Articles by Erika

The jury hearing the Google-Oracle copyright violation and patent infringement case is expected to return a verdict on the first phase of the trial -- possibly a partial verdict -- as early as Monday. The jurors retreated to consider the charges last week, after attorneys for Oracle and Google delivered their final arguments. Oracle alleges that G...

By 2016, tablet PCs will reach an inflection point, a new study predicts: That is the year tablet shipments are predicted to outpace those of notebook PCs That is one prediction in the quarterly NPD DisplaySearch Tablet Quarterly report, which also forecasts that shipments of tablet PCs will grow from 81.6 million units in 2011 to 424.9 million uni...

The U.S. Federal Communication Commission may have settled for a gentle slap to Google's wrist after investigating alleged violations of the federal Wiretrap Act via its Street View program, but Google's legal woes stemming from that issue are far from over. Europe reportedly is preparing to look at allegations that Google employees may have known...

Imagine walking into a department store on a Wednesday morning and spotting a pair of shoes you feel that you must acquire, or life will have no meaning. You excitedly ask the sales rep if you can try on a pair in your size and she says, "Sure, why don't you come back on Friday?" That deflating experience occurs all the time on the Web, Ken Krogue,...

Research In Motion's investors did not seem pleased with the company's latest endeavor, BlackBerry 10, which CEO Thorsten Heins unveiled at its BlackBerry World 2012 conference in Orlando, Fla., earlier this week. As the new operating system made its debut, the device maker's stock dropped on the Toronto Stock Exchange approximately 15 percent -- ...

IBM is building out its digital marketing functionality in its Smarter Commerce portfolio with the acquisition of Tealeaf Technology, a provider of customer experience analytics. Financial details about the acquisition, which is expected to finalize in the second quarter of this year following customary closing conditions and regulatory clearance, were not released.

Amazon is taking the long-expected step of developing its own content for Amazon Instant Video. It is doing so via its content development division, Amazon Studios, which uses audience feedback to suggest content for its customers. Now it has pushed this model further, though, inviting series creators to upload proposals for comedy and children's ...

Samsung is top dog in the global smartphone market. No, wait -- it's Apple that is No. 1. Well, either way, Apple is making more money than Samsung. A recent flurry of reports analyzing the state of the mobile market has provoked some head-spinning. Some issues, such as the global competition between Samsung and Apple, are being hotly disputed by ...

In most respects, the numbers reflecting the state of organ donation in the U.S. paint a grim picture. There are 114,183 people waiting for an organ -- 18 of whom will die each day, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services webpage OrganDonar.gov. Facebook has now added another number to the mix: 900 million -- its user base In ...

The Oracle and Google legal teams delivered their closing arguments Monday in the high-profile trial over allegations Google violated Oracle's copyright on Java, and the case was sent to the jury. Their respective lines of reasoning built on developments brought to light in the trial, with the usual oratory flourishes attorneys tend to indulge in....

Samsung's first quarter earnings suggest that it has reached a significant milestone: It could be the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, topping Apple in market reach. In this case, "suggest" is the operative word.

Walmart is targeting an interesting customer segment -- shoppers with access to the Internet but perhaps no credit card to use for purchases -- with its newly launched "Pay with Cash" initiative. It allows a customer to shop at the Walmart.com website and then pay for the order at a local Walmart store. Walmart will then ship the order to the customer.

SugarCRM has just debuted a controlled release of version 6.5 of its flagship open source CRM offering. In many ways, the release is an iterative change -- it does not represent the same major shift in functionality and user interface as version 6 did, when it was launched in 2010. In one key way, however, the new version is significantly differen...

Nintendo has reached a dismal milestone: For the first time ever, it posted a fiscal year operating loss -- down US$458 million for the year just ended. It is an ignominious turn of events for the company, which created legendary games like "Super Mario Brothers" and innovative devices like the Wii.

As testimony unfolds in the Oracle-Google lawsuit, now in its second week, it appears that Google's defense against copyright infringement is vulnerable. That is not to say Google will not ultimately prevail in the end. Oracle has alleged that Google's Android OS infringes both Java patents and copyrights. So far, testimony has focused on the copy...

Salesforce.com has unveiled a new series of cloud computing initiatives for the government user base -- a highly lucrative niche for tech vendors, especially those that can present their products in a budget-friendly light. The new offerings, bundled under the name "Government Cloud," include a dedicated, multitenant instance of Salesforce.com's c...

In an initial determination, International Trade Commission judge Thomas Pender ruled that Apple was violating one of Motorola Mobility's patents for 3G wireless technology. Specifically, the ruling cited a patent that was issued to Motorola in 2001 for a "method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code divisi...

The hacker group Anonymous and other so-called hacktivists are the biggest concern for IT security professionals, according to a survey by Bit9. Its 2012 Cyber Security Survey queried nearly 2,000 IT security experts to gauge the current state of enterprise security and otherwise identify what keeps IT executives up at night. In general, 64 percen...

What a difference a year makes. Netflix, the tech industry's golden child last spring, has been struggling to overcome a series of missteps it made later in 2011. There is guarded optimism that when the company posts its fiscal first quarter report after the closing bell on Monday, some progress will be evident. However, Netflix is expected to rep...

Kana Software has introduced a new service experience platform that combines CRM functionality with BPM, knowledge management, analytics and social listening -- the latter a result of Kana's acquisition last April of Overtone. ...