Articles by Erika Morphy

It has been eight years since the 2000 presidential election revealed the many flaws that existed in the mechanics of U.S. voting systems. Despite that debacle, many states have not made even basic improvements to assist voters -- such as providing user-friendly Web sites that tell them how to register and where to go to vote A new study has found ...

Research conducted at the University of Washington in Seattle suggests that clinical applications that can assist people paralyzed by spinal cord injuries or neurological diseases are perhaps five years away from realization In a study published by Nature, scientists Eberhard E. Fetz, Chet T. Moritz and Steve I. Perlmutter demonstrated for the fir...

The Federal Trade Commission has essentially shut down the largest spam operation in the world, freezing the assets of two of its accused ringleaders Lance Atkinson, a New Zealand citizen living in Australia, and Jody Smith of Texas, deceptively marketed a variety of products through spam messages, including a male-enhancement pill, prescription dr...

Some five weeks after its launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, GeoEye-1, the satellite developed by aerial and geospatial information provider GeoEye, has signaled back to Earth GeoEye-1 snapped the first location the satellite saw when the camera door was opened -- Kutztown University, located midway between Reading and Allentown, ...

Microsoft gave audience attendees at the 2nd annual Microsoft Business Intelligence conference a sneak preview of its forthcoming SQL Server this week, code named "Kilimanjaro." It was an appropriate venue for its debut, given its increased emphasis on BI. ...

Oracle is acquiring Primavera Software -- a best-of-breed vendor in the project portfolio management niche. The company already has some in-house functionality in this asset category; it now plans to leverage its existing technology with the Primavera product line to produce an enterprise application.

Google is expanding its market-making ad platform to reach online gamers, a 200-million-strong constituency, with the introduction of a beta program,AdSense for Games. As part of the AdSense platform, it operates much as one would expect: Game producers can display video ads, image ads or text ads within their games to earn revenue. They can cont...

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Dish Network's appeal of a decision that found EchoStar had infringed TiVo's patent for its Time Warp software, which allows users to record television programs while watching a different channel, and also to skip over commercials. The appellate court ruling now stands, requiring Dish to pay US$104 milli...

Google's new Web browser, Chrome, is key to the company's push to connect its myriad Web offerings and become an integrated online service provider. That said, writing it off a month after its release -- based partly on figures that show a decline in downloads -- seems more Schadenfreude than sober analysis. Chrome's share of the overall market pe...

It didn't take long for NetSuite to cozy up to Google. Shortly after the Web conglomerate rolled out its open source browser Chrome last month, the SaaS suite provider announced its support NetSuite was also the first vendor to announce support for the iPhone and for Firefox 3.0, Mini Peres, NetSuite's vice president of product marketing, told Linu...

IBM's considerable footprint in the cloud computing space is growing larger. The company has announced an expansion of its ISV (independent software vendor) partner network; it has also launched a beta version of Bluehouse -- a social networking and collaboration cloud service designed to connect people from different businesses. Big Blue took the...

Of all the protests mounted against the pending ad partnership between Google and Yahoo, the one lodged by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., is bound to be among the most worrisome Kohl, who oversees the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to continue to monitor the competitive landscape of the online advertising industry ...

The U.S. House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversightreport is referenced as "Questions regarding technical flaws, poor government oversight and potential contractor mismanagement on the National Counterterrorism Center's RAILHEAD information technology program." As that language suggests, it chronicles a series of missteps in a US$...

Sprint Nextel has successfully rolled out Xohm in Baltimore. The new 4G wireless WiMax network runs on 2.5 GHz and delivers downloads at 2 to 4 Mbps -- but it is clear the telecom service provider is still carefully negotiating the industry land mine that has become network management On the same day the company introduced its service, it was also ...

The Motion Picture Association of America has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Los Angeles seeking a restraining order against RealNetworks. RealDVD, which became available on Tuesday, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the MPAA maintains.

Oracle introduced a new collaborative platform called "Beehive"at OpenWorld last week. To be sure, it was hardly the only announcement the enterprise software vendor made -- but it did serve as grist for many bloggers "It gives users a very slick way to communicate and work together, and does an excellent job of tying together email client, IM prog...

Besides working overtime to crank out the US$700 billion financial market rescue plan -- to little avail as it turned out -- the House of Representatives on Sunday also passed a piece of legislation that could rack up significantly more penalties for copyright violation. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, or...

Three major Internet service providers have promised Congress that they do not monitor their customers' activities online. However -- in an argument worthy of the political venue in which it was made -- executives from these companies went on to equivocate: not that they do monitor users -- at least not to a gratuitous level. If they did, though, they were under no obligation to say so. However, if they should decide to monitor customers in the future, they would promise to adhere to certain rules of the road -- set by themselves. In other words, they told the legislators: There's no need for the federal government to step in and regulate, as we will do it for you.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison startled attendees at the company's Openworld conference -- as well as the rest of the industry -- with his announcement that Oracle and HP are joining forces to build computer hardware. It is Oracle's first direct foray into hardware manufacturing. HP will actually make the line of data warehouse application computers; Or...

As Wall Street unwound last week, RightNow CEO Greg Gianforte watched from a vantage point an ocean away. As it happened, he was in London, making a stop on his self-assigned global tour to visit the company's top 50 users Like many people, Gianforte is viewing the events with a combination of uncertainty and cautious hope that the turmoil has rea...