Archive

President Barack Obama emphasized the mutual benefits that come with a truly effective partnership between government and business in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last month. Following up with a practical initiative, the White House has directed federal agencies to do a much better job o...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has taken the first steps that could eventually rework -- perhaps significantly -- two programs that provide low-income residents with subsidies for their telephone service. How those subsidies and services might look when all is said and done is unclear. W...

With Apple revealing that the second generation of its popular tablet computer-- aka the iPad2 -- will be available for purchase next week, it's a good time to think about mobile devices in general: how they fit into our lives now, and how they may ultimately change our lives in the future. Of cours...

Word on the street about Twitter in recent weeks has pointed to a company looking for new dollars. The latest buzz: It wants to sell out to Facebook or Google; or JP Morgan is about to make a significant investment. Cofounder Biz Stone has been dispelling those rumors, but it's possible, of course, ...

A recent study that I just read shows that the startup success rate over a period of 10 years is about 30 percent. This obviously means that about 70 percent of startups are out of business after a 10-year period! There is no doubt that the failure rate of startups is stunning and, in my opinion, wi...

Through the late 1990s Motorola led. It missed the change from analog to digital, though, and over the last decade, Nokia grew to become the No. 1 cellular handset maker. During the last several years, the tide began turning again. Nokia tried just about everything it could think of, but still could...

Google removed a slew of apps containing malware from the Android Market on Tuesday. At least 21 of the tainted apps appear to have come from publisher called "Myournet," which copied apps developed by others and modified them to include a Trojan horse before re-uploading them. Before their removal,...

Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level almost from the start of the Obama presidency. The administration issued its strongest backing yet for cloud technology with last month's release of the "Federal Cloud Computing Strategy." Offici...

E-commerce is growing, but it's no longer on fire. Forrester Research released two new forecast reports on Monday. The reports project online retail in the U.S. and Europe will grow at a rate of 10 percent per year from 2010 to 2015. The report expects 2015 online retail to reach US$279 billion in t...

Despite the national effort to cut government spending, expenditures for information technology at the federal level will actually go up in fiscal 2012 compared with 2011. That's good news for vendors. Federal agencies will spend about $79.5 billion on information technology in fiscal 2012, which be...

Hundreds of thousands of Gmail users woke up Monday to find their emails had vanished and they had lost their contacts. Initial estimates put the number of people affected at between 150,000 and 500,000. Google's support forums are inundated with messages from angry users. The Internet giant indicat...

In the midst of the civil unrest in Egypt and throughout the Middle East, U.S. Senate-proposed legislation that has become known as the "Internet kill switch bill" was recently reintroduced. The controversial bill, first introduced by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn, i...

Microsoft's search engine, Bing, added a Facebook integration feature on Thursday that will let searchers see which results their Facebook friends have liked. After users connect Bing with their Facebook account, pictures of friends will appear below any relevant results generated in a search. They ...

Numerous sites supporting some form of mobile photo sharing have popped up over the past few months, ushering in the next big social media trend. While the press coverage of these sites generally has been positive, they also have been subject to a fair amount of criticism in online forums. The commo...

Google has released a plug-in that connects Microsoft Office with Google Docs. Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office became available for download worldwide on Thursday. The plug-in brings multi-person collaboration through Google accounts to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The plug-in syn...