Articles by Erika

HP is proving relentless in its bidding war with Dell over data storage company 3Par. Within hours after Dell matched HP's offer of US$1.8 billion, or $24.30 per share, HP countered with $2 billion, or $30 per share The battle for the company broke out in earnest in mid-August with the first public offer from Dell, for $1.15 billion. HP promptly f...

It has been a roller-coaster week for 3Par, a company whose shares were trading at US$9.65 when Dell first tried to acquire it in mid-August, with no sign that the ride will be ending any time soon. Since that event, HP made a counteroffer, which Dell has now topped -- but only slightly....

Google has rolled out a new service that allows Gmail account holders to make voice calls to any traditional phone number from their Gmail account. It will require the installation of a voice and video plug-in, but users won't need to have a special phone number assigned to them. Google already has a similar service -- Google Voice -- that lets u...

Another day, another new smartphone coming to market. In this case, it is Dell's Aero, a device retailing for US$99 with a two-year contract with AT&T. Features include a 5 MP camera, a 3.5-inch display, and Flash Lite support for streaming audio and video content. It also has WiFi connectivity, giving users access to AT&T's 20,000 hotspots, as we...

Virgin Mobile is making an aggressive move in the mobile broadband arena, going head-to-head with the likes of AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Beginning Wednesday, the carrier is offering a US$40 unlimited mobile broadband plan without a contract. Similar offerings from competitors are priced at $60 per month and usually call for a two-year contract. V...

New generations of cellphones may be offering a feature that is a throwback to the analog age: FM radio. If they do, it will be because a controversial proposal gaining traction in Washington includes this functionality as part of the horse-trading. The National Association of Broadcasters has proposed that stations pay an aggregate US$100 million...

A lawsuit that is moving forward in the state of Hawaii adds another dimension to the ongoing debate over Internet addiction -- while prompting more than a few cynical guffaws from tort reform advocates The suit, filed by plaintiff Donald Smallwood against the company NCSoft, claims that he became "psychologically dependent and addicted" to the fan...

HP has made an eyebrow-raising counterbid for a data storage company that Dell is trying to acquire. Last week, Dell made a play for 3Par, offering US$1.15 billion. HP has topped that offer with its own bid of $1.6 billion -- a 33 percent premium on Dell's $18 per share bid, and a huge premium for 3Par, whose shares were trading at $9.65 before Dell made its first offer...

Sybase has only recently formally entered the SAP corporate family. However, the two companies have collaborated on software integration projects for years: hence, the introduction of Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM, a native iPhone app When designing the app, Sybase took the iPhone user needs into account, Bryan Whitmarsh, senior product manager i...

After a few days of absorbing the criticism of its joint proposal with Verizon, Google -- a company that was once counted as a stalwart in the push for Net neutrality -- is defending itself In a nutshell, the plan calls for excluding the mobile Internet from most of the consumer protections that would apply to the wired Internet. It would allow the...

Dell's latest product, the Streak, will make its U.S. debut on Friday, with consumers able to place pre-orders for the device starting Thursday. When Dell unveiled the Streak in May, it immediately grabbed the attention of tech-watchers. It sports a 5-inch color, multitouch screen, runs on the popular Android platform and is powered by a 1 GHz Qua...

On Monday Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg proposed a far-reaching plan designed to address all the concerns the varying stakeholders have with Net neutrality. Twenty-four hours later, it is clear that at least some of those stakeholders -- particularly advocates for Net neutrality, a group Google once seemed to lead -- are dismayed by the proposal.

Oracle's 3-year-old lawsuit filed against the now defunct third-party software service provider TomorrowNow alleging "massive theft" appears to be heading for resolution with owner SAP admitting liability However, the underlying issue that the suit touched upon -- how much support and maintenance a third-party software service provider can offer it...

Zoho is poised, possibly this week, to take its BlackBerry CRM app out of private beta and make it generally available. It will be followed in the coming weeks by an iPhone app, which is in development now, Raju Vegesna, evangelist for Zoho, told CRM Buyer. The interfaces of the iPhone and BlackBerry apps are different, of course, due to differenc...

A former employee's age-discrimination lawsuit against Google can proceed now that the California Supreme Court has cleared the way for "stray remarks" made by his colleagues to be included as evidence. The suit was originally filed in Santa Clara County in 2004 by Brian Reid, who served as director of operations and engineering at Google and is k...

Conflicting reports are circulating about whether Google and Verizon -- once bitter enemies on the subject of Net neutrality -- have come to an agreement on how network operators should manage Web traffic Several publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post have reported that the two firms are close ...

The Federal Trade Commission and Intel are settling charges of anticompetitive behavior the government agency has levied against the chipmaker. Intel, which hasn't admitted to any wrongdoing, has agreed to make several concessions to settle the charges, which the FTC brought forward in a lawsuit last December. Intel has agreed it will not pay cust...

Several mobile carriers, including AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, are working on a project that would allow consumers to use their smartphones to make purchases, thus displacing debt and credit cards. The project, reported by the Bloomberg news service, appears ready to roll out with a test scheduled for Atlanta and three other U.S. cities. Discover Financial Services and Barclays are said to be working on the trial project...

The time Americans devote to social networking sites and blogs has jumped dramatically in the last year, according to new figures from Nielsen. People in the U.S. spent nearly a quarter of their online time -- 22.7 percent -- on social networks and blogs in June 2010. That was up from 15.8 percent in June 2009, for a 43 percent increase The next mo...

There's a slew of CRM applications heading to mobile app format, available at online venues such as Apple's App Store and the Google Apps Marketplace. Social CRM, in particular, is on the vanguard as vendors optimize their applications for mobile use. One example is BatchBlue Software, a company targeting small business users. BatchBlue launched i...