Articles by Erika

Motorola Mobility has filed yet another lawsuit accusing Apple of infringing several of its patents for wireless antennae, software, data filtering and messaging technologies The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida this week, follows a similar lawsuit Motorola filed in another Florida court, alleging the same...

Both privacy advocates and representatives of businesses that handle consumer data are flocking to Brussels. Why? The EU has proposed a strict set of new data privacy rules that would restrict companies such as Facebook even more than they currently do. Facebook, et al., have descended on the city in the hope of softening some of the restrictions,...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has plans to host a new TV show called "The World Tomorrow." The half-hour weekly episodes are scheduled to begin airing in mid-March on Russia's English-language RT channel. It will reach some 60 million global viewers. Assange sees the series as a vehicle to discuss the issues of the day with the people who are s...

There has been plenty of evidence that shareholders, to say nothing of customers, have been unhappy with RIM's direction in the last few years. They have been calling for new leadership, new strategy, new products -- new something. This week, a management shakeup seemed to grant that wish.

Google is incorporating its social network, Google+, in just about every part of its online empire -- including, most recently, its Gmail system. Now, new users who want a Gmail account must also sign up for Google+ It's not necessarily a novel move for Google. The company has been integrating its products for years, from Picasa to YouTube to Blogg...

Microsoft reported a mixed performance on Friday for its second quarter ending Dec. 31. Earnings were essentially flat compared with the same period last year. The company reported a profit of US$6.62 billion, or 78 cents a share, on $20.89 billion in revenue. For the same period a year ago, Microsoft reported a profit of $6.63 billion on $19.95 billion in revenue...

Do you like to garden? Share coupons? How about bike riding? If so, there's an app for that -- on Facebook, that is -- or soon will be. As promised at last year's f8 developer conference, Facebook rolled out about 60 new apps to be used on its site this week. They are designed for users to express more precisely how they are interacting with conte...

Nike has rolled out another product aimed at digital device-loving athletes. Called Nike+ FuelBand, it is a digitized wristband with a built-in three-axis accelerometer that tracks a user's movements. That's any movement -- from running or dancing to swimming or fiddling at your desk. Users can also set personal goals for a variety of activities u...

This was a big week for the Nasdaq-listed Blackbaud: The company announced its plans to acquire Convio, which offers a fund-raising application for nonprofits, for US$275 million ...

Dell's gaming computer brand, Alienware, has released a new desktop computer that -- while not quite in keeping with the trend toward mobile gaming -- is compact, powerful and sleek ...

Tests conducted by the U.S. Air Force Space Command found that LightSquared's 4G wireless service does indeed interfere with GPS devices, as some critics have claimed However, the company's executives have refused to accept the test results, calling them bogus....

Facebook eradicated the Koobface virus from its site about nine months ago. However, the social network says it is on a mission to vanquish it completely It's been three years since the virus first appeared on Facebook, and the company has learned quite a bit about it and its creators, it said in a blog post. It intends to share what it knows with...

Netflix shareholders have filed a class action lawsuit against the company, alleging that it withheld material information from investors about its growth prospects and plans for its fees before its stock plunged late last year The suit was filed against the company's senior management in the U.S. District Court in Northern California. CEO Reed Ha...

IBM continues to carve out its own stake in the social enterprise app space -- a market forecast by Forrester Research to grow 61 percent each year to reach US$6.4 billion by 2016 -- with the beta rollout of the next release of its enterprise social networking platform, IBM Connections. ...

Salesforce.com has snagged a marquee name for its executive ranks: the former chief information officer of the United States, Vivek Kundra. Kundra, who left his post with the Obama administration last year, is joining Salesforce.com as executive vice president of emerging markets. Prior to serving as the federal government's first CIO, Kundra held...

If there were ever a mobile device that could not handle another blow, it would be Research In Motion's tablet device, the PlayBook. The BlackBerry's typical user works in the government and corporate environment, where security is essential. PlayBook users -- while much smaller in number -- have similar needs. News has emerged of a vulnerability ...

SOPA opponents -- that is, the people and organizations lining up against the Stop Online Piracy Act -- clearly still have their work cut out for them. At the same time, there are signs that the massive protest against the bill is having some effect. The bill's chief sponsor, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, suggested in an interview published Thur...

Avaya has released its IP Office 8.0 -- the latest iteration of its trademark unified communications platform for small and mid-sized businesses. ...

It has been a rocky week for the medical news website WebMD, and it appears that the remainder of 2012 may be equally tumultuous. On Tuesday, WebMD CEO Wayne T. Gattinella resigned, and the company announced it was not looking for a buyer after all. It informed shareholders that 2012 revenue could clock in at 2 percent to 8 percent below 2011's re...

Oracle has released its Big Data Appliance, which it announced last year at Oracle OpenWorld. With no release date promised, the industry was surprised by its relative speed to market. Less surprising was Oracle's enlistment ofCloudera -- the leading provider of Hadoop system management tools -- to provide an Apache Hadoop distribution and tools f...