Articles by Erika

Amazon's stock price reached an all-time high of US$268.98 per share on Monday -- a far far cry from its debut at $16 per share 16 years ago. The stock was off only slightly on Tuesday, closing at $266.38 The company's share price has been steadily climbing. Monday's spike of 4 percent followed an upgrade from Morgan Stanley analyst Scott Devitt, w...

Mobile CRM is decidedly one of the hot trends for 2013, but just what new permutations can we expect as the year unfolds? CRM Buyer informally surveyed a number of executives in this broad space and came up with a wide range of predictions -- from the specific to the overarching. ...

AT&T on Monday announced a new service to compete with such video-on-demand offerings as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime The service, called "U-verse Screen Pack," is aimed at its U-verse customers, offering unlimited access to AT&T's library of some 1,500 movies from a TV, computer or wireless device. The service will cost US$5 a month....

AT&T on Monday announced a new service to compete with such video-on-demand offerings as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime The service, called "U-verse Screen Pack," is aimed at its U-verse customers, offering unlimited access to AT&T's library of some 1,500 movies from a TV, computer or wireless device. The service will cost US$5 a month....

Hulu CEO Jason Kilar bid a fond adieu to the company's employees, announcing in a blog post Friday that he and CTO Rich Tom will be leaving at some point during Q1 2013. Kilar made no mention of the reasons for their departures, other than to say, "Rich and I have been fortunate to build and innovate alongside each other these past 5+ years and ou...

PNC Bank took an unusually open approach with its customers recently. It sent a letter apologizing for any inconvenience they might have experienced recently when the bank was battling denial of service attacks assumed to have been launched by the hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters "In some cases, those measures also may have bloc...

A federal judge this week granted Amazon's request to throw out one claim in Apple's lawsuit against it -- namely the allegation that Amazon engaged in false advertising by using the term "Appstore" for its slew of Android-based online offerings. Other claims Apple is alleging against Amazon, including one for trademark infringement, are going for...

Last summer, open source CRM provider Zurmo threw its hat into the CRM ring with a beta version of its particular take on the hot new gamification software category. ...

The Federal Trade Commission and Google have reached a settlement on a two-year investigation the agency conducted into the search engine giant's business practices. In short, Google has agreed to give competitors access to standard-essential patents and allow its advertisers more flexibility in how they use rival search engines. Perhaps most significantly, Google has agreed to refrain from seeking injunctions to block rivals from using its standard-essential patents...

After an arguably crummy 2012 for Facebook, it is kicking off 2013 on a positive note: J.P. Morgan raised its price target on the social network giant from US$29 to $35 at the start of the year, citing the progress the company has made with its mobile advertising business unit. Morgan research analyst Doug Anmuth said positive advertiser feedback ...

The gaming revolution has begun Ouya, a startup that launched with the outsized goal of challenging the big three gaming platforms of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, reported on Friday that it had shipped 1,200 consoles to developers. The Android-based product is a deceptively simple-looking cube the size of a coffee mug, which is meant to hook up to...

Some Netflix customers found themselves without service on Christmas Eve -- an unpardonable lapse on a day when many are snuggled in their homes and eager for entertainment The streaming video provider has caught its fair share of flak for the outage -- but it was not solely to blame for its service being down in this particular instance. There wer...

Instagram's recent changes to its terms of service have led one user to file a proposed class action lawsuit against the company, alleging breach of contract and other violations The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last week by California user Lucy Funes, claims that Instagram's "unilateral" changes to its terms of use transfer ...

This story was originally published on Aug. 21, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series Jeff Hasen, Hipcricket's CMO, recently had what he called his "10 millionth" bad customer experience with Comcast.

Research In Motion delivered a mixed bag of news in its latest quarterly earnings, prompting the phone maker's stock to drop on Thursday by some 17 percent. The so-so report reignited fears that RIM will remain a marginal company, even if its BlackBerry 10 operating system, expected to debut on Jan. 30, is a blockbuster success. In some respects,...

Path, a social networking startup designed for the mobile environment, on Thursday launched a new social search feature that is both simple and highly intuitive -- and that plays to Path's unique strengths as a private mobile social network. Here's how it works: A user launches the search function via the new search field at the top of the Path ...

Salesforce.com rolled out an integration between Sales Cloud and Work.com this week. The integration is currently available in pilot and will be made generally available to all Salesforce.com customers in the first half of 2013 To understand the value-add the integration offers, one first has to become acquainted with Work.com, a social performan...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday rejected all 21 claims in Apple's "pinch-to-zoom" patent in a preliminary ruling after an ex parte re-examination of the patent The USPTO ruling is a significant blow to Apple, as the patent was among those found to have been infringed by Samsung in a case that went to trial this summer. The jury ...

Attorneys representing four former GoDaddy employees in a suit over unpaid overtime are seeking to have the suit expanded to a collective action Michelle Matheson, a partner with Matheson & Matheson and the attorney of record on the suit, and Eric Epstein, an employment attorney in Los Angeles, represent the former employees of GoDaddy, all of who...

The International Trade Commission on Tuesday ruled that Apple has not violated Google's Motorola Mobility patent for a touchscreen sensor. ITC judge Thomas Pender said the patent was invalid The touchscreen sensor patent came before Pender this summer, when Google asserted three other Motorola patents against Apple. The commission ordered Pender...