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Ask just about any research company that tracks online spending about this holiday season and you will get bombarded with cheer: "good," "strong," "robust," and "surprisingly strong" are among the adjectives used to describe online shopping activity this month and last. The latest indicator is a rep...

Over the last 25 years, I have had a ball as a tech analyst following who is hot and who is not and what is next. There was plenty to follow in 2011. What about 2012? It may be even busier with winners and losers. At the end of every year, I look around the industry and try to call the winners and l...

It seems that every day a new crisis hits the news about our privacy, but not many news stories are as astonishing as the recent revelation by a 25-year-old researcher about the Carrier IQ software that is installed on most modern Android, BlackBerry and Nokia phones. Carrier IQ software collects m...

Sprint Nextel and C Spire have agreed to postpone their lawsuits against AT&T's troubled merger with T-Mobile. A federal judge approved motions filed jointly by the companies and AT&T on Tuesday. Sprint originally sued to block the merger in September.The deal has drawn attention from the De...

Sprint Nextel and C Spire have agreed to postpone their lawsuits against AT&T's troubled merger with T-Mobile. A federal judge approved motions filed jointly by the companies and AT&T on Tuesday. Sprint originally sued to block the merger in September.The deal has drawn attention from the De...

Best Buy's fiscal third-quarter profit fell 29 percent, surprising analysts and retail observers who had been expecting stronger results. For the quarter ended Nov. 26, the electronics retailer posted a profit of $154 million, or 42 cents a share. In the same period a year earlier, it reported a pro...

Stephanie Allen started making and freezing meals for her own family 16 years ago, developing a collection of recipes that worked especially well. The mother of two knew how important it was to plan and make meals ahead. That experience led Allen to cofound Dream Dinners, now a nationwide company th...

Jive Software has made its debut on the Nasdaq, following on the heels of other recent tech company IPOs such as Groupon, LinkedIn and Netflix. Jive, a maker of collaborative social media software for the enterprise, doesn't have the consumer orientation of those three, but it's apparently similar e...

Netflix shares began perking up Monday after a report from DealReporter suggested that Verizon is looking into acquiring the DVD and streaming service to kick-start a video offering of its own. News from Bloomberg on Tuesday morning further intensified the rumor, which arose less than week after Reu...

With mixed emotions, Rick Singer, CEO of GreatApps.com, recently bought his first .XXX domain name. He was happy that his small business had progressed to the point where its brand needed to be protected. At the same time, GreatApps is, as the name suggests, a software company, not an adult entertai...

One of the most significant workplace changes of the past decade has been the steady increase in telework and flexible work arrangements. In the past, the ability to work remotely from time to time might have just shown up on a "corporate perks" sheet handed to new employees. Today, telework is no l...

Intel has informed its shareholders that its fourth-quarter results will not match its earlier outlook. The reason: a global shortage of hard disk drives, due to flooding in Thailand earlier this year. Now the company expects fourth-quarter revenue to be approximately $13.7 billion, down from the pr...

LightSquared's signal may interfere with GPS devices, according to a leaked draft summary of a report on tests commissioned by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Results of tests conducted between Oct. 21 and Nov. 4 reportedly indicate that up to 75 percent of GPS units ...

A backlash is growing against an app designed to help consumers scope out products at local stores, compare them to similar goods on Amazon -- and then leave the stores empty-handed to make their actual purchases online. Critics of the app, called "Amazon Price Check," include brick-and-mortar retai...

The quick answer: It depends. The type of cloud services you select might be dictated by your IT budget, the core competencies of your IT staff, and your IT strategy and tactics -- meaning which applications you keep in-house, versus which ones you selectively outsource. To begin, let's look at the ...