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Every interaction an enterprise has with customers, partners or suppliers instigates a new trail of data that can create a deluge effect over a short period of time. Experts predict that within a few years, it won't be uncommon to see enterprises with networks and databases storing over 100 TB (terabytes) of information. Today's challenge is extracting the useful information that can be applied to improving operations from the less useful. That's where data mining comes in...

Five9's Virtual Call Center products -- on-demand contact center applications -- are now fully compatible with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. Essentially, what this means is that the system, which requires only a Windows-based PC, Internet connection and headset, can now support Vista Of Five9's nearly 1,000 customers, "multiple" firm...

Is there a hybrid approach to e-mail messaging that allows you to choose the best from both the open standards community and your legacy proprietary systems technology? An emphatic yes! Today, a majority of enterprises work in a Microsoft Exchange environment. Microsoft has been able to monopolize the e-mail server market because companies have inv...

Looking back at last week, I had a lot to choose from, but the two things that I thought were the most interesting were Sony's dropping the PSP (PlayStation Portable) price to a very attractive US$169, and the resignation ofPC World's editor in chief over a throwaway Apple piece, which got me thinking about ethics in technology journalism The first...

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a mind map may be worth many more. That's because a mind map combines both the power of a picture with the suggestion of words You may have seen mind maps, but you may not have known the name for them. Sometimes they look like clusters of bubbles; other times, like elaborate tree structures....

Television once represented the Holy Grail for advertisers. As millions of consumers tuned in to watch their favorite dramas and sitcoms, it presented advertisers with unprecedented opportunities to reach millions of target customers quickly and easily. However, as technology has advanced, television's grip on consumers has loosened. To protect the golden goose, television networks are trying to make their ads stickier, and are tinkering with new multimedia advertising models...

More than half of "Second Life" users are from Europe, according to a study announced Friday that analyzed active users of Linden Lab's virtual online world A full 61 percent of the 1.3 million users who ran the official "Second Life" software and logged in in March were based in Europe, compared with 19 percent from North America and 13 percent fr...

Apple rival Creative introduced its answer to Apple's iPod Shuffle Thursday. The Zen Stone offers the same 1 GB storage capacity of the Shuffle, but at half the price. However, without a full package of services such as iTunes, will the Zen Stone drop like a rock? "The Creative Zen Stone, at just (US)$39.99, opens up a huge new market for MP3 playe...

Following in the footsteps of fellow telecom equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks will advance plans to reduce its 60,000-person workforce by 15 percent -- 9,000 people -- in the next two-and-a-half years, the company said Friday The cuts are part of a larger plan to become more competitive in a vastly changed telecom landscape, s...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a summary Friday of its latest report on global warming. The report, gleaned from the help of 2,000 scientists, calls for the world to cut emissions of CO2 and shift energy sources to renewable fuels The report also calls for the stabilization of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 201...

Yahoo Photos' days were numbered once Yahoo purchased Web-based digital photo storage site Flickr in 2005. Now, Yahoo Photos' number has come up Yahoo has decided to close the increasingly unpopular Yahoo Photos this summer, and it is urging users to transfer their pictures to Flickr. Yahoo is making the task as simple as possible during the three-...

Microsoft and Yahoo have reportedly discussed a possible merger or other strategic alliance, a move that would dramatically alter the online landscape and could provide Microsoft with the weapon it needs to better battle with search and advertising giant Google The two firms have held preliminary talks, suggested several published reports that surf...

Many people have defined software development as more art than science -- sometimes even a dark art. That's why the business side of an enterprise is often perplexed by the application lifecycle management (ALM) process. They see what goes in as requirements, and see what comes out as functionality -- but they often don't understand what takes place in between...

Broadband providers have been pushing so-called triple play offerings as a means to fatten their coffers, but those services are also contributing to increasing support costs and drooping customer satisfaction "The competitive environment that characterizes today's broadband and value-added services landscape benefits the growth of many digital lif...

Information security firm OpenLogic announced on Wednesday a product that will scan Windows, Linux and Solaris machines for all installed open source software OpenLogic Discovery will help enterprise customers inventory their installed open source software to help them remain compliant with internal policies....

Some things never change -- in our memories, that is. We pump quarters into the jukebox in a crowded bar, waiting for our favorite singles to play and create just the right mood for the evening. We hold up wooden paddles at an estate auction, hoping to score that prized painting for a sweet price. We race to the finish line in the marathon (or, more realistically, a 5K race), pushing toward the moment when the stopwatch, or camera, will record our personal best time...

On the surface, the recent brouhaha with Digg and the HD DVD encryption key posted on the site seems to be about cracking the code to let people copy movies. While most people may think digital rights management (DRM) is a pain in the butt and a waste of time in the effort to fight illegal copying for commercial gain, they tend to have little interest -- even the generally tech-savvy community of Digg users -- in learning how to copy their own HD DVDs...

Graphics technology leaderNvidia has released details of a new graphics card it describes as "the world's fastest." The Nvidia GeForce 8800 Ultra is expected to give gamers a boost in their never-ending quest to cram more state-of-the-art graphics onto PCs....

A virtual equivalent of fisticuffs has broken out online, and no, it is not between warring camps of "American Idol" fans or bloggers with too much time on their hands. Rather, the dispute is between a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination and a once-ardent supporter While much of the argument falls into "he said, he said" territor...

LucasArts and Day 1 Studios on Wednesday unveiled "Fracture," a new shooter game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in which environmental devastation has split the United States into two warring halves Set in the year 2161, "Fracture" puts players in the role of Mason Briggs, a demolitions expert fighting for a group called "Atlantic Alliance," which ...