Articles by Erika

United Airlines experienced a major computer problem this week, and the news no doubt sent shudders down the spines of would-be Thanksgiving holiday travelers everywhere. The glitch -- reportedly in its dispatch system -- led to the delay of a number of flights. United found and corrected the error, and by mid-afternoon, system-wide on-time perfor...

Amazon began shipping its 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD on Thursday, ahead of its original planned schedule. The specs and price point of the device are interesting enough that it will certainly make some inroads in the tablet market: Among other features, it sports a front-facing HD camera, 16-GB or 32-GB storage options, and 10 hours of battery life Th...

Genesys is making a play for the middle market with the release of Genesys One. The last time the company targeted the middle market was more than 10 years ago, when it was owned by Alcatel. Since then, the middle market has changed significantly.

Well, that was fast. About 24 hours after Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would move to bring the once-failed Cybersecurity Act of 2012 to the Senate floor for a vote, its opponents shot it down again. Reid's procedural motion to move the bill forward was rejected 51-47 on Wednesday....

In a year when precious little seems to have gone right for Facebook, Wednesday was the day an employee lockup on selling some 800 million shares expired. The stock was expected to drop, perhaps dramatically, as a result -- but it didn't. For the most part, Facebook shares hung tough -- increasing by some 11 percent to close the day at US$22.36 a...

Zynga's chief financial officer is departing for Facebook, yet another blow to the social game-maker, which has been languishing for months and recently trimmed its 2012 outlook The departure of CFO Dave Wehner apparently set into motion a number of changes in the company's executive ranks. David Ko has been named chief operations officer. Barry Co...

A Microsoft lawsuit against Motorola Mobility went to trial on Tuesday in Judge James Robart's U.S. District Court of Western Washington's courtroom. The case is focused on allegations made two years ago by Microsoft that Motorola Mobility demanded unreasonable royalty rates for its patented wireless and video standards standards-essential technologies.

John McAfee, founder of the eponymous antivirus software company, is wanted in Belize in connection with the murder of American Gregory Faull, according to news accounts. The San Pedro police department is said to be actively searching for McAfee, who has gone missing This episode is focusing a very public spotlight on the downward, highly destruc...

As companies rush to offer mobile CRM apps to their customers, they are in danger of repeating the same mistake made a generation ago with the launch of early online initiatives: not placing enough emphasis on security. We know how that worked out. Untold millions of customers were compromised financially because the companies they chose to do business with online did not take proper precautions...

Groupon reported disappointing earnings for the third quarter, and shareholders soundly punished the company as a result It posted a net loss of US$3 million, compared with $54.2 million in the same quarter in 2011. Third-quarter revenue clocked in at $568.6 million, compared with $430.2 million a year earlier. However, analysts had expected revenu...

Demandbase is extending beyond its Web analytics and sales roots with a new platform that allows B2B advertisers to target and personalize display ads for specific companies Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising, which has been incorporated by Eloqua within its own marketing automation application, represents a shift for Demandbase.

Walmart is opening its doors on Thanksgiving Day at 8 p.m. local time. To persuade shoppers who may be digesting the biggest meal of the year to leave the comfort of their sofas, the retailer is offering door-busting specials at specific time slots Customers who are inside the store and standing in line between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. local time can p...

Mobile CRM and its related technologies have intrigued developers and users alike for years. However, it wasn't until Facebook announced it would acquire Instagram for an eye-popping US$1 billion that the money began to pour into this space. "That was the transaction that crystallized for us and a lot of folks that mobile is a hot growth area dese...

Sandvine has released a new report on global Internet traffic that points to the growth of online data consumption and implies that the increasing use of legitimate content services such as Netflix may be softening the impact of illegal P2P file-sharing At face value, that seems difficult to believe.

A U.S. District Court judge has dismissed an Apple lawsuit alleging that Motorola Mobility abused its standard-essential patents by charging rates that exceeded fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) terms. Apple filed the case in March 2011, before Motorola was acquired by Google. It was scheduled for a hearing in Madison, Wisc., this wee...

Just in time for its one-year anniversary of being a public company, Groupon's response to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into its accounting practices was made public. It was an inauspicious reminder that to regulators and investors, Groupon -- once the tech industry's golden child -- remains a question mark. The stock market responded to the disclosure on Friday by sinking Groupon's share price some 5 percent to a new low of US$3.83...

U.S. Federal Trade Commission staff have recommended that Google should be sued for antitrust violations, according to a report in Bloomberg that cites anonymous sources. A majority of the agency's five commissioners appear inclined to do so, the sources said.

Nudge, a marketing application designed for the real estate space, has released an update that incorporates Instagram into its offerings. ...

Billionaire investor and activist shareholder Carl Icahn has acquired a 10 percent stake in Netflix, according to a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The value of the 5.5 million shares is about US$169 million. Icahn Capital believes that Netflix is undervalued and positioned for expansion both in the U.S. and overseas,...

EMC has announced it is acquiring Silver Tail Systems, a provider of real-time Web session intelligence and behavioral analysis. When the acquisition is closed, which is expected in the fourth quarter, Silver Tail will be part of EMC's security division, tasked with extending RSA's enterprise security portfolio. Terms were not disclosed.