Articles by Erika

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments Wednesday for a patent case that could impact how manufacturers configure and sell computers overseas, and to what extent U.S. patent laws can be enforced in foreign countries Called Microsoft v. AT&T, the software industry is aligning behind Microsoft in this battle, given the far-ranging ramificati...

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments Wednesday for a patent case that could impact how manufacturers configure and sell computers overseas, and to what extent U.S. patent laws can be enforced in foreign countries Called Microsoft v. AT&T, the software industry is aligning behind Microsoft in this battle, given the far-ranging ramificati...

Less than two weeks have passed since Viacom demanded that YouTube take down 100,000 clips of its copyrighted content. Yet, the media giant is now providing Joost with basically the same content through an agreement announced Tuesday Neither Joost nor Viacom is revealing financial details about the deal; however, it is widely believed that Joost ga...

The newly released American Customer Satisfaction Index (ASCI) provides fresh data illustrating consumers' growing love affair with e-commerce. The e-commerce industry registered a score of 80 on ACSI's 100-point scale -- less than a percentage point away from its all-time high score of 80.8 in 2003, according to the index, which was released by the University of Michigan and ForeSee Results...

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has cautioned Wall Street that analysts' fiscal year 2008 expectations for Windows Vista sales may be too "optimistic" and "overly aggressive." Vista is more of an opportunity to sustain Windows revenue -- not necessarily grow it, Ballmer reportedly said Thursday during a meeting with financial analysts. Some analysts ha...

A Texas judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the family of a 13-year-old girl who allegedly was assaulted by a man she met through the social networking Web site MySpace Part of the case was dismissed with prejudice, a decision that will likely be appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court, according to one of the plaintiff's attorneys, Adam Loewy, a pa...

Microsoft on Tuesday issued 12 software patches, six of which covered vulnerabilities the company designated as "critical." The patches were part of Microsoft's regular Patch Tuesday security bulletin TechNewsWorld spoke with Ashar Aziz, CEO and founder of network malware security firm FireEye, to find out how dangerous these vulnerabilities were a...

When Dave Asiala, Dow Chemical's sharedservices IT director, is talking about his company'sRFID (radio frequency identification) initiatives and wants listeners to have an "Aha" moment, he tells them about Dow AgroSciences' use ofRFID tags in its in-ground Sentricon Termite ColonyElimination System "Essentially these are bait traps that areundergro...

Microsoft is offering new business intelligence (BI) features for its Dynamics CRM product. It can be downloaded for free from CodePlex, Microsoft's open source project-hosting Web site, and the Microsoft CRM Sandbox, a GotDotNet project created for Microsoft CRM users Called "Microsoft Dynamics CRM Analytics Foundation," these tools include busine...

Just in time for the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, McAfee has released new research that points to a recent increase in mobile malware attacks Nearly half of the mobile operators who have been the recipients of mobile malware experienced an attack within the last three months, according to the report....

Verint Systems has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Witness Systems for US$27.50 per share in an all-cash deal that will total roughly $1 billion The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter, pending approval by regulators and Witness Systems stockholders....

MySpace has launched a pilot project that will help the popular social networking site identify uploaded content that may infringe on someone's copyright Its new content management and antipiracy system, which it licensed from Audible Magic, can recognize certain uploaded copyrighted content, match the appropriate business rules to that particular ...

About 51 percent of organizations contacted for a recent study by Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm are using at least one on-demand application This finding was not surprising to Rebecca Wettemann, Nucleus Research's vice president, because even though the technology has been around for only a short period of time, "interest in it has exploded,"...

Music company EMI Group is reportedly in talks with online retailers about providing its digital music catalog in an unprotected MP3 format, allowing downloaded songs to be played on multiple devices The company is in talks with RealNetworks, eMusic, MusicNet, and Viacom's MTV Networks, according to The Wall Street Journal....

Details about the forthcoming Windows Mobile 6, a platform that has been code-named "Crossbow," have been leaked days before Microsoft's planned formal release at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. The operating system will begin shipping on mobile devices worldwide by the second quarter Viewed as an incremental upgrade to the last point ...

Hackers on Tuesday launched a denial-of-service (DoS) attack against at least three of the 13 root servers that maintain the Internet's domain name system (DNS) The attacks, which lasted for 12 hours, reportedly targeted the server that maintains the dot-org suffix, and the servers at the Department of Defense and the Internet Corporation for Assig...

Wal-Mart Stores has launched a new service providing movies and television episodes for sale online The company will offer about 3,000 movies and TV shows on the beta version of the online download store, at price points that -- true to Wal-Mart's ethos -- are cheaper than many of those offered at Apple's iTunes Store, the retail giant's main compe...

RightNow Technologies has added new capabilities to its voice application, which it first introduced in June 2005 when it acquired Convergent Voice, a voice automation vendor. In this major upgrade, the firm has enhanced the application's inbound functions and has begun developing outbound features, as well Future releases will further build out th...

The government of India has asked Google to blur sensitive images of its military bases and buildings that can be seen with its mapping application, Google Earth -- a source of concern to top Indian officials since at least 2005 Google has reportedly agreed to show fuzzy, low-resolution pictures of certain building installations after talks with th...

Sage Software has introduced SageCRM Version 6, with upgrades that enhance the usability andproductivity of the application, as well as new administrative capabilities Much of the development that went into this release targeted end-user adoption, said Chris Reich, the group's director of CRM product management. "We have focused our efforts on deli...