Articles by Erika Morphy

Amazon is making its biggest acquisition yet, having inked an agreement to acquire online shoe retailer Zappos for close to US$900 million in stock and cash. Under the terms of the agreement, Amazon will acquire Zappos shares in exchange for approximately 10 million shares of Amazon common stock, valued at approximately $807 million. It will also provide Zappos employees with $40 million in cash and restricted stock units. The deal is expected to close this fall...

Yahoo is reportedly on the brink of acquiring Xoopit, a Firefox extension that lets users share content from their email accounts with social networks. Xoopit works with both Gmail and Yahoo Mail. It can send photos, videos, Web addresses, attachments and links to photo-sharing sites like Flickr or Picasa Xoopit will be acquired for US$20 million, ...

If you want to reach Jim Walden by email, you'll have to ping him atwork. Three months ago, he ditched his personal emailaccount because he was concerned about the security implications. Walden knows security. He's currently the cochair of the white collar practice at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and once served as chief of the computer crimes and inte...

Adobe has released two new platform initiatives for developers and content publishers: Open Source Media Framework, previously part of the Strobe project, gives developers new open source tools to build media players based on the Adobe Flash Platform.

This is the marketing resource management world, according to Manticore CEO Jeff Erramouspe: There are the enterprise-oriented types of platforms that can handle robust applications. Their downside is that they require consultants to manage their difficult implementations and dedicated personnel for their ongoing use.

A mini-drama of particular interest to bloggers unfolded in the midst of the hoopla surrounding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's resignation earlier this month. Having become the standard bearer for the Republican party's ultra-conservative wing, Palin never really left the media spotlight following her unsuccessful run for the vice-presidency. Her abrupt decision to resign created shock waves...

Microsoft and Yahoo may be close to finalizing details on the elusive search and online advertising deal that the two have been flirting with for more than a year. The news that the duo are finalizing terms was reported by Kara Swisher in the All Things Digital blog Microsoft executives have flown from their Redmond headquarters to Silicon Valley t...

Macrovision, a company that has a number of operations under its roof but is best known for its digital rights management software, has issued a spate of announcements. Two major developments head the list: It is changing its name, and it is embarking on a new product path -- namely the launch of a media guide codenamed "Liquid." The company's new ...

A hack into Twitter's back-end productivity applications earlier this month is raising some serious questions -- not only about password system security itself, but also about some consequences of network intrusion that may have been unforeseen. About a month ago, a hacker was able to access a Twitter employee's personal email account, according t...

An unhappy Kindle customer is taking his grievance to court. Seattle resident Matthew Geise bought the second-generation model of Amazon.com's popular e-reader device, the Kindle 2 -- along with the US$29.99 Kindle Cover -- only to find that this protective covering was anything but. Geise made the purchase as a birthday gift for his wife....

Verizon has launched two products that fall into what it is calling the "social TV" service category: the Widget Bazaar application store and Internet Video on TV The latter is a collection of widgets that Verizon has developed in conjunction with Facebook Connect, Twitter, ESPN, Veoh, Blip.tv, and Dailymotion that let FiOS TV subscribers connect w...

Space Exploration Technologies -- or SpaceX, as it is usually called -- took a key step toward providing support for NASA and advancing private space travel on Monday: It successfully launched a small satellite into orbit atop its Falcon 1 rocket It was a first for the company, which has been making significant strides in private space flight sinc...

Microsoft is taking a new pricing approach with its upcoming Windows Azure cloud operating system: It will allow customers to pay on a per-use basis rather than calculating license fees according to number of processors or some other traditional measure. Microsoft reportedly will charge for the services and bandwidth consumed on the Azure OS, SQL ...

Nokia and AT&T Wireless have introduced a low-priced smartphone that plays up its social networking features and comes with a Qwerty keyboard. It will run on AT&T's 3G network. The primary constituency of the Nokia Surge is likely to be younger users who rely on their phones to support most of their Internet-related activities....

M.A. Ketabchi, president, CEO and founder of business process management provider Savvion, might have done just as well focusing on product marketing in his career. From the beginning, he has distinguished Savvion from the competition by concentrating on the one thing potential customers care about the most: rapid ROI. "Our customers have always a...

Sprint Nextel and Ericsson startled the telco world with the announcement that Ericsson would take over managing the day-to-day operations of Sprint's CDMA, iDEN and wireline networks. "Network Advantage," as they've termed the seven-year outsourcing deal, is valued between US$4.5 billion and $5 billion. It includes an option for renewal Under the ...

LexisNexis is enhancing its customer relationship management product, InterAction CRM, with its version of social networking functionality. Called "InterAction IQ," the tool delves into the CRM app and the Exchange Server to establish which users have relationships with certain clients or prospective clients, and then rates those relationships as ...

Google's announcement of a Chrome operating system, coming just nine months after its launch of the Chrome browser, has the tech sector buzzing over the possibilities. Google is targeting netbooks, claiming to have agreements with several OEMs already inked. How will the option of a Chrome OS be received by the desktop-using masses? Are they ready...

Microsoft reportedly is in preliminary talks to settle two pending antitrust investigations now before the European Commission. Microsoft wants to end these probes before the Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes leaves office at the end of the year, according to the scuttlebutt. Microsoft did not return a request for comment in time for publicati...

Yahoo has rolled out a beta for a feature designed to meet an unfilled need in online search: automated note-taking. The newSearch Pad feature in Yahoo Search automates note taking through a number of functions, such as saving recently visited links. It does not target the so-called stereotypical search engine user -- that is, someone who's lookin...