Archive

It's been clear for some time that print media has to adopt a new business model or basically face extinction. What wasn't so clear, even a few months ago, is how fast the industry would decline. Recent events are a dramatic illustration of what appears to be a tailspin. On March 16 of this month, t...

There are reports that Cox and AT&T have begun cooperating with the Recording Industry Association of America's new antipiracy strategy -- first announced in December -- of targeting illegal file-sharing activities through Internet service providers instead of through the courts. Once the RIAA i...

Twitter has announced its intention to start making money through the introduction of premium business accounts sometime this year. The San Francisco-based social network provides users with a free service that lets them post 140-character notifications, or "tweets." Unique visitors to Twitter incre...

It's Game Developers Conference time, and that means plenty of news -- some good; some great. Thus far, the most eye-catching announcements out of GDC '09 have come from two upstart hardware makers -- one trying to bring console gaming to users around the globe, the other aiming to take the console ...

Spark Capital, one of the early investors in Twitter, Akamai Technologies and Novatel Wireless, has launched a new seed fund for technology entrepreneurs, specifically in the Boston and New York City areas. Called "Start@Spark," the program will provide up to $250,000 in seed money to business start...

Blockbuster and TiVo have joined forces to deliver Blockbuster's vast library of digital video to owners of the TiVo television set-top box. "We are excited to be teaming with TiVo, the company that created the DVR, to make Blockbuster's entertainment content readily available to their millions of s...

In just a few years, Software as a Service has gone from a curiosity to a mission-critical application, accelerating into mainstream adoption. Faced with a dire financial situation, most businesses are taking advantage of the tremendous economies of scale that SaaS brings. Yet that's only the beginn...

Failed efforts to reach a licensing agreement with Warner Music have led YouTube to unceremoniously yank thousands of user-created videos from the site. YouTube is required to follow intellectual property rights laws, of course. However, critics of the move contend the creators' use of content in ma...

Sony Ericsson's president of North America, Najmi Jarwala, has stepped down amid rumors that the joint venture between the two companies may soon be dissolved. The announcement comes at a dismal time for Sony Ericsson. The company is expecting first-quarter losses of between $459 million $526 millio...

I frequently encounter intellectual property disputes between companies and independent contractors doing work for those companies. Often, the disputes involve trying to determine who owns the copyright to materials developed during their working relationship. Whether you are an employer or a worke...

VoIP provider Skype announced on Monday the beta version of its business-user-oriented Skype for SIP, which will run on enterprise PBX systems. SIP is a signaling protocol that lets users set up and tear down multimedia communication sessions such as voice and video calls over the Internet. It can a...

From the perspective of IT users, developer communities and global industry as a whole, IBM may be the worst place for beleaguered Sun Microsystems to land. Sure a merger as is rumored is good -- but not urgently or obviously so -- for IBM. Big Blue gains modest improvement in share of some servers,...

TomTom has responded to Microsoft's allegations of patent infringement with a lawsuit of its own. Close to three weeks after Microsoft filed complaints against TomTom in the U.S. District Court in Seattle and with the International Trade Commission, TomTom has filed a countersuit in the U.S. Distric...

The Pre can't come out fast enough for struggling smartphone maker Palm. The company reported dismal financial results Friday for the third quarter of its 2009 fiscal year. Revenue fell to $90.6 million, down 71 percent from $312.1 million during the third quarter of 2008. Losses surged to $95 milli...

The economic wolf is at your door, but acid-spewing aliens are threatening you and your squad-mates on some desolate planet. Or it's the ninth frame and you are one strike down against an opponent whose bowling prowess is considerably better than President Obama's. So those worries about jobs and th...