Articles by Erika Morphy

Despite laws, safe-driving campaigns and even gory public service announcements, an overwhelming number of teens are still texting while driving, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Teens and Distracted Driving." Driving while distracted -- often due to texting while driving -- has been identified as an automob...

United Airlines was my Internet destination this week, as I continued samplingtravel-planning Web sites for the E-Commerce Times The first item to catch my eye was an unusual graphic. It was neither a 1) plane 2) automobile 3) hotel nor 4) iconic celebrity hawker.Instead it was a stylized drawing of a woman's outstretched leg with a big bow on her ...

After months of rumors, Dell has confirmed its intention to become a major player in the smartphone sector, announcing partnerships with China Mobile and Brazil-basedClaro, which is part of the America Movil network. This is not a regional or emerging market strategy on the part of Dell. "We plan to announce agreements with carriers in other marke...

Rival chip companies Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have forged an agreement to settle their legal conflicts. AMD has agreed to drop its litigation against Intel. In exchange, Intel will pay AMD US$1.25 billion and promise to follow certain business rules as the two continue to compete head to head. The deal includes a five-year cross-license renewal. ...

PC peripherals maker Logitech has announced it is acquiring LifeSize Communications for US$405 million in an all-cash transaction. The purchase of the high-end video equipment manufacturer places Logitech squarely in the middle of the enterprise video-conferencing industry. Acquiring LifeSize's high-definition video communication applications -- n...

Europe is ratcheting up its opposition to Oracle's proposed US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The European Commission has issued a formal statement of objections to the deal, based on a perceived threat to competition. Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes raised those concerns last month in a meeting with Oracle's top executives, ar...

The Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in Bilski v. Kappos, a case that has been making its way through the legal system for more than 10 years -- and along the way has morphed into the software industry's worst nightmare. "It's been called 'the case of the century,' and to a large extent I have to agree," John Squires, an attorney with Chadb...

Cisco has introduced new technologies to its collaboration platform -- a product portfolio that encompasses its telepresence, unified communications and WebEx solutions. Among the additions are new hosted email offerings and integration with enterprise social software. The enhancements leverage real-time and asynchronous collaboration applications in both video and voice-based communications.

Sales of Microsoft's Windows 7 boxed software over the first three days of its release have vastly surpassed those of its predecessor, Vista, for the same time period, according new figures from the NPD Group. Specifically, NPD's weekly tracking service is reporting that Windows 7 software sales in the U.S. were 234 percent higher for those three ...

This week, I headed southwest as I continued making the rounds of travel-planning Web sites for the E-Commerce Times My first impression of Southwest Airlines' Web site was that its online presence faithfully reflected its corporate persona: It looked to be a roll-up-your sleeves, no nonsense outfit....

Google has introduced a search engine for online retailers. Priced at US$50,000 annually, the Software as a Service offering is aimed at high-end e-commerce operations that want to provide customers looking for a particular product on their site with more accurate search results. Search is arguably one of the weakest features on most retailers' si...

Cisco is broadening its footprint with a major move into the cloud computing space. The company has formed a far-reaching partnership with EMC -- a joint venture in which VMware, a majority owned subsidiary of EMC, will also play a large role. Intel's Xeon processors and other data center technology are also a significant component to this offerin...

Microsoft has slashed the prices of its SaaS email offering and its online business productivity suite, making them more competitive with the low-cost premier edition of Google Apps Exchange Online as a standalone app is now available for US$5 per month instead of $10, while the Business Productivity Online Suite, which bundles online versions of E...

Though it's officially less than two weeks out of the gate, Microsoft's Windows 7 already owns a 3 percent share of the market for personal computer operating systems, according to Net Applications. When Windows 7 was generally released on Oct. 22, it already had a 1.99 percent share of the market, the firm reported. That figure rose to 3.67 percent by the end of last week.

Social networking site Facebook has been awarded US$711 million in damages from prolific spammer and social network scammer Sanford Wallace for bombarding its users with spam, Facebook attorney Sam O'Rourke reported in a blog post. Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court in Northern California also banned Wallace from accessing Facebook Faceb...

My tour of travel-planning Web sites for the E-Commerce Times has included stops at some of the aggregator sites, some discount companies and some alternative services. I'm now entering new territory with explorations of the Web sites of the operators themselves. First stop: JetBlue, a discount airline that has carefully cultivated a customer-frie...

Amazon has introduced a new shortcut for consumers to pay for their purchases on Amazon.com and partner Web sites. Amazon PayPhrase lets shoppers pick their own phrase -- for example, "Knick Knack" or "Jack's Allowance" -- and use it in lieu of entering a credit card number to make purchases. The phrase is accompanied by a pre-established PIN....

The Los Angeles City Council voted 12-0 on Tuesday to adopt Google Apps, which include Gmail and other office software tools, for its 30,000 employees. The deal places Los Angeles among the vanguard of public sector operations relying on cloud-based productivity software. Plans call for installation of the system by June, when a pilot project will...

The board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers may vote to allow internationalized domain names (IDNs) at the association's ongoing meeting in Seoul. Assuming the proposal is adopted, countries can apply to test country-code top level domains beginning in mid-November, ICANN spokesperson Michele Jourdan told TechNewsWorld.

Facebook has tweaked its home page once again -- this time offering users two different feeds: The News Feed features updates ranked according to what Facebook determines to be the most enjoyable or important content posted by a user's friends. The Live Feed, which consists of all of the real-time updates from the user's network, includes a larger assortment of information, such as notifications when friends add friends.