Articles by Erika Morphy

IBM has announced a new corporate strategy regarding its participation in the hundreds of standard-setting organizations relevant to its products. Simply put, it only wants to work within an environment that is open and transparent. "Standard-setting is too important -- for business, for government, for citizens and consumers -- to be anything but...

Adobe's long-awaited Creative Suite 4 has made its public debut. As the company has demonstrated with previous releases of Creative, as well as other products, it is advancing a Web 2.0 agenda. For example, Adobe has integrated Flash throughout Creative Suite 4 to facilitate collaboration among designers and developers as they craft digital work products...

Oracle OpenWorld wasn't a day old before Twitter-like blog posts began peppering the Internet Mike Gotta from the Burton Group posted notes encapsulating his essential gleanings from Charles Phillip's keynote: ...

A sales representative for a large electronics recycler in New Jersey is contacted by a Hong Kong-based importer seeking to buy CRT monitors. The buyer is worried about any U.S. laws that regulate such exports. The electronics recycler's response? Essentially, he told the importer it was only the laws at the port of Hong Kong that should concern him...

IBM is applying a common research model, collaboration between academia and the private sector, to the social media tech space. The IBM Center for Social Software is the first instance of a tech company establishing a center around these very popular emerging -- but still consumer-focused -- technologies, according to Big Blue. The Center's missio...

Peak oil: When planet Earth reaches the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. Some say it has already happened, some believe it will within the next 50 years, and some deny the possibility all together By any measure, though, it is a scary concept around which consultants, scientist...

The din of protest against the proposed Google and Yahoo ad partnership, announced earlier this summer, is getting louder every day. The World Association of Newspapers, a Paris-based organization that represents about 18,000 newspapers and 77 newspaper associations around the world, is asking the Antitrust Division of the United States Department...

There is a near-universal desire among firms to link all aspects of their supply chain -- including the customer front end -- on one platform. However, there are relatively few applications on the market today that address that demand ModusLink hopes to fill that void with its newly launched e-business suite.

Gartner's CRM conference is always a big event for the industry. The 2008 gathering, which just wrapped, was no different, with attendees leaving the Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center in Oxon Hill, Md., in a thoughtful mood over the direction CRM is heading. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of buzz around social networking, Heidi Cere...

Players in the fragmented and crowded ad platform space just lost a little more elbow room with the entrance of LinkedIn's Audience Network Not surprisingly, given its strong reach into business networks in almost every community, LinkedIn is offering up its job-related data to advertisers that seek to place ads targeting categories of professional...

Jeremy Jaynes -- said to be one of the world's most prolific spammers -- had his nine-year prison sentence vacated after the Virginia state Supreme Court ruled that the law under which he was prosecuted violated the First Amendment. The state's antispam law, the Court found, did not adequately differentiate between commercial and noncommercial spe...

With the exception of unlimited plans, major wireless carriers have raised their prices for text messaging almost in tandem by more than 100 percent over the last three years, a fact that caught the attention of U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. Kohl sent a letter to the chief executives of the four la...

When one company is ousted from the S&P 500 index, another one is added to keep the number at 500. The most recent losers in this game of musical chairs are, for obvious reasons, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Effective Sept. 12, these mortgage giants will be replaced by Fastenal and Salesforce.com, respectively. For Salesforce.com -- erstwhile upsta...

Four months out of the gate, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online has been updated with Web 2.0 functionality to support Internet marketing campaigns, as well as other activities. The new features allow users to create and manage online and search engine campaigns; research and bid on keywords using search engine optimization; analyze return on investmen...

Google and NBC Universal have inked a multiyear agreement under which Google will distribute ads through its Google TV Ads service for placement on some NBC cable channels Sci Fi, Oxygen, MSNBC, CNBC, Sleuth and Chiller are among the channels covered by the deal, which will go into effect later this year. NBC Universal is expected to add more chann...

The Association of National Advertisers wants the proposed Google-Yahoo advertising partnership blocked. The trade group -- which represents 400 companies that collectively spend over US$100 billion in marketing communications and advertising annually -- has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice objecting to the deal The New York-based as...

Comcast has answered the Federal Communications Commission's order -- to not only cease its controversial network management practices, but also reveal them publicly -- with a legal maneuver of its own: The cable provider has asked the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to overturn the ruling Prior to this juncture, Comcast has been circumspect in...

Last week, SugarCRM made version 5.1 generally available. With its beta release earlier this year, the open source CRM provider broke new ground, providing innovations in business intelligence and an intriguing mobile app for the BlackBerry and the iPhone. These features are deservedly being called "big ticket" items, says Martin Schneider, SugarC...

Gannett has increased its stake in CareerBuilder, acquiring another 10 percent of the Web site from the Tribune Company for US$135 million. Gannett now has a 50.8 percent controlling interest in the site. Other stakeholders are the Tribune, now with 30.8 percent, The McClatchy Company, with 14.4 percent, and Microsoft, with 4 percent....

Another front may be opening in the battle for mobile platform supremacy. Microsoft is rumored to be planning to launch its own mobile application store -- a rumor that began after some bloggers, including Mike Elgan at ComputerWorld, talked up an ad Microsoft apparently ran seeking talent to assist in the endeavor The ad was eventually taken down,...