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Sony is entering the world of flash memory-based portable media devices that play video The company Thursday announced two new Walkman units that could challenge similar devices sold by SanDisk, Creative and others....

Beleaguered PC maker Dell posted a 33 percent drop in net profit for its fourth quarter, falling short of even lowered Wall Street forecasts Dell said it earned US$673 million, or 30 cents a share, down from $1.01 billion or 43 cents a share in the same period a year ago. Sales dropped about 5 percent to $14.4 billion....

A new computer virus targeting antivirus vendor Symantec's security software has hit a division of at least one big U.S. corporation this week and is still considered a threat to other networks The virus, which has reportedly infested CNN and its parent company Turner Broadcasting System, is the latest strain of the Rinbot computer virus, which hij...

When Oracle announced it had agreed to buy the established business intelligence vendor Hyperion for US$3.3 billion, executives did not waste time explaining one of its motives "Hyperion is the latest move in our strategy to expand Oracle's offerings to SAP customers," Oracle President Charles Phillips stated. "Thousands of SAP customers rely on Hy...

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking will experience weightlessness for the first time when he flies aboard Zero Gravity's G-Force One next month The flight, scheduled for April 26, will take off from the Shuttle Landing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will perform parabolic maneuvers during a controlled ascent and descent -- in some...

Etelos, a provider of open source hosted Web 2.0 applications, has released a beta version of a CRM tool designed to work with Google Apps, a commercial suite of office applications Google introduced last week. The Etelos product is integrated into Google's platform The application, called "CRMforGoogle," includes features to customize modules, aut...

While much has been written on how vendors can get the most out of their analyst relations strategies -- both in blogs and in my book -- little has been written about how technology buyers can maximize their use of advisory firms. Jim Zimmerman, in his blog, AnalystPerspectives, presents this issue in a well-written post It got me thinking about th...

Researchers have fashioned the world's smallest transistor out of a one-atom-thick layer of graphene that's also less than 50 atoms wide. The minuscule graphene-based transistor may be the breakthrough that leads to faster microprocessors, ultimately replacing silicon, which becomes unstable at sizes ten times larger than graphene A key element in ...

Traditionally, preparation for board meetings has involved an enormous amount of time, expense, and stress. There are always last-minute items that have to be incorporated into the board book -- that heavy package that goes to board members and their support staff before a meeting A great deal of editing, copying, collating and printing is involved...

Remember when outsourcing was thought of in terms of call center operations and IT coding? Not anymore....

Six to eight weeks. That's about what it seems to take to get an on-demand solution up and running these days. This information comes from an analysis of nine on-demand vendors that we surveyed for our annual WizKids report which will be out this week What's good about that time interval is that it is about half of a quarterly reporting period, w...

Enterprise and consumer computer buyers will have to speak louder if they want to influence manufacturers to offer Linux and open source applications preinstalled on new computers Without stronger guarantees of consumer and enterprise interest, computer makers have no financial incentive to offer non-Microsoft software options....

The networked home -- complete with "smart" appliances and a range of security and entertainment options -- is becoming increasingly common Many new homes come equipped with centrally controlled entertainment, security and climate systems, and more existing homes are being retrofitted with home theaters and music systems that can, for example, pipe...

Google plans to provide Web advertisers with more data and tools to combat click fraud, a damaging practice that costs advertisers an estimated US$16 billion a year The new tools are part of an effort to crack down on click fraud and dull its impact on the otherwise highly profitable pay per click online advertising model....

Verizon Wireless became the first U.S. carrier to deliver a service that streams television to mobile phones with the Thursday launch of its new Mobile TV on the MediaFLO network The service is available in three separate packages: four channels for US$13 per month; eight channels for $15; or eight channels plus unlimited access to the mobile Web a...

China-based computer maker Lenovo said Wednesday that it would recall more than 200,000 batteries manufactured by Sanyo and sold in its ThinkPad computers, including 100,000 sold in the United States The recall covers ThinkPad machines sold between February 2005 and September 2006, spanning the time when Lenovo took over the production of ThinkPads...

IBM has become the first vendor to incorporate Google Gadgets into its commercial portal software, WebSphere, the two tech companies announced Wednesday. Users of WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Portal Express v. 6.0 will have some 4,000 free-of-charge add-ons they can create, customize and use within the WebSphere Portal "The delivery of Google Gad...

Oracle has agreed to buy business intelligence (BI) heavyweight Hyperion Solutions for US$3.3 billion in cash. The move follows SAP's acquisition of BI vendor Pilot Software last month, illustrating the trend among enterprise resource planning (ERP) providers to enhance their operational backbone products with performance management, a subsector in the business intelligence space...

The pioneering computer game "SimCity," first written for the Commodore 64 in 1985, is being released this summer for the Nintendo DS platform, game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) said Thursday One of the most popular games of all time, "SimCity" involves the planning, creation and control of virtual cities and their residents. It was the predecess...

The European Commission on Thursday stepped up the antitrust penalties Microsoft could have to pay to a whopping US$4 million a day for what the Commission says are unreasonable pricing practices In a statement of objections sent to Microsoft, the commission said the company had failed to comply with its obligations resulting from the commission's ...