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Have you watched the news lately? "Credit markets deteriorate." "Housing foreclosures at 25 year high." "Unemployment on the rise." "Weakest U.S. dollar in decades." "Consumer confidence declining." It's pretty clear there could be some nasty surprises for businesses, and marketers in particular, if the economy continues down this path How's your d...

Part 1 of this two-part series explores the ways in which governments are attempting to use CRM technologies to improve services Like their peers in the private sector, government agencies are under pressure to deliver services around the clock and in digital form....

What a nut I was. Back when Sun Microsystems and Microsoft announced they would be joining forces on interoperability between Sun, nee Java, and .NET (remember Steve Ballmer [of "Ballmer and Butthead" fame] and Scott McNealy sitting side by side), I thought they meant it I pushed the envelope, just for giggles, calling for binary compatibility betw...

Plano, Texas-based Docudesk, which makes software tools to convert proprietary file formats such as Adobe's PDF (portable document format), recently introduced an enterprise version of its deskUNPDF document conversion line. The launch of deskUNPDF Professional provides users with new feature options and conversion formats to address a wide array of PDF document conversion needs on both Intel and PowerPC OS X systems...

The "digital universe" of data was bigger than expected in 2007 and continuing to explode in size, according to a new study from IDC The study, sponsored by EMC and titled "The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2011," found that there were about 281 billion gigabytes (or 281 exabytes...

The House Judiciary Committee held a panel hearing on the issue of net neutrality Tuesday, hearing testimony from such diverse interests as a rock band, an abortion rights advocacy group and the Christian Coalition of America. The unlikely trio converged on the Hill to call for legislation that would ensure that cable and telco Internet service providers do not dole out broadband -- or restrict its use -- for political reasons...

Nortel debuted a new optical network technology designed to provide four times the capacity of current systems and as much as 10 times the capacity in the future The 40G/100G Adaptive Optical Engine boosts transmissions from 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) to 40 Gbps, and will go as high as 100 Gbps by the end of 2009, Nortel said, using the existing...

YouTube has opened up its application programming interfaces (APIs) to the world. This will let developers build what amounts to their own mini-YouTubes on their Web sites, blogs or Wikis "We now support upload, other write operations and internationalized standard feeds," wrote Stephanie Liu of the YouTube APIs and Tools Team on the YouTube blog....

TiVo and Google have struck a deal that will enable the digital video recorder maker's users to watch Web-based YouTube videos on their television sets The service will be available later this year to consumers who own its Series 3 devices connected to the Internet through a broadband link, TiVo said....

Think of this scene: A woman walks into a high-end department store on Fifth Avenue. As she enters, a salesperson rushes up to her, shouting: "Welcome back, Ms. Smith. Last time you were here, you bought some makeup. I bet you want to buy some perfume today, right?" Web-based commerce has made massive strides in the past 10 years. The leaders in t...

Open source software is making its way into the systems that touch our everyday lives, from our banks to the stores where we shop. Open source is also found in some of the IT systems that manage traffic flow on city streets, state highways and in the skies. In fact, throughout the overlapping transportation and travel industries, open source has a very big footprint...

In Part 1 of this five-part series, we define virtualization; in Part 2, we look at the business drivers for virtualization; Part 3 looks at the challenges enterprises face when they virtualize their IT environment. This installment covers implementing and maintaining a virtualized system Before you implement a virtualized environment, you have to...

Sprint has provided a software upgrade to the HTC Mogul smartphone that will let it be the first smartphone to use Sprint's 3G EV-DO Rev. A network, which has previously been limited to laptop PC cards. EV-DO Rev. A is much faster than its widely used predecessor, EV-DO Rev. 0 EV-DO Rev. A lets users send and receive data at broadband speeds compar...

Only a few months into a relationship with Linux-powered PCs, Wal-Mart is pulling the plug on the products The retail giant has sold out its stock of Linux-driven and price-friendly Everex Green gPC systems, and says it won't be restocking its shelves with replacements -- although several models can be found on Walmart.com....

Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have created a reasoning virtual 4-year-old child The "child," named "Eddie," can reason about his own beliefs to draw conclusions in a manner that matches human children of that age....

TheEuropean Commission has given its long-awaited blessing to Google's proposed US$3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising company DoubleClick Coming nearly a month ahead of an established April 2 deadline, the decision rested on the EC's findings that the merger would not hurt consumers or impede competition within the European Economic Area...

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said his media company won't get into a bidding war with Microsoft for the right to take over Web portal Yahoo During a keynote speech at the Bear Stearns Media Conference, Murdoch suggested the US$44.6 billion offer Microsoft made for Yahoo was too rich for his company to match or exceed....

The stock price for Texas Instruments dropped nearly 6 percent -- and sent a minor shock wave through its biggest customer's stock -- on news that the company had lowered its profit forecast on Monday Dallas-based TI, which supplies chips to about half the wireless handsets worldwide, saw its shares slide to US$27.93 by midday Tuesday on the New Yo...

Hulu, the video Web site from NBC Universal and News Corp., will open its virtual viewing rooms to the public Wednesday Announced nearly one year ago, the free video streaming site launched in October 2007 with an invitation-only beta....

After a tumultuous weekend filled with mobile social network culture clashing with panel discussions and keynotes, the discourse at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival (SXSW) returned to civility as attendees' attention returned to the variety of platforms available for content creation, distribution and monetization Within h...