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Perhaps a savvy political operative tasked with designing the best go-to-market campaign for SOA (service-oriented architecture) would proclaim: "It's the applications, stupid!" Focusing on the applications -- and not the means to achieving them -- has served computing well over the decades. I recall trying to run a global newsroom -- with some 15 ...

We are working our way toward the end of the year, and this year appears to be going out with a bang. The most recent drop in our river of discontent was a memo written by Yahoo's chief marketing officer talking about what other people in the company needed to do to fix it These things are always so well received that I thought it would be good to ...

Holiday gift buying has never been more exciting. Portability has gone wild this year, and a stunning array of innovative audio and video devices have appeared that let us carry our music, movies and television programs anywhere After reviewing dozens of the hottest products, we settled on seven of the coolest devices as our top picks....

Do you wonder if technology has given us more information than needed? Perhaps, but sometimes it is very helpful, if not invaluable. There is so much good, solid data on the Internet that researchers can use it with great comfort and assurance. Almost gone are the days when academics were stuck in libraries searching old books for scraps of data to use in scholarly articles...

Opening up an online high-yield savings account for Jeff Dennis, 57, of Brighton, Mass., was a no brainer. "I deposited (US)$200 into an account and got a $25 bonus at a time when interest rates were in the basement," he told the E-Commerce Times That was three years ago. Interest rates on savings are still in the basement. The popularity of onlin...

Once considered the dark horse in solar's current race to the rooftop, solar concentrators are making a major comeback Solar investment veterans RockPort Capital Partners and Nth Power recently led a US$8 million Series A round for Practical Instruments. The company plans to use the funds to launch a product that it hopes will give it the market le...

By all accounts, the e-commerce sector is poised for another blockbuster holiday season, with forecasters calling for another year of double-digit growth and sales of about US$27 billion for the fourth quarter, according to Forrester Research Most retailers are already well underway with plans to capitalize on that growth, putting in motion plans c...

It seems rarer than ever these days that a majority of Americans can get together, rally round a common cause, hash out their differences, and forge a consensus in support of a durable and lasting approach to a pressing and vital public issue. Yet that is what is happening as a groundswell builds from the grass roots up with regard to U.S. energy policy and the prospect of developing biofuels as an alternative energy source...

Disney jumped into the video-on-demand cable arena on Tuesday in a mega deal with Comcast The long-term distribution agreement, which includes 10 ABC-owned broadcast television stations and the Disney networks, extends the Disney-Comcast relationship into the next decade....

Hackers are incorporating virtual machine detection into their Trojans, worms and other malware in order to thwart antivirus vendors and virus researchers, according to a note published this week by the SANS Institute Internet Storm Center Researchers often use virtual machines to detect hacker activities....

No longer having to hear that "CRM is dead" is one thing to be thankful for, says Brad Wilson, general manager ofMicrosoft Dynamics CRM That was a talking point making the rounds a few years back, and it developed sudden and significant traction when it was echoed by an executive of one of the leading CRM vendors at an industry conference. No more ...

Some 80 percent of American Internet users say they'll be buying gifts online this holiday season, according to an AOL Shopping/Zogby poll released Tuesday The same percentage of Web users, the surveyors found, say they will spend the same amount or more than last year on online gifts....

Palm on Wednesday introduced its Treo 680 smartphone amid plenty of fanfare and even more partnerships The phone is available in four colors -- crimson, copper, arctic and graphite -- and retails for US$399. Cingular subscribers, however, can get the device for $199 through an exclusive deal with the nation's largest wireless carrier....

Dell released its delayed third quarter results Tuesday, posting a stronger-than-expected profit, but again warning that the financials could change depending upon the outcome of both internal and external probes into past accounting practices The Round Rock, Texas-based PC maker said it earned US$677 million, or 30 cents per share, well outpacing ...

Gone are the days when laptop computers were well-traveled -- but temporary -- replacements for a more powerful desktop computer. Currently, buyers are hard-pressed to narrow their purchasing options to just a few choices. Powerful alternatives abound, making this time of year one of the best for upgrading to the latest portable multimedia desktop replacements...

In the retail world, Black Friday has long been a red-letter day on the calendar. The Friday after Thanksgiving, while not always the busiest shopping day of the year, is notable for kicking off the mad dash toward the finish line of the holiday season In the world of e-commerce, Cyber Monday has quickly become its own virtual landmark. The Monday ...

Microsoft andNovell, participants in a recent historic Windows-Linux technology- and patent-sharing pact, are having some differences of opinion over the existence of Microsoft technology in the Linux operating system Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fired up Linux and open source supporters by claiming the deal with Novell reflects the inclusion of Mic...

Talk about art imitating life. A self-replicating worm dubbed "Grey Goo" has caused the virtual community Second Life to shut down at least once, according to the site's owners, Linden Life. Within the Second Life virtual environment, Grey Goo's creators claimed to spin gold rings, and unwitting players interacted with them to spread the malware further...

Unveiling a scaled-down version of its identity management software, IBM on Monday tapped into what it sees as a growing demand among small- to mid-sized businesses (SMB) for online collaboration and secure transactions with trading partners IBM Tivoli Federated Identity Manager Business Gateway will allow authorized SMB users to securely access th...

Gift-givers with deep pockets who want to impress those on their holiday lists may have another luxury item to consider along with jewelry and plasma televisions: For the first time, a single share of Google stock now costs more than US$500 Shares of the search giant's stock broke the $500 mark early Tuesday, making the company one of the most valu...