Articles by Erika

Until recently, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act -- covering a myriad of activities related to hacking and intellectual property theft -- was just one of many questionable federal laws on the books. Then came the case of Lori Drew -- the woman found guilty of a misdemeanor under the Act: accessing protected computers without authorization. What Dr...

British residents are finding that access has been restricted to a Wikipedia page about "Virgin Killer," an album by the 1970s German rock group Scorpions. Several British Internet service providers have limited access to the page because it displays an image of the album's cover, which depicts a nude, prepubescent girl The ISPs took action in res...

SugarCRM has released Sugar 5.2, which packages some existing Web 2.0 features with new technologies. The company is also introducing Cloud Services -- a framework for developers to build links to third-party data sources such as LinkedIn or JigSaw. SugarCRM is no stranger to Web 2.0. It has made the Sugar platform available through partnerships t...

Salesforce.com has announced its latest platform-to-platform integration -- this time with Google. Force.com for Google App Engine is a new set of tools and services that allows developers to build Web applications on App Engine that leverage the enterprise data that resides in Salesforce.com. At Dreamforce last month, Salesforce.com announced it ...

A few weeks ago, Johnson & Johnson presented the blogosphere withan ad for its brand name pain reliever Motrin that was aimed at mothers who were experiencing back pain from carrying their babies around in slings. The backlash was swift. The ad struck many viewers as having a tone that mocked, or at best condescended to, the very demographic the c...

Research In Motion has lowered its Q3 forecast in response to the weakening U.S. economy. The company, which produces the iconic BlackBerry handsets, now expects adjusted earnings per share to fall between 81 US cents and 83 cents for the quarter. Its initial forecast called for earnings per share to range from 89 cents to 97 cents Third-quarter re...

Part 1 of this two-part series discusses the growing interest in developing ways for Web surfers to move seamlessly from one online hub to another without the bother of multiple sign-ons and the inconvenience of leaving data and connections behind. Part 2 looks at some recent attempts to solve the dilemma. Within the last two days, a handful of ne...

Zoho has added a new offering to its portfolio of online services: an SQL-based front end for its online reporting and business intelligence service application. Zoho CloudSQL is a middleware service that uses Structured Query Language to connect to business data stored in Zoho Reports, the company's online reporting and business intelligence serv...

There's been a growing concern among companies operating social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn -- as well as the hundreds of niche sites that have sprung up -- that too many of these online hubs could lead to paralysis among users. Inevitably, a user with too many sites to visit and update will abandon some, if not most. Facebook,...

Update Rollup 1 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is now available. No, it's not a new release -- but as with anything Microsoft, the cyber-community is talking about implementation do's and don'ts The authors are advising users NOT to import customizations to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server in the following scenarios:...

About eight months ago, the owners of a sporting goods company contacted their attorney, Doug Wolf, a partner at Wolf Greenfield. It seemed a company was using the firm's logo and trademark without proper authorization. Setting the matter right should have been a straightforward task for Wolf -- except for the fact that the intellectual property theft was happening online, specifically in Second Life.

Last Wednesday, a troubled teenager went home, logged onto the Internet, and discussed his unhappiness with strangers at a discussion board he liked to frequent. He wanted to kill himself, he said. And then Abraham Biggs Jr. did just that -- on live videocam. The camera stopped running approximately 12 hours later when the police came to the door.

President-elect Barack Obama may not find it that hard to give up his BlackBerry after all. Verizon Wireless has announced that some of its employees accessed his personal cell phone account records. The wireless provider apologized to the president-elect and said it would discipline the employees involved Verizon apparently realized this week that...

IBM and five universities are receiving funding from a government agency to build a supercomputer -- but not just any supercomputer. They've been tasked with building hardware and software that mimics the human brain "There are no computers today that can even remotely approach the robust and versatile functionality of the brain," said Dharmendra M...

RightNow Technologies has gone deep with contact center functionality in November 08, the latest quarterly update of its flagship Software as a Service CRM application. The new version builds on RightNow's strong self-service platform with the addition of agent-scripting technology, a desktop add-in framework, and guided assistance. RightNow has a...

CA has released a suite of Enterprise IT Management (EITM) software tools that it's calling the next "killer app" for virtualization. The first phase in the nascent industry -- server consolidation -- is well underway; the next big trend, according to CA, is the comprehensive management of virtual systems....

Fifteen people have filed suit against online media company NebuAd, alleging that its use of deep packet inspection technology violates consumer privacy. The technology tracks the Web-surfing habits of ISP customers in order to better target ads to them. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, also ...

Saturday, Nov. 8, 6:15 p.m. The Wheaton, Md., Metrorail stop in greater Washington, D.C. I am meeting a friend at 7, and I'm later than I wanted to be getting to the Metro. It's not that I don't have this routine down pat: It takes about 40 minutes in non-rush hour to get to Dupont Circle, and trains run every 15 minutes. Unfortunately, though, I'm a bit off my stride. I forgot to get dollar bills and now have to scrounge through my purse looking for enough loose change. Uh oh. I can tell from the people coming up the escalator that the train is close.

Microsoft has upgraded Windows Live, its group of Web 2.0-style online services, with a new set of social networking apps. Many of these new applications are upgraded versions of the services that Windows Live has been extolling since its inception, including photo sharing, e-mail and instant messaging. The new package also offers integration with...

Part 1 of this three-part series discusses the fuzziness -- or the flexibility, depending on one's point of view -- of the definition of "cloud computing." Part 2 provides a snapshot of some of the major players and best-of-breed vendors in this fast-growing technology sector....