Archive

The board was re-elected, company executives were questioned about corporate strategy, a proposal to create a sustainability committee was killed. All in all, it was business as usual at Microsoft's annual shareholders' meeting Tuesday, except for some uncomfortable talk -- uncomfortable from Micros...

Turkey hotlines revolutionized the way home cooks dealt with kitchen emergencies during Thanksgiving. Now, hotlines are being joined by social media, videos, apps and other twenty-first century ways of solving bird problems. The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line women -- and they are all women -- have bee...

Tech heavyweights such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Zynga are lining up in opposition to a copyright enforcement bill that will be the subject of a hearing in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday: the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The companies sent a letter to key me...

Google is adding 24/7 phone support for its Google Apps for Business product line -- the first time since the apps launched in 2007. It is a major step forward for Google, which has been pushing to place these apps on the desktop alongside -- or even, hopefully, in place of -- Microsoft's productivi...

For U.S.-based retailers, running a successful global e-commerce business takes the right balance of strong local marketing and effective operations. While it is essential that retailers cater to local customer experience expectations, it is also critically important to abide by local laws and regu...

Microsoft's Windows Phone platform is gaining more interest from application developers. In fact, it's captured more developer mindshare than Research In Motion's older and more widespread BlackBerry platform, according to a recent study. The third-quarter 2011 results of a survey by Appcelerator an...

The industry roils with definitions and explanations of cloud. These definitions come from product vendors cloud-washing their products, cloud providers positioning their cloud infrastructure, IT teams attempting to cloud-paint their efforts in virtualization, and even from consultants writing artic...

Citigroup has reached an agreement to sell its music label, EMI Group, in two parts for a total of $4.1 billion. Universal Music Group has announced it is buying EMI's recorded music division for $1.9 billion. Sony/ATV, according to news reports, has nabbed -- or is poised to nab shortly -- EMI's pu...

Google has acquired a startup called Apture that provides a new type of search functionality beneficial to publishers -- or anyone, that is, who hates to see Web users leave a page's content to search out related information. Apture has developed technology that displays links to related information...

Oracle's recent acquisition of RightNow raises a question: Can multiple cloud companies be merged together to form a tightly coupled suite of solutions like those which were promised but never delivered during the client-server era? On the face of things, it would appear that merging cloud companies...

The Senate defeated a Republican bid to overturn Net neutrality rules on Thursday, thus paving the way for the regulations to take effect on Nov. 20. In a 52-to-46 vote along party lines, senators rejected S.J. Res. 6, the resolution proposed earlier this year by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison under the ...

Amazon has purchased Yap, a voice recognition startup, according to an SEC filing. The move added to speculation that Amazon is preparing a voice-command service similar to Apple's Siri or Google Android's Voice Actions. The transaction was apparently completed in September, but a public statement h...

Seven members of a massive alleged Internet fraud ring have been charged by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The ring infected more than 4 million computers worldwide with malware and rerouted online searches fraudulently to websites and ads, which then paid the ring's member...

Rumblefish and APM Music are teaming up to offer an online catalog of popular music and soundtracks to consumers looking to legally add sound to personal video content such as YouTube videos, slideshows or presentations. The partnership, announced Thursday, combines Rumblefish's experience with soci...

Several cable companies and the U.S. FCC have launched a program that will assist low-income families in getting access to broadband and low-cost computers. The initiative is part of the FCC's push to increase broadband adoption across the U.S. This particular program, in which such companies as Com...