Articles by MIke Pearson

Telecom giant Verizon's second-quarter profits fell 21 percent from the same period last year, but much of the decline was attributable to charge-offs due to previous workforce reductions and deteriorating demand among business customers battered by the global recession, the company reported Monday The company announced plans to cut 8,000 more jobs...

Noting that more and more businesses are using Twitter to communicate with customers, the San Francisco social networking startup has launched a new sub-site to help companies learn strategies to leverage the service to their benefit Twitter101 provides a quick overview explaining what Twitter is, a guide to the service's sometimes impenetrable lin...

Gateway announced its third entrant in the netbook market on Monday, the LT2000 series, less than a month after introducing the 3100 series, its first product offering in this category (click image to enlarge)...

Worldwide PC shipments will fall on a year-over-year basis for the first time in nearly a decade, but all signs still point to a late-year tech sector recovery, according to research firm iSuppli Shipments will fall 4 percent from 2008 sales, to 287.3 million units, the firm predicted....

Blockbuster and Samsung announced Tuesday that they are partnering to bring the movie-rental chain's digital streaming library to the electronics giant's televisions, home theater systems and Blu-ray disc players. The service should be available by this fall The owners of some existing 2009 model televisions, Blu-ray players and home theater system...

Not content with battling Google on the search front, Microsoft now plans to offer a free, lightweight Web version of its Office productivity suite The Web app will come as part of the next major release, Microsoft said Monday, as it announced that Office 2010 was entering an invite-only technical preview, with general availability projected for th...

Sony joined the netbook race on Monday with a new line of Vaio models The move comes nearly a year after the Sony executive in charge of the Vaio line derided the diminutive computers as part of a damaging "race to the bottom" for computer manufacturers....

Nokia is denying rumors that it is about to unveil a smartphone running on Google's Android operating system "There is no truth to this rumor whatsoever," spokesperson Joseph Gallo told LinuxInsider on Monday. "It is a well-known fact that Symbian is our platform of choice for smartphones."

More companies are joining in the fight over Internet taxation begun by Amazon.com Internet retailers Blue Nile and Overstock.com have joined the Web's largest retailer in dropping affiliate programs in North Carolina and Rhode Island, according to numerous press reports. Amazon also reportedly dropped its affiliate program in Hawaii....

The free fall in the IT sector may be nearing an end, according to Forrester While the decline is not yet over, spending should begin to improve as the year wears on, culminating in the beginning of a recovery in the fourth quarter, according to a report by Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Andrew Bartels....

Palm's new smartphone, the Pre, is off to a rolling good start and has plenty of room to grow, but it isn't likely to emerge as a solo iPhone killer, ABI Research analyst Michael Morgan told the E-Commerce Times on Tuesday Morgan's assessment comes amid widely reported news accounts of a note from Charter Equity Research estimating sales of the Pre...

European consumers will be able to cut a few cords from their lives as early as next year when smartphone manufacturers are expected to begin providing standardized chargers under an agreement announced Monday with the European Commission The agreement follows a February announcement by the GSM Association, a London-based industry trade group, deta...

The Department of Defense will proceed with the creation of a new command to coordinate the day-to-day defense of military, federal government and critical civilian networks from attack, according to numerous press reports The cyberdefense command will be part of the U.S. Strategic Command, a multiservice military operation that is responsible for,...

In what's being hailed as a milestone moment, Intel and Nokia announced Tuesday that they will work together on developing new mobile chipset technologies, as well as new devices to use them What, exactly, those devices might be or when they might find their way into consumers' hands remains unknown. Neither Intel nor Nokia executives wanted to dis...

Amid questions about consumer enthusiasm for Blu-ray technology, Sony on Monday announced a new notebook computer positioned by the electronics giant as an entry-level Blu-ray player for mobile viewing The VAIO NW notebook series carries an US$880 starting price tag for a Blu-ray equipped model, and comes with a 15.5-inch widescreen display, as wel...

Norway-based Opera Software opened access Tuesday to what it described as a "revolutionary" technology that allows average computer users to set up browser-based servers to share files and photos, stream music and chat "Unite," as the service is called, is included in a beta release of the company's Opera browser, which ranks a distant third behind...

Should you read this article? Maybe Hunch can help you decide The new Web service, open to the public Monday, is meant to help people make decisions on hundreds of topics -- such as what kind of camera to buy or where to go on vacation....

The Federal Communications Commission has closed the first round of comment on its national broadband plan initiative, a requirement of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 The FCC must deliver a completed plan to Congress by February 2010 showing the way to more widespread broadband adoption nationwide....

EMC's all-cash bid to buy Data Domain is going to be hard to beat, according to Stifel Nicolaus analyst Aaron Rakers EMC's US$1.8 billion bid, announced Monday, is worth $30 per share in cash, a 20 percent premium over a previously accepted bid by NetApp of $25 per share. NetApp's bid included payment of $11.45 in cash and 0.75 shares of its stock ...

Google said Monday that it plans to build an e-book service to make electronic editions of mainstream titles available to consumers -- whether they own a specialized e-book reader or not The service should roll out by the end of the year, Google spokesperson Gabriel Stricker told the E-Commerce Times....