Articles by Jennifer LeClaire

Yahoo is hogging the tech media headlines today as observers seek to separate fact from fiction As the dust settles, it is clear that Yahoo is planning a new search tool, may not be losing its head honcho to Disney, and has wooed a former ABC programmer to its camp....

From New Zealand to India, worldwide tech media is buzzing with headlines about China cracking down on thousands of Internet cafes. In a market that has some 87 million Internet users -- the world's second-largest population of Netizens after the United States -- the implications on e-commerce have far-reaching effects China has shut down 1,600 Int...

Mandrakesoft is giving the penguin a makeover with its latest Linux release, complete with extended support for mobile devices, enhanced hardware compatibility and major application upgrades Company officials said Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official will become the basis for a large part of the software publisher's product range while attempting to stay tr...

In a possible reaction to hacker concerns, the Bush Administration has blocked at least some foreign visitor access to its official re-election site The British Internet traffic analysis company Netcraft reported several locations have not had access to the site since Monday....

Linux could be poised to take another big step into the public sector overseas, thanks to a new report from the UK Office of Government Commerce (OCG). The OCG study concluded that open-source operating systems such as Linux are "viable" and could "generate significant savings." The UK joins other European and Asian nations in their open-source exp...

In a move that gives Linux greater play in the data center, Dell has reached an agreement with Novell to certify Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 on Dell PowerEdge servers The companies said the deal would give customers more choices for fully-supported Linux platform developments. Dell Services will also assist customers throughout the lifec...

Despite strong shipments from top-five vendors Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the worldwide market for hand-held devices has experienced its third successive quarter of year-over-year decline Device shipments totaled 2.1 million units in the third quarter, an 8.7 percent year-over-year decrease, according to IDC's Worldwide Hand-held QView report....

After making two acquisitions of its own over the past few months, Classmates Online is selling its assets to United Online for US$100 million in a move that will boost United's subscriber base United, which also operates NetZero and Juno services, will add the subscription-based Web site that allows classmates, teachers and friends to find one ano...

IBM has announced a new low-cost blade server along with a set of "Business-in-a-Box" solutions targeting small- to mid-sized businesses (SMB) The entry-level BladeCenter Express Model gives smaller companies access to IBM's eServer technology at a lower price. The pared down server can still accommodate up to 14 dual-processor servers, but with a ...

In another move to exterminate worms and viruses in networked businesses, Cisco today said it would buy Perfigo for $74 million in cash Perfigo's CleanMachines is a "shrink-wrapped" network admission control solution that recognizes users, their devices and roles; evaluates the security posture of the endpoint and scans for vulnerabilities; and enf...

"Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" has become the second computer game to be a victim of Internet pirates in less than a week. Illegal copies of Rockstar Games' much-anticipated title, its manual and its cover are popping up all over the Web just days before its official release This follows online pirates theft of "Doom 3" and "Half-Life 2" in August...

In a world that just keeps getting smaller, Microsoft and Swatch have teamed up to introduce a new line of watches that that uses wireless technology to offer personalized news, sports and weather from MSN Direct If that's not enough to sell the futuristic timepiece, the Swiss watchmaker is also attempting to woo consumers with exclusive entertainm...

U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell is calling for a hands-off approach to Voice over IP (VoIP) and has vowed to attempt to take regulatory control back from the states after the presidential election "It is very likely that treatment of VoIP will have some of the farthest reaching consequences of anything the Commi...

Unisys has joined forces with the SAS Institute to make Linux enterprise-ready for business intelligence in a move that demonstrates the server maker's commitment to meeting customer interest in open-source software and services The effort is aimed at helping organizations migrate from the proprietary Unix/RISC-based systems to industry-standard 32...

When you ask business folk if they've considered hiring an IT consultant to move their company to an open-source platform, some think of a penguin logo and sleep-deprived, pony-tail-sporting developers. Others conjure up an image of an unkempt young techie with his feet up on the desk and Cheetos crumbs on his keyboard These perceptions may be unfa...

Search engine company Google has found itself under intense scrutiny over privacy concerns just days after releasing its new desktop search tool Google released a beta version of Desktop Search just last week with the typical media fanfare and analyst glee. The free downloadable tool allows users to search personal computer files at the same speed ...

Black Duck Software has released code designed to help attorneys wade through the multifaceted intellectual property (IP) issues around open-source software As part of its protexIP solution suite, protexIPTM/license management allows corporate legal teams to manage commercial and open-source software licenses and implement IP business policies acro...

JBoss is throwing its open source weight around in the business process management (BPM) ring, adding a workflow engine to its middleware platform with today's launch of jBPM 2.0 JBoss will compete with the likes of Oracle, BEA Systems, IBM and Microsoft for its share of a BPM market that Gartner predicts will see moderate double-digit growth, to U...

U.S.-based computer memory chip maker Micron Technology has announced plans to build its first chip manufacturing plant in China in mid-2005, according to an Associated Press report today citing a company executive in Shanghai as its source Micron plans to spend "likely more" than US$100 million (about 80 million euros) over the next three to five ...

IBM is putting rivals Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems on notice with the announcement of two new p5 servers capable of running Linux and Unix and allowing users to run 254 virtual servers on each machine "HP and Sun should be concerned about IBM's p5 because the price of the machines are relatively low and the performance is very high," Bill C...