Articles by Erika

Microsoft has forged deals with LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook to connect their networks through its popular email and personal information manager, Outlook The company introduced Outlook Social Connector when it rolled out a beta of Microsoft Office 2010 last November. The OSC connects emails, contact information and networking sites within the Ou...

Research In Motion released details about several anticipated new offerings for its BlackBerry device at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They include a new WebKit-based browser, a free version of BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, and an assortment of new apps RIM executives at the trade show emphasized the new BlackBerry browser's ease ...

Google has opted not to attempt further renegotiations of its Digital Books settlement agreement with the Authors Guild despite objections the Department of Justice lodged earlier this month. Instead, it is gambling that the judge will see its view of the matter. In a filing made Thursday at the U.S. district court in Manhattan, Google asked Judge...

In general, Internet security experts become alarmed whenever a new social networking app looks like it is going to become the next big craze. "People already have so much information coming at them online and through their email boxes," said Gerry Egan, vice president of product development at Symantec. The last thing we need is another vehicle t...

AT&T has picked Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to build its new LTE (Long Term Evolution) high-speed wireless network. It is a significant win for the two companies, which are developing a similar network for Verizon, as it solidifies their hold on this particular piece of the wireless infrastructure market. For consumers, an LTE network with a speci...

AT&T has picked Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to build its new LTE (Long Term Evolution) high-speed wireless network. It is a significant win for the two companies, which are developing a similar network for Verizon, as it solidifies their hold on this particular piece of the wireless infrastructure market. For consumers, an LTE network with a speci...

AT&T has picked Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent to build its new LTE (Long Term Evolution) high-speed wireless network. It is a significant win for the two companies, which are developing a similar network for Verizon, as it solidifies their hold on this particular piece of the wireless infrastructure market. For consumers, an LTE network with a speci...

Google is making a play for social media users with Buzz -- a new tool that enables Gmail users to view media and status updates of friends. Typically, when Google enters new territory, it is enough to send stock prices plummeting and analyst wheels spinning. Oftentimes, there is a good reason. Consider the ruminations on the fate of standalone G...

Google has taken two key steps to propel sales of its smartphone, the Nexus One. It has cut the early termination fee from US$350 to $150. It has also introduced customer support for the ordering and shipping processes. However, these moves are not as expansive as some users would like. For one thing, T-Mobile's early termination fee, which is sep...

The Department of Justice has advised the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that "significant" copyright and antitrust issues remain in the proposed amended settlement agreement between Google and the Authors Guild. "The amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement," the agency e...

Amazon has reportedly acquired Touchco, a start up company that focuses on touch-screen technology, according to a report in The New York Times that cites a person briefed on the deal as a source. Amazon does not comment on rumors or speculation, Amazon spokesperson Mary Osako told the E-Commerce Times....

PC users purchased record numbers of Windows licenses in the last three months of 2009, driving big gains for Microsoft over the company's second fiscal quarter, the first quarter in which the company's Windows 7 OS was on retail shelves For its quarter ended Dec. 31, Microsoft reported net income of US$6.66 billion, or 74 cents per share, from $4....

Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the Minnesota woman who was twice found liable for copyright infringement for sharing two dozen songs using an online file-sharing application, has turned down an offer to settle her US$54,000 penalty for less than half that amount. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave Thomas-Rasset the option of settling...

The Department of Justice has cleared the path for Live Nation and Ticketmaster to merge -- but with several conditions attached, including significant support to companies that will be formed to provide competition. The two firms, which announced the possibility of a merger a year ago, have agreed to the conditions, setting the stage for the crea...

Minnesota federal judge Michael Davis has reduced the fine imposed on Jammie Thomas-Rasset for illegally sharing music on the Internet from US$1.92 million to $54,000. Davis, who presided over the trial, said that the original calculations to determine Thomas-Rasset's penalty -- more than $83,000 per song -- were "monstrous and shocking."

Move over Data.gov. The United Kingdom has unveiled its own version of an open source database for its citizens, and the U.S. version pales in comparison. The site, data.gov.uk, which has been running in beta since last September, opened to the public this week to much fanfare. The brainchild of Web founder Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt, a ...

After strenuous deliberations, the European Union's antitrust regulatory authority is giving Oracle's proposed US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems a green light. The EU's approval is the culmination of a months-long dispute between Oracle and Europe that threatened the deal's survival until Oracle signaled last month it would make some...

People who use social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are not known for their reticence -- many put just about any personal information imaginable out there. The risks to such openness are clear -- from inviting tailored phishing attacks to appalling potential employers with one's late-night party habits -- but many users who are tec...

Microsoft has said it will change Bing's search data retention policies, promising to hold users' IP address data for only six months instead of 18 The change in policy is due to a number of trends, including growing pressure from regulatory authorities, Bing Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen acknowledged in a blog post, citing privacy standard...

Consumers will spend US$6.2 billion in 2010 at mobile application stores, while related advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide, according to new statistics from Gartner. Those numbers are expected to rapidly grow within the next few years, the analyst firm predicted: By 2013, worldwide downloads will surpass $21.6 billi...