Articles by Erika

The Kaden Group has launched a new social CRM application, PartnerOption.com. The startup is hoping to carve out a niche by targeting small businesses with a product that combines free CRM functionality -- for now -- with an organized, easily portable business social network focusing on sales leads, distribution and reseller opportunities. "Most ...

Every now and then -- or possibly a great deal more often -- the FBI will plant a car-tracking device on someone's automobile to track their movements. How do we know this? Occasionally, these devices are found by the persons being monitored. Some incidents have found their way into the court system. And some have made their way into the media's h...

You may not know it, unless a friend or relative has had treatment for breast cancer, but it is the little things that can kill you during recovery -- or at least make you very sick. Little things as in commercial brands of toothpaste or mouthwash. A patient undergoing chemotherapy must use medicinal versions of these products, which can be surpri...

LastPass is a password manager. Users rely on it to store the myriad user names and passwords they inevitably collect as they go about their business on the Web. With LastPass, they only have to remember one single master password. LastPass handles the rest -- including, presumably, security. That customer-company relationship was shaken this week...

ListenLogic is moving into the social CRM sphere after building expertise with its two related offerings: a reputation management application that helps corporations identify threats before they reach crisis proportions, and a social market research and listening product. "These were the jumping-off point for our latest product," said founder and ...

Intel has reported a major technological breakthrough in microprocessor development: the world's first 3D transistor. The Tri-Gate transistor will continue the steady delivery of computing products that are ever more powerful, ever cheaper and ever smaller, the company said. Intel has also previewed a 22-nanometer node microprocessor code-named "I...

Researchers in Japan are working on a device that has managed to intrigue -- or at least amuse -- public relations executives, social scientists and even the patent holders of a sanitizer for computer keyboards and other peripherals: an Internet-based kissing machine Yes....

Gartner's Business Intelligence Summit 2011 kicked off on Monday in Los Angeles. It is the sister conference to one held in the beginning of the year in London. While the keynote speakers and participating companies vary, the general themes running through both conferences are the same. One is that with every passing year, business intelligence te...

In the big scheme of things, Microsoft's third fiscal quarter for 2011 was pretty good -- until, that is, one drills down and sees that its core product, Windows, delivered a disappointing performance, while recent computing developments, especially the consumer craze for tablets, are not exactly trending Microsoft's way. In general, sales and pr...

Jane Velez-Mitchell, host of her own TV show, "Issues," on HLN and author of a newly released book, Addict-Nation, An Intervention for America, well remembers the genesis of one of the topics in her book. She and her partner were about to become intimate, she cheerfully relates -- until she got an overwhelming urge to check her BlackBerry for email first.

Talk about your anti-climatic endings. Thirteen years after the Sturm und Drang that was the government prosecution of Microsoft on antitrust grounds, the mammoth, multi-million dollar case has ended with a straightforward, run-of-the-mill legal proceeding The case will end on May 12 without any further oversight hearings, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kote...

CoTweet, a social media management application that ExactTarget developed when it realized that email marketing recipients often continue a conversation about a brand in social marketing venues, now has stronger integration for CRM legacy systems. The company recently unveiled new extensions that allow users to integrate conversations that origina...

The FBI has requested and received a preliminary injunction from a U.S. district judge to continuing issuing "stop" commands to the zombie machines infected with the Coreflood botnet. It is an essential step that is part of the agency's dramatic takedown of the botnet's command-and-control system earlier this month, an agent said in written testimony...

As far as privacy-related storms go, the current one sweeping the industry is unusually fast moving. In the days since researchers Peter Warden and Alasdair Allan published the unsettling discovery that Apple's iOS could track users' movements, timestamp them, and then send the information to Apple, the following has occurred: 1) Google has been outed as well, spurred on by a not-so-subtle tip provided by Apple CEO Steve Jobs; 2) investigations into the processes of Windows Phone 7, Nokia and other smartphone devices immediately commenced; 3) a lawsuit was filed against Apple in Tampa, Fla., seeking class action status; 4) probes have been launched in France, Germany, Italy and South Korea; and now 5) Congress is getting involved.

Nintendo confirmed the rumors that have been swirling for weeks that it is working on a next-generation Wii. The company released sparse details about the game console, other than it is set to be on store shelves in 2012 and will be unveiled at the video game industry conference, E3, held in Los Angeles this June. It did not respond to the E-Comme...

Microsoft is going to boost employees' compensation, the company announced in a memo that was sent out to its entire staff on Thursday morning Penned by CEO Steve Ballmer, the memo says the company has decided to shift a portion of stock award targets into employees' base salaries. The end result will be more cash up front for employees, as Micros...

eGain recently introduced a multidimensional search function to its knowledge agent and its self-service product lines. In essence, it is two sides of the same coin in that it provides the same functionality to both the agent desktop and the computer screen that a customer uses when searching for an answer. The feedback the company has received s...

Canonical is releasing its Ubuntu 11.04 suite of corporate and developer desktops and servers -- aka "Natty Narwhal" -- on April 28. New features include a technology preview for Ubuntu Server 11.04, which is downloadable through the Ubuntu software repositories.

Facebook has introduced a number of security improvements aimed at better safeguarding users' privacy. These enhancements came a day after Sophos published an open letterasking the site to tighten up its security. By all accounts, Sophos, which did not return TechNewsWorld's call, was not impressed. Not that Facebook hastily revamped its controls ...

Google is rolling out access in the U.S. to a tool that has already made a mark in other parts of the world: Map Maker. As the name suggests, Map Maker allows people to create and edit Google Maps It debuted outside the U.S. because Google didn't believe there would be much demand for it in the states, where there was already a wealth of online map...