Articles by Erika

Earlier this month, it looked for a while as though there might be another wave of multi-jurisdictional investigations against Microsoft reminiscent of the antitrust saga that began in 1998. Google had been complaining -- first behind the scenes, then publicly -- about the lack of access for third-party search engines in Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista...

The three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court has upheld a ruling that grants extensive new privacy protections for e-mail users. It is an ambitious decision -- said to be the first for the Circuit Courts -- and one that is almost surely headed to the Supreme Court for review In Warshak v. United States, the federal court upheld the finding that...

Oracle is enhancing the mobile options it offers to Siebel CRM On Demand customers through partnerships with best-of-breed application vendors and device manufacturers. Earlier this year, for example, it announced a partnership with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. More recently, it struck a deal to integrate Siebel CRM On Demand withVettro's portfolio of mobile on-demand sales applications...

Of the 88 White House officials who also have e-mail accounts with the Republican National Committee, some 51 are missing records, according to a House Oversight Committee interim report released on Monday The investigation stems from a larger Congressional probe into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by the Department of Justice, and the possible...

LG Electronics has filed a countersuit against Hitachi alleging that the firm has infringed seven of its patents that relate to plasma display panel (PDP) technologies. The suit comes in response to similar accusations made by Hitachi against LG Electronics in April -- namely, that LG was improperly using Hitachi's PDP patent The LG suit, filed in ...

Salestream Software has launched an upgraded version of its e-mail marketing add-in for Microsoft Outlook. PoliteMail 2.0 allows users to craft 1to1 marketing messages instead of generic e-mails. Its major selling point is that users don't have to leave Outlook to use PoliteMail Additionally, the new version of the software has enhanced tracking an...

Given that a swarm of presidential candidates in both the Republican and Democratic camps have participated in several formal television debates, many voters may already be feeling election fatigue some 18 months before the big day. That should not stop viewers from tuning in on July 23, however, when eight Democratic presidential candidates will debate once again in South Carolina. The difference? The event will be sponsored by YouTube andCNN -- and the questions won't be fired by sober-faced, polite journalists; they'll be coming from, well, anybody...

Oncontact Software has released a new version of its CRM (customer relations management) suite that is fully interoperable with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. This is the first release in a two-part rollout: Oncontact will release an enhancement to its Web offering in August Designed to be installed with little integration required, On...

The FBI is launching a new initiative in the cyber crime wars, taking on the criminal organizations -- the so-called "botherders" -- that have gathered under their control compromised or zombie PCs. The bot herders' purpose is to send out malware or spam and phishing campaigns over the Internet that cannot be traced back to their origins The initia...

Microsoft has released its latest batch of fixes in this month's Patch Tuesday announcement, employing a new format that makes it easier for IT administers to single out areas of risk, according to Amol Sarwate, research manager of the vulnerability research lab at Qualys The new format doesn't give users a total count of vulnerabilities, however.

ATG has updated its e-commerce platform to include automated affinity selling for retailers and other e-commerce providers. It is the biggest update the vendor has made since it rolled out its v. 6.4 platform last summer, spokesperson Tucker Walsh told CRM Buyer This release enhances the company's adaptive scenario engine by automating personalizat...

Another day, another charge that Microsoft has violated its consent decree -- or so it must seem to the software titan, which has been battling such accusations ever since the mega antitrust case against it ended in 2002 In the latest controversy, though, the company lodging the complaint is none other than Google, an adversary almost equal to the ...

An e-mail apparently written by a key antitrust enforcement official in the U.S. Justice Department is raising suspicions that the Bush Administration unduly favored Microsoft's positions in an incident that has quickly become known as "memogate." Issued by Assistant Attorney General Thomas O. Barnett, a former antitrust partner at Covington & Burl...

IBM is contributing a processing engine to the open source and public health communities that will make it easier to track the transmission of diseases around the world The software, Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM), is available for use through the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework Project, which is hosted at the Eclipse Foundation....

A former substitute teacher for a Connecticut middle school has been granted a retrial following a conviction that launched a wave of sympathy and outrage Julie Amero could have been sentenced to 40 years in prison after being found guilty of exposing her students to Internet pornography. However, the defense countered that the porn was on the scho...

Call center software developer CosmoCom normally has an appetite for enterprise-scale customers. Now, it is employing a new business model with a product introduced in South Korea aimed at small and mid-sized businesses CosmoCom teamed with KT Networks -- a company within the Korea Telecom family focused on network integration and telecom service -...

Microsoft is slated to garner the majority of IT development spending over the next six months, according to a survey of more than 300 developers by Evans Data The reason is more complex than Microsoft's dominance on the desktop or in corporate IT. Rather, developers are gravitating to Microsoft and other leading tech and software providers because...

If the reports of Avaya's acquisition are accurate, Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners are near to closing the largest leveraged buyout of a computer networking company Avaya, TPG and Silver Lake are declining to comment on the reports, but according to the New York Times, the two private equity firms will pay about US$8 billion for the c...

ChoicePoint is still doing damage control two years after identity thieves set up fake businesses and bought personal information on 163,000 U.S. residents from the data broker A settlement reached this week between ChoicePoint and attorneys general from 43 states and the District of Columbia may well be the tipping point for the company as it wor...

In the never-ending war against spam, the good guys say they have chalked up one significant win: the arrest of 27-year-old Robert Alan Soloway, alleged to be the world's most prolific spammer Soloway has reportedly been using an army of zombie computers to send out huge volumes of unwanted e-mails. He has been indicted by a federal grand jury in S...