Articles by

A startup launching this week aims to bring mobile e-mail -- now mainly ensconced in the enterprise with technology such as the Research In Motion (RIM) BlackBerry -- to the average consumer by promising to deliver e-mail and instant messages to traditional mobile phones Berggi has been operating in stealth mode for several months and claims to hav...

The California Supreme Court on Monday ruled that ISPs and Internet publishers cannot be sued for posting or distributing libelous material written by others At issue in the ACLU v. Gonzales case was the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which would impose criminal sanctions, with penalties of up to US$50,000 per day and up to six months jail tim...

Virtual reality has been a rich vein of computer science for fiction writers and movie makers, but its less heralded cousin, augmented reality (AR), may have a greater influence over how we lead our daily lives in the future AR overlays the virtual world on the real world in real time. While virtual reality attempts to insulate itself from the real...

Labor market analysis needs to be part of the decision process on whether or where to locate or terminate operations around the globe Managers of globalized or labor-intensive operations such as software development, customer service and back office support should be able to guide labor market analysis activities and understand their results....

The holiday shopping predictions are in Forester Research reports online retail sales this holiday season will reach US$27 billion in the United States alone. JupiterResearch is a little more optimistic, adding $5 billion to that cheery figure. Jupiter further predicts that a record 114 million users will buy online this holiday season....

When the Internet burst upon the scene in the early 1990s, the concept of software as a service (SaaS) seemed an idea whose time had come. It got hyped along with everything else about the Internet and reached a massive peak of inflated expectations in early 2000, as venture capitalists funded dozens of nearly identical companies that provided various SaaS solutions...

Thin is all the rage these days in digital cameras. If a shutterbox can't fit in the pocket of a pair of designer jeans, some consumers will just turn their nose up at it. I'm not one of them Thin has its merits, but so does substantial. Among these merits are more muscular zoom lenses -- 10x or more....

Siebel reportedly settled a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of its software engineers for US$27.5 million. The software maker was accused of violating overtime laws between 2000 and 2005 Approximately 800 employees who worked for Siebel, which was acquired by Oracle in January, will be receiving on average of $27,000 each, assuming the agreeme...

Red Hat-owned JBoss is releasing two technologies aimed at broadening the open source application server and middleware market offerings, to serve as a more complete stack of open source software at the heart of a services oriented architecture (SOA) Red Hat touted capabilities and features in both its new JBoss Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and its...

Nintendo's Wii is entering the game marketplace as the clear underdog, going up against No. 1 and No. 2 heavyweights, Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox. Unable to compete based on high-definition graphics or speed, Nintendo's Wii is being positioned as a more fun -- and at US$250, far cheaper -- alternative to the other two consoles The Dav...

Universal Music Group (UMG) on Friday filed a lawsuit against MySpace.com, alleging that the Web site is building a business based on publishing stolen songs and music videos The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, called MySpace a "vast virtual warehouse" of pirated copyrighted material that belongs to blockbuster artists ...

Striking back against rival Google, Yahoo on Monday inked a deal with seven publishing companies that will allow more than 150 newspapers to sell ads on its online classified service The newspaper giants involved in the deal include Belo, Cox Newspapers, Hearst Newspapers, Journal Register, Lee Enterprises, MediaNews Group and E.W. Scripps.

There is little dispute that Software as a Service model rapidly becoming a dominant delivery model. By 2009, more than 50 percent of new implementations of sales force automation applications will be SaaS deployments, according to a newGartner research note Not surprisingly, the popularity of this deployment model in SFA is opening new opportuniti...

Cornell University researchers have created a robot capable of self-awareness, learning and adapting -- all keys to the intelligence and technology needed for robots to function in adverse and changing environments The Cornell researchers, who published their findings in the Nov. 17, 2006, issue of Science, said their robot did not rely onpredeterm...

Music has the power to transcend national and cultural boundaries, asPart 1 of this series on digital music notes Today, an explosion of musical and technological innovation is resulting in a profusion of new, cross-cultural musical styles and influences. Digital music technology is the "core enabler" changing the face of the music industry -- as w...

A recent national survey found that an overwhelming 83 percent of consumers would purchase more online if retailers provided more interactive and interesting sites. Consumers surveyed expressed interest in a wide variety of features that would improve their shopping experience, but what does creating "more interactive and interesting sites" really mean for retailers?...

Red Hat says it is ready to unveil its biggest release in two years. Developers and users of the open source Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) have packed on more than 1,000 new components for stability, security and virtualization, among other features, according to the company The unveiling of RHEL 5 Beta 2 -- a compilation of community andcustomer...

As the end of the year approaches, I will begin talking more and more about the big things expected to drive the 2007 Technology Segment. One of them, particularly since the Democrats are back in power in the U.S., is a move toward Green, and HP took a huge step to get ahead of this parade last week In addition, I had the opportunity to host a Coup...

Robotics, which has played a longstanding role in industrial applications, has finally entered the classroom in the form of applications for disabled students. It's a trend that could move beyond special needs and into the education mainstream Gallaudet University, a school for the deaf and hard of hearing, recently added Anystream's Apreso Classro...

A trio of search titans is joining forces to make it easier for people to find information on the Web. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft on Thursday agreed to support a single open protocol to make Web sites more visible to search engines Sitemaps 0.90 is freely available to webmasters. The protocol intends to make it easier for them to notify search eng...