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There's more behind Oracle's decision toprebrief bloggers on its latest product release than a sense that the time is ripe With the launch of On Demand, version 15, the company is introducing robust new Web 2.0 functionality -- and it's sending a strong signal that more of this type of application development is on the horizon....

Bloggers -- especially those whose traffic volumes can rival a minor newspaper's -- are getting used to the royal treatment. Consumer electronic vendors, hotels, auto manufacturers -- heck, even politicians -- are reaching out to the people who have made it their avocation to blog about them. Everywhere, it would seem, except in the CRM industry V...

What is the biggest difference between shopping online and shopping in a store? In a store, customers can wander from place to place until they find something that appeals to them. Online, they usually need to have a good idea of what they are looking for in order to locate it A small but growing number of companies are trying to alter that equatio...

There are those partnerships where the companies swap logos and do joint press releases and that's about it, and then there are partnerships where true integration happens This latter type of partnership is starting to emerge between Salesforce.com and Google, and that's a very good thing for the CRM industry....

Part 1 of this series looked at advances in nanotechnology and the threats it presents Advances in nanotechnology have given flight to some seemingly fanciful, and also alarming, projections and fictional scenarios. Yet the applications of nanotech are so diverse and far-reaching that scientists agree that the widespread ability to manipulate matte...

Every time you go online, you leave electronic footprints -- and someone is following them When you display a page, enter a search query, play a video or click on an ad online, that information is logged by the servers of the companies that own the site or serve the video or ad or search results....

Paramount Pictures and developer FanRocket have teamed to bring Paramount movie clips to Facebook's user profile pages. Using the third-party developer's VooZoo application, available Monday, subscribers to the social networking site will have access to clips from a gamut of films including "Forest Gump," "Mean Girls" and "Zoolander." "Facebook is ...

Microsoft's Xbox price-cutting campaign is going global, though it's not clear whether U.S. consumers will be in line for any additional discounts Bidding to break ahead of the pack vying for next-generation gaming console dominance, Microsoft confirmed Monday it cut the price of its Xbox 360 device in European markets....

The South by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival (SWSXi) kicked off last weekend as roughly 9,000 Web designers, Web developers, academics, bloggers and social media participants gathered for the five-day event The 15-year-old conference features scores of panelists throughout the day, the Screen Burn gaming center, keynote addresses from...

Microsoft's chief software architect said the company will not rush to integrate its Web advertising system with that of possible merger partner Yahoo Ray Ozzie, the Lotus Notes inventor and Groove Networks founder who took over the software architect role from Bill Gates in 2006, told the Financial Times that Microsoft would take its time integrat...

Don't mess with mobile social networks That was lesson from day three of this year'sSouth by Southwest Interactive Conference and Festival (SXSWi), which is a week-long confab of music, film and interactive conference....

A British company has introduced a new camera that can peak under clothing to detect weapons, explosives or drugs Called the "T5000" and created by ThruVision, the camera has a range of over 80 feet and works with moving subjects, making it particularly applicable for the security industry....

A behemoth on the semiconductor scene just got a little bigger. Chip manufacturer LSI has acquired the hard disk drive business of Germany-based Infineon Technologies for an undisclosed amount The buyout, announced Monday, came a little less than a year after the former LSI Logic acquired Agere Systems in what one analyst called "a merger of equals...

Everywhere you look today, you're hit right between the eyes with an URL. They pop up in TV ads, in ads on the big screen, on billboards, posters, soup cans, cereal boxes, on the sides of buses -- just about anywhere If you see one that's interesting, and have pen and paper to hand, you may jot it down. But what if you're walking or driving? How wo...

Contact consolidation is not for the lighthearted. For years, contact center management has been attempting to control costs by reducing the number of agents, physical sites and consolidating software and hardware solutions. Often these attempts are in conflict with customer and corporate demands. So, how do we increase contact center availability? Improve customer satisfaction? Reduce operational costs?...

The promise of the Web has long been the ability to personalize, and the shopping experience is no exception Startup iStorez is trying to bring a twist to the personalization of e-commerce, using proprietary technology to create a dynamic shopping experience that leverages the special offers that scores of retailers are already making to their cust...

Last week was filled with what could represent the beginning of one of the biggest overall changes to the cell phone market. The short-term change was the announcement of a solid and apparently well-controlled developer platform coupled with the long anticipated Exchange integration announcement. However, bigger than that and longer-term was the announcement of Intel's new Atom platform, which forecasts the death and rebirth of a better iPhone...

Xandros, which makes intuitive Linux solutions and tools to manage mixed environments, announced two new products that will make it easier for Windows systems administrators to manage Linux platforms in their IT environment One is the Xandros BridgeWays Management Console for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The other is Opsi4xandros, an all-in-one soluti...

The IT security front is like any war: Secure one battle line and a breach may occur on another Red flags about malware have become almost a daily occurrence in the virtual world, and the malware lexicon has mushroomed in recent years. Terms like "zombie," "rootkit," "worm," "Trojan," "spyware," "botnet" and others are descriptors of some of the mo...

In Search Of: CEO to turn IT organization that operates like a terrorist group into a Microsoft-like outfit. Vision and big-picture mentality not required. Management, administrative and detail skills sorely needed. Ability to deal with a chairman who occasionally goes off reservation during press interviews a big plus That chairman would be multim...