Archive

Microsoft today unveiled new Office software, called Xdocs, which allows corporate workers to better share data by using a Web browser. Though the concept is hardly new, the innovation that Microsoft hopes will sell this new product, is that the data entered into Web forms, can be formatted using th...

An expected upturn in spending on information technology is taking longer than anticipated to materialize, and the sector will post much weaker growth than previously forecast for 2002, according to two new reports. When spending does turn around, it probably will begin with lower-cost items, such a...

The classic law of supply and demand has caught up to technology workers. Not only are fewer jobs available, but there has been a noticeable erosion of salary gains made during the technology boom. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 75 percent of top-earning workers rep...

Microsoft is slated to announce the release of its .NET Content Management Server 2002 at the annual Microsoft Exchange Conference in Anaheim, California. The new software will let developers more rapidly publish content to the Web directly from Microsoft Word, according to the company. In addition,...

The dollars spent by tech sector heavyweights on research and development number in the billions. Determining a company's return on its R&D investment is not a clear-cut exercise -- and until ROI is achieved, companies and their shareholders pay for their investment in lost profit. Even so, IDC ...

Despite high-profile layoff announcements from IBM and others, the third quarter was a relatively quiet one for job cuts in the technology sector, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm counted 91,450 job cuts in the quarter ended September 30th, down ...

Purveyors of interactive online games have hit upon an audience-pleasing business model, featuring methods like subscription plans that give users unlimited access for a monthly fee. But firms in other areas of e-commerce likely will be hard-pressed to emulate gaming companies' success using the sam...

The 64-bit microprocessors coming down the pike from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices may one day help PC servers rival the power of Unix boxes and may transform the PC desktop. But experts do not expect users to adopt these new processors right away, and in the short term, businesses may not want t...

EBay has launched a sports-themed section on its auction site, combining several existing categories, including memorabilia, ticketing, sporting goods and licensed merchandise, into a single section that it says will generate $1 billion in sales this year. Sports sales growth is just one piece of a ...

A recent Goldman Sachs report pushed back a meaningful rebound in corporate IT spending until mid-2003 at the earliest, predicting flat numbers until then. But amid the gloom inherent in this and other dour forecasts, tech bright spots remain in both the enterprise and consumer markets. For example,...

Seeking to recoup millions of dollars that he maintains rightfully belong to shareholders, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has filed a civil suit against five telecom executives who profited from IPOs during the late 1990s and into 2002. The five executives -- including former WorldCom CEO B...

When Amazon.com announced its second-quarter 2002 results, its outlook seemed promising: Sales of books, CDs and DVDs were up 20 percent compared with the year-ago period. The company's first-quarter report also was positive, showing a 15 percent increase from the first quarter of 2001. However, not...

Such onetime high-profile visionaries as Thomas Middlehoff, Jean-Marie Messier and Robert Pittman have lately departed their firms in droves, leaving corporate spectators to wonder whether broadband is broken. Messier's vision of seamless media convergence may still have life at Vivendi-Universal, h...

In a move that will boost production of computer chips found in common consumer electronics equipment, the European Union regulatory board reportedly has approved a joint venture between Germany's Infineon Technologies, Motorola and Agere Systems. Each of those three companies will own one-third of ...

Server technology improvements are poised to turbocharge the way companies run their e-commerce operations, ranging from the way they process transactions to the methods they use to snag new sales. For example, IBM has been developing "self-learning" software that not only ties servers together, but...