Articles by Erika

Facebook has jumped into the online Q&A space -- typified, up until now, by such websites as Quora, Aardvark, Hunch, Ask.com, and Yahoo Answers -- with Facebook Questions, a beta feature that can be viewed by all Facebook users. The service is being released on a rolling basis, with reportedly some three million to five million people able to use ...

At face value, Motorola turned in respectable second quarter earnings: It posted revenue of US$5.414 billion, which, although down slightly from the $5.497 billion realized the same period a year earlier, nonetheless beat analyst expectations of approximately $5.19 billion The company also posted mobile smartphone shipments of 2.7 million units in ...

India's Ministry of Human Resource Development has unveiled a prototype of a touchscreen computer that will initially cost US$35. Eventually, Minister Shri Kapil Sibal said, the price will drop to $20 and then $10. "I think -- assuming the device does come to market -- that there will be some unexpected demographics interested in it," he added.

Facebook, one of the most popular sites on the Web -- now claiming 500 million users -- also has the dubious distinction of being one of the lowest-ranked in terms of customer satisfaction. Facebook scored a paltry 64 on the 100-point scale of the 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) E-Business Report. That puts it in the bottom 5 percent of all measured private sector companies, drawing the same level of consumer scorn as airline and cable companies. Indeed, its ranking is so low, even the IRS scored higher, the survey said.

The Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, a consortium of cable, entertainment and technology companies, has announced more details about a concept that would ultimately give consumers the ability to legally access the digital content of a slew of providers for use on multiple devices -- from smartphones to personal computers to Web-enabled television sets.

Amazon has announced a dramatic upswing in e-book sales. For the first half of 2010 it sold three times as many Kindle books as it did in the first half of 2009. For the full second quarter, it reported sales of 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books sold. Over the past month, it sold 180 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books. Amazon ...

Seven months after Avaya closed its acquisition of Nortel and simultaneously released a road map for integrating the two product lines, Avaya has delivered on that plan. It is releasing a cornucopia of new and enhanced products that largely follow the promises Avaya made in January, Drew Kraus, an analyst with Gartner told CRM Buyer. "I think they...

Motorola will sell the majority of its network equipment business to Nokia Siemens Networks in a US$1.2 billion deal that is generally seen as a positive move for both companies as they pursue their respective business strategies. Motorola gets a much-needed infusion of cash, plus the freedom to focus on its now-successful handset business. The tr...

U.S. sales of gaming hardware, software and accessories experienced a slump in the month of June with such transactions down by 6 percent compared to a year earlier, to US$1.1 billion, according to NPD Group. Within that category, hardware -- in particular, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 -- showed signs of growth, posting a 5 percen...

eBay has been slammed with a lawsuit alleging that the e-commerce giant infringes on six patents with its PayPal, Bill Me Later, Shopping.com and StubHub services. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware by XPRT Ventures, veers from the typical pattern of patent disputes. For starters, XPRT has already tabulated its damages and is a...

Facebook has been blindsided by a lawsuit that could have triggered an upheaval in its ownership structure, or at least a massive legal fight -- if it had been filed a few months ago, that is. Still, the modicum of legal uncertainty created by the case must be giving top executives at the social networking giant some concern.

Google has reportedly invested a significant sum of money -- between US$100 million and $200 million -- in social games company Zynga in order to build out a Google Games offering for the search engine giant. The news was first reported Friday by TechCrunch, which said it had received confirmation from multiple sources....

China has renewed Google's Internet Content Provider license, according to David Drummond, the company's senior vice president of corporate development and chief legal officer. With this step behind it now, Google will be able to continue to provide Web search and local products to users in China The question of whether Google would be able to oper...

Comcast's pending acquisition of General Electric's NBC Universal was put under the microscope again Thursday as the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and The Internet of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a field hearing to investigate the proposed deal The Federal Communications Commission is expec...

In May, TheFind reached a notable milestone: It overtook Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) Shopping to become the No. 2 search engine for retail queries, according to comScore. Google holds the No. 1 slot. A relative newcomer, TheFind has posted remarkable growth in a short period of time. In April, for example, it grew 175 percent year over year, noted founde...

Borders is expanding its reach into the e-book market with the launch of its e-bookstore, a site that holds 1.5 million titles and is powered by Canadian company Kobo. Borders acquired a stake in the firm last year and sells the Kobo eReader at the online store, as well as the Sony Reader Pocket Edition and Sony Reader Touch Edition. The Kobo eRea...

Netflix has expanded its library of streaming movie titles -- and will be making them available to customers much faster -- through a new agreement it has inked with distribution house Relativity Media As part of the deal, Relativity's movies can be streamed to Netflix's customer base months after they are released in theaters. This is a radical de...

Google has announced plans to buy ITA Software, a major provider of airline travel software, for US$700 million. ITA is a prominent player in its space -- it counts among its clients virtually all of the major Web travel information and booking providers, including such airlines as American and Continental as well as several aggregators like Hotwi...

Sony has issued a voluntary global recall of 535,000 Vaio notebook computers after reports of a defect in the devices' temperature control software was brought to its attention. The flaw can cause the notebook to overheat, sometimes to an extreme degree The recalled products are from the VPCF11 Series and VPCCW2 Series notebook computers, slightly ...

Google will no longer redirect mainland China Internet users to its Hong Kong site at Google.com.hk. Instead, it will display a link to the uncensored Hong Kong site on itsGoogle.cn landing page The Hong Kong page also gives mainland users access to such services as music and text translation....