Archive

It's no secret: We just don't watch TV commercials like we used to. We change channels, or, if we're watching a DVR-recorded show, we skip over them entirely. Like everything else, commercials are migrating online. This brave new world of online commercials sometimes resembles the old TV model, b...

There's a rumor that honor exists among thieves, but outside of Robin Hood, no one considers them a bunch of do-gooders. Yet there may be a bright side to their shadowy work, at least in terms of enterprise software. Why has Microsoft, a company known to be almost brutal in its license-protection pr...

More shoppers went online to retailers' Web sites this holiday season, and overall they were happier with their visits than they were in 2008, a survey by ForeSee Results found. For the second straight year, Amazon.com led ForeSee's pack of top 40 U.S. e-retailers in terms of customer satisfaction. ...

The recent lull in smart meter deployments and smart grid projects has come to an end with an announcement from the Obama administration last month. The Department of Energy announced over $3 billion in funding for smart grid projects, which will be matched by private-sector funding to push the tota...

Google's plan to acquire mobile ad network AdMob in a $750 million deal announced last month is under fire from two consumer groups, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Digital Democracy. The two have asked the Federal Trade Commission to block the deal, arguing that it would substantially lessen c...

SaaS has become an increasingly popular model for cloud computing adoption, with 68 percent of U.S. respondents in a recent study reporting adoption of SaaS at some level, and 62 percent of global respondents reporting plans to move toward SaaS in the next year. SaaS and cloud computing represent a ...

Amazon's Kindle is on a roll: On Christmas day, Customers purchased more e-books than physical books for the first time ever, according to the e-tailer. November marked the Kindle's best sales month ever, according to the company, which announced that milestone even before Cyber Monday purchases wer...

Hope was a slogan and a sentiment that played a major role in the U.S. presidential election of 2008, and hope continues to be the mindset of technology advocates pushing for cloud computing in the public sector. As a former government employee with a long history in the intelligence field, I can ea...

HP has significantly elevated its efforts to become an indispensable full-service supplier to cloud computing aspirants, especially telecommunications, mobile and Internet service providers. At Software Universe in Hamburg, Germany, HP this month announced three new offerings designed to enable clou...

Lacing a shoestring budget with enough green to get your startup up and running takes some finagling. Still, it can be done. If you can't find investor backing right now, then turn to alternative funding routes. You may want to start with your own hidden assets to find the cash you need. One example...

Funny thing about economic disasters: They tend to spawn a bevy of new businesses. It's not that a recession is the best time for pie-in-the-sky thinking; rather, it's when pie-in-the-mouth issues become most pressing. "The tantalizing successes of some startups, coupled perhaps with the rise in une...

The mad rush for e-readers this holiday season has led Barnes & Noble to offer in-store certificates worth $100 to customers who won't get its device, called the "Nook," by Christmas Eve as promised. B&N has said that demand is so strong it can't keep up with the orders. Meanwhile, archrival...

The mad rush for e-readers this holiday season has led Barnes & Noble to offer in-store certificates worth $100 to customers who won't get its device, called the "Nook," by Christmas Eve as promised. B&N has said that demand is so strong it can't keep up with the orders. Meanwhile, archrival...

The mad rush for e-readers this holiday season has led Barnes & Noble to offer in-store certificates worth $100 to customers who won't get its device, called the "Nook," by Christmas Eve as promised. B&N has said that demand is so strong it can't keep up with the orders. Meanwhile, archrival...

General P2P file-sharing systems have been ubiquitous throughout the Internet since the mid-1990s. While such systems were made famous -- or infamous -- by the likes of Napster, the common thread with those systems was the general architecture. P2P systems consist of a distributed network architect...