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SugarCRM is repackaging its functionality to target both companies that wish to resell SugarCRM to their own customers as well as large-scale enterprises that wish to manage multiple instances of the application through one console Its new product, Sugar Data Center Edition, bundles existing software, systems management, monitoring, subscription an...

EMC announced a new line of deduplicating backup storage products this week at its annual EMC World conference held in Las Vegas In addition to deduplication, the new offerings include disk drive spin down and low-power disk drive technologies, all of which are meant to lower the cost for businesses to use disk-based backups rather than tape....

SOA (service-oriented architecture) is replacing Web services, which took the spot of object-oriented programming, which usurped the client/server computer, which supplanted mainframe computing as the primary way that companies design their applications. As the latest transition takes place, SOA is encountering some of the problems that the other initiatives had to overcome: a dramatic corporate retooling, which is needed in order to reap the advantage of the new programming capabilities.

A recent report from the Aberdeen Group explores the critical role closed-loop marketing plays in today's Best-in-Class organizations, and the dynamic shift in the tools, technologies and processes that support today's top-performing closed-loop marketing initiatives. Significantly, 88 percent of top-performing organizations indicated they leverage closed-loop marketing.

Open source mobile messaging software developer Funambol has created a new open source software (OSS) forge as a central collaboration site for mobile OSS developers around the world The Web site pulls together some 50,000 global developers to a combination of wikis, blogs and forums in addition to discussions and code for 30 open source mobile pro...

HP kicked off a new effort Thursday to expand its green computing influence with the release of a series of products, tools, services and initiatives to help customers reduce their environmental impact when imaging and printing The product releases target the differing needs of enterprise, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), consumers, and gr...

Nanotechnology may be considered one of the most promising new technologies emerging today, but it's also the source of considerable concern about potential risks to the environment and human health. A new study published Tuesday in Nature Nanotechnology adds further evidence that there's good reason for that concern In the study, titled "Carbon na...

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the organization focused on bringing low-cost laptops to children in developing nations, announced it intends to release a newly redesigned version of the XO notebook, the XO-2, in 2010. The second generation of the XO will include new technology to meet OLPC's goal of advancing new concepts of learning, lowering power...

Bidding to grab an early share of the rapidly growing mobile advertising market, Microsoft on Tuesday announced a broad initiative to drive both display and search ads on mobile devices The software giant will immediately make available display advertising on its Windows Live for mobile platform and will soon roll out plans to serve advertising wit...

Results of a customer satisfaction survey released this week are timely for one industry in particular, as it faces a perfect storm: the collision of potentially stringent new regulations affecting customer service with a host of economic factors that are driving perception of that service deeper into the ground The industry is, of course, the airl...

It all used to be so simple -- at least for retailers. Back in the day, it was enough to have your catalog online; then interactivity and rich media came along. Now, we're in an age of personalization, where buyer patterns are predicted and mapped to up-sell and cross-sell options. The Internet has indelibly changed the way retailers engage with prospects, and how products are sold. ...

Zuora introduced itself to the world this week, and while it is not a typical CRM company, its position should have a big impact on CRM and all other markets that offer on-demand solutions. Founders Tien Tzuo, K.V. Rao and Cheng Zou, formerly of Salesforce.com and WebEx, chose the usually sedate billing market because they have a new idea that looks like it has legs...

Looking to remodel your own little castle in Spain? Perhaps just design a modest little country cottage or addition to your current abode? As in many areas, software tools and expertise up until relatively recently accessible only to professionals are now available to just about anyone that cares to invest a little time and money acquiring and learning how to use them.

Nobody likes it when people renege on a promise. You don't have to look very far to see how we as a society view people who lie, break promises or misrepresent themselves. In movies, the bad guy is always dishonest. In books, liars invariably get clobbered: Iago gets tortured, Claggart gets walloped, and Dante puts the liars all the way at the bottom of hell. In fact, even our English word "hell" is derived from the Old Norse "hel" -- a place for punishing "oathbreakers and criminals."

In its most direct challenge yet to the dominance of Apple's iTunes Music Store, Napster on Tuesday launched what it says is the largest online MP3 download store, selling some six million tracks All of the songs offered for download by Napster are free of digital rights management (DRM) controls, meaning they can be played on virtually any device,...

Greenpeace International has taken video game console makers to task for using hazardous materials in the devices, releasing a detailed report Tuesday. Test results in the "Playing Dirty" report indicated that Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony have moved away from or limited their usage of individual toxic compounds in certain materials in the consoles...

Netflix has launched a new set-top TV box that may usher in a new generation for the company's movie distribution model -- online streaming downloads directly to a consumer's television. To get the job done, Netflix has teamed with Roku to build the new box, called "The Netflix Player by Roku." The player is about the size of a paperback novel, com...

Google launched the beta version of its Google Health personal health records aggregator Monday. The service, according to Google, will put users in control of their own medical records, giving them 24-hour-a-day access to their health records from a variety of sources With the introduction of Google Health, the search giant joins other Internet co...

I remember being at the 2000 Democratic National Convention and watching Joe Lieberman give his speech accepting the nomination as Al Gore's running mate. Contrasted with the opposing lines of bandana-faced protesters and riot-geared officers, his speech left me hopeful and uplifted. I recall I felt a sense of pride and kinship, as if I were witnessing history in the making...

When an e-commerce startup talks about upending the business model on which Amazon and eBay and other e-tail giants have built billion-dollar businesses, it's clear it doesn't lack ambition Still, the founders of Cartfly believe the new face of the Web will eventually create a new way to sell and buy goods online, one as broadly distributed and spr...