Articles by Erika

Consumers are becoming increasingly accustomed to being able to consume online content at the time they want and on the device they want -- and that device now includes the television set, according to a new study by NPD It found that while desktop PCs and laptops are still the primary source for viewing online content, mobile devices such as tabl...

Customer satisfaction with the credit card industry has stabilized after years of dramatic changes to the space, according to J.D. Power and Associates' 2012 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction study. It found that for the third consecutive year, customers' satisfaction with their credits cards has increased This year overall credit card satisfaction clo...

HP posted numbers Wednesday for what was the worst financial quarter in the company's long history. It reported an US$8.86 billion loss for its third fiscal quarter, which ended July 31. In the last three months, it took in a net revenue of $29.7 billion, down 5 percent year over year and down 2 percent when adjusted for the effects of currency The...

The U.S. Department of Justice executed seizure orders against three website domains allegedly engaged in the illegal distribution of copies of copyrighted Android cellphone apps. It is the first time that website domains involving cellphone app marketplaces have been seized, the DoJ said The seizures of the domains -- applanet.net, appbucket.net a...

There are still 19 million Americans who lack access to high-speed Internet, according to the Federal Communications Commission's Eighth Broadband Progress Report At this stage in the Internet's evolution, that number is shocking and brings home the fact that the natural spectrum landscape is not as stable and robust as one might assume, Chris Hoov...

This week has not been good to Facebook, nor have the past several weeks. The social media giant's stock has been hammered for days, at one point touching $19 per share -- half of its IPO valuation months ago. It still is within a stone's throw of that marker with a Tuesday close of $19.16 per share Some of the company's strife is likely due to the...

Jeff Hasen, Hipcricket's CMO, recently had what he called his "10 millionth" bad customer experience with Comcast. It's galling enough to be treated poorly by a company when you buy just about all of its services, as Hasen does with Comcast. Worse, though, is when you are a mobile CRM expert, as Hasen is, and can so plainly see how easy it would b...

A memo circulating internally at HP tells of a new mobile initiative being plotted by the computer maker The memo was penned by Todd Bradley, who is in charge of the company's recently merged Printing and Personal Systems Group. The company is creating a new Mobility business unit responsible for "consumer tablets" and "additional segments and cate...

The tech industry is making strides in developing supply chains and products that are free of conflict minerals from eastern Congo, although for some companies, progress still needs to be made, according to a report by Enough, the project to end genocide and crimes against humanity. For the second year, it ranked companies according to their perf...

VerticalResponse recently launched its social platform with two new features: Coupons and Clipper Coupons lets businesses generate custom coupons that can be published as a Facebook tab on their Facebook page or as a standalone Web page. Clipper is a browser button that lets users save interesting Web pages to their VerticalResponse Social account;...

By now Facebook must rue the day it went public -- or at least rue its initial offering price of US$38 per share. On Thursday, the company's stock closed at $19.88, after hitting a low of $19.69. Early Friday, it hit a new low of $19.01 -- half its IPO value, plus a penny. By mid-day, it had recovered slightly to $19.14. From the first hour of it...

Zoho has been speedily turning out applications to complement its core platform. Earlier this spring, for instance, it introduced Zoho CRM. Now, it is rolling out Zoho Marketing Campaigns to buttress the marketing functionality it introduced in the CRM app "We had marketing and campaign features in that app, but the functionality wasn't deep enough...

The fixes Sony made to its PlayStation Network last year after its system was hacked may not have made it impenetrable: Reports are circulating that the hacktivist group Anonymous has breached the network again The rumors started with a tweet posted to the group's account that has since been taken down. The tweet apparently claimed the hackers had...

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh is nothing if not persistent. Even though an earlier order for the CEOs of Apple and Samsung to speak to each other to avoid a lengthy trial did not yield anything positive, she is asking the two men to try again With the jury set to begin deliberating over the companies' patent disputes, she wants Apple CEO Tim Cook a...

Wall Street has been in a foul mood over Internet stocks, and online professional recommendation company Angie's List has not escape the market's wrath. Its stock fell 15 percent on Tuesday -- a selloff that appears to be largely related to the end of a 90-day lockup period for shares issued in a secondary offering earlier this year This alone is n...

Barnes & Noble has dropped the prices on its Nook tablet product line with the Nook Color, the 8 GB Nook Tablet and the16 GB Nook Tablet now retailing for (US)$150, $180 and $200 respectively. That amounts to a $20 reduction from the Color's original price and $50 the 16 GB device ...

Barnes & Noble has dropped the prices on its Nook tablet product line with the Nook Color, the 8 GB Nook Tablet and the16 GB Nook Tablet now retailing for (US)$150, $180 and $200 respectively. That amounts to a $20 reduction from the Color's original price and $50 the 16 GB device ...

App.net founder Dalton Caldwell watched the social Web's trajectory with admiration and then dismay over the years. From all accounts, he liked its initial promise. As it morphed into a commercialized, ad-supported ecosystem of products, however, he apparently grew disillusioned. Hence the crowd-funded campaign Caldwell has launched to build ad-free, subscriber-based rival products...

Salesforce.com is rolling out a limited pilot of yet another social media initiative -- Salesforce Communities. The offering combines its Chatter product, its Salesforce.com business processes, and an underlying social intelligence that makes it easy to show people the right information and give them the correct access to experts, said Doug Bewsher, senior vice president, Salesforce Chatter...

IBM has expressed interest in acquiring the heart of Research In Motion's operations -- its enterprise services unit, according to two unnamed sources cited in a Bloomberg report last week This is not the first indication of a company's interest in acquiring part of the ailing BlackBerry maker, and RIM's executives have said they would consider "al...