new-millennium twist, it is followed closely by the clean technology sector. Earlier this year, the National Venture Capital Association reported that Internet...

U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has upheld a permanent injunction on a Colorado law that would have required out-of-state online retailers to report their in-state customers' purchases to Colorado tax authorities and notify those customers of the resulting sales tax owed to the state. The repor...

Facebook accused Yahoo of violating 10 of its patents Tuesday, a response to a similar suit Yahoo filed just under a month ago. The two Internet competitors are embroiled in a patent duel that started last month, when Yahoo sued Facebook for 10 counts of patent infringement. The litigation came at a...

Rumors that Yahoo was prepping for a huge round of layoffs have turned out to be true. On Wednesday, the company announced it would lay off 2,000 employees under a plan designed to prepare it for the future. Scott Thompson, the company's recently appointed CEO, said Yahoo's larger goal was to focus ...

Books and e-books are becoming the No. 1 sales and marketing tool for many small and mid-sized businesses. Large companies have successfully used them for years, but they were much more expensive and took much longer to produce. Now print on demand and e-books are transforming the space, allowing ev...

Amazon is testing a service that will let tablet users purchase items through mobile applications. It is expected to enhance the Kindle Fire tablet's de facto role as a shopping conduit for its users. It already is second nature for users to download books and movies from Amazon's content library. W...

Research In Motion has been accused of infringing six patents owned by Dutch semiconductor company NXP. NXP claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Florida that the BlackBerry maker has infringed on patents pertaining to data transmission, GPS receivers on mobile phones, and circuit desig...

The European Commission has opened two formal investigations of Motorola in response to grievances Apple and Microsoft filed against the company. The licensing fees Motorola charges for patented technologies used in products like the iPhone and Xbox are set unfairly high, the companies have alleged....

Groupon's announcement last week that it was revising its financial results for the fourth quarter has apparently caught the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency is taking a look at Groupon's financials. This development caps a run of bad news for the company over the...