Archive

Managing an IT environment can be expensive and challenging. As a result, some companies prefer to rely on service providers to assist with specific projects. Others prefer to utilize managed services for operational work and to establish better services, processes, tools and methodologies to lever...

Facebook brushed itself up with a new makeover Sunday, this time focusing on the layout of members' profile screens. Users' profile pages now begin with a snapshot of information about themselves and feature recently tagged photos of the user. Facebook users can list their activities and include fri...

After months of speculation, Google's ebookstore opened for business on Monday, revealing answers to questions about what it will offer and the formats it will support. As well as providing books for sale, Google has made some of its vast collection of out-of-copyright books available for free, incl...

In a move that confirms the U.S. government's recent emphasis on seeking cloud-based information technology solutions, the United States General Services Administration has awarded a contract for converting the agency's email system to a cloud platform. GSA gave the $6.7 million, five-year task orde...

Though evidence abounds of cloud computing moving from the hype stage to successful adoption and deployment, many enterprises are still not clear on how to adopt cloud and make it part of their enterprise IT strategies. This is in part due to a misperception about what cloud computing is and the num...

When Larry Ellison introduced new servers and clusters at the old Sun Microsystems auditorium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Thursday, he poked fun at competitors IBM and HP, depicting Oracle as a cheetah, IBM as a stallion and HP as a turtle. He noted that HP products are slow and the company is vulner...

Google is tightening its copyright and piracy protection procedures, instituting new measures that will facilitate Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests and will better oversee search advertisers that use copyrighted or trademarked terms. Specifically, Google will roll out four changes:...

Aberdeen surveyed 240 users and managers of IT support to find out how organizations in this new world can ensure that workers are productive and customers enjoy their products. The 107 support managers who responded to Aberdeen's survey ranked the metrics they use to evaluate their IT support staff...

Google announced Wednesday it has changed its search algorithm to make sure bad merchants don't soar to the top of search results due to strings of complaints against them. The decision to alter its algorithm was a response to a story The New York Times ran last weekend about an eyeglass merchant, D...

The bones of a plan to balance consumer privacy and businesses' need to gather data online was aired yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission and was greeted with both praise and criticism. In a 122-page preliminary report, the agency called for any company collecting or using consumer data that ca...

Having an actively engaged, independent board is a must for the long-term viability of any corporation. Unfortunately, there are still many management teams that feel that their prospects for long-term employment, as well as generous salaries and perks, are dependent upon a "friendly" board of direc...

All I wanted to do was save a little money. Is that too much to ask? So I decided to try something I never tried before. I went to check out the Black Friday sales at the local stores the morning after Thanksgiving. Yes, before sunrise. Actually in the middle of the night. Someone should have braced...

The Apple iPad, rather than Amazon's Kindle, will likely benefit most from the strong demand for e-readers, according to a recent ChangeWave Research report. The ChangeWave survey of more than 2,800 consumers found that 47 percent are interested in the Kindle, a 15-point drop from a similar survey i...

The European Commission has opened an antitrust probe of Google for allegedly discriminating against competing search services by restricting its advertising partners from placing ads on their sites. It also is investigating whether Google has restricted advertisers from moving their data to competi...

An internal struggle has broken out at the FCC over Chairman Julius Genachowski's surprise announcement minutes before midnight Wednesday that he intends to pursue a full Commission vote on Net neutrality rules four days before Christmas. "I strongly oppose this ill-advised maneuver," said FCC Commi...