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The press has been replete with complaints from companies that have to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). Some of the criticisms were based upon the outsized cost of compliance. Other criticisms revolved around the difficulty and intricacy of compliance, especially to Section 404, Management Assessment of Internal Controls The complaints, it seems t...

Today it seems like every owner of a decent size database now calls itself a "specialized vertical search engine." I suppose there is some clever (if not misleading) marketing logic in positioning oneself as such given the wholesale adoption of search as a business tool, and of good search results as a very cost-effective form of inquiries, leads or orders when a search-based marketing program is done well...

Digital dashboards for the corporate world usually employ the typical "green light, yellow light, red light" motif, giving you an at-a-glance view of the company's bottom line (except, of course, for the color-blind -- like myself) However, the Holy Grail for metric gazers is not where the business is but rather where the market is headed....

Picking up the pace after somewhat of a piecemeal approach to open sourcing the Java programming language over the last several months, Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Schwartz said the company will open the core Java code to the community by year's end Speaking at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco Wednesday, Schwar...

Wireless networking continues to make inroads in metropolitan and rural areas across the U.S. as the development of 802.1x technologies and associated standards forges ahead. Wireless broadband and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) have both gained momentum and are moving inexorably forward. It's now possible to connect to the Internet and a variety of voice and data networks in spaces large and small, public and private...

Cingular will be the first carrier in the United States to offer Hewlett-Packard's new iPAQ handheld device, the companies announced Thursday. The phone features five wireless communications technologies including a global positioning system, or GPS HP's iPAQ hw6920 series Mobile Messenger was designed with business users in mind. Users can check c...

After US$5.4 billion dollars and nearly a year of discussions, Advanced Micro Devices finalized its takeover of graphics chip maker ATI, setting the stage for a revived fight with Intel and Nvidia, which becomes the Intel graphics partner by default AMD -- which promised integrated platforms next year for commercial, gaming and media computing -- s...

Controversial television commercials about the war in Iraq and stem cell research may be remembered long after the 2006 mid-term elections are over The debates began swirling over a Republican ad that used fear tactics to sway voters, but grew louder in the wake of a pro stem cell research campaign featuring actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from P...

Blaming high churn rates and merger-related costs, Sprint-Nextel, the third-largest mobile phone operator, reported its fifth straight quarter of profit losses Net income from continuing operations declined to US$247 million, or 8 cents a share, from $363 million, or 12 cents, a year ago. Revenues were the bright spot for Sprint-Nextel. The combina...

Amid an enormous amount of buzz, software giant Oracle laid out its plans for Linux at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco this week, indicating that it will use Red Hat Linux as the foundation for an Oracle-branded "Unbreakable Linux." During his keynote Wednesday, Oracle chief Larry Ellison announced a Red Hat path that will promote the Lin...

Fans of online banking can hardly imagine how they lived without the channel. Just as snail-mailed personal correspondence has gone out of fashion in favor of e-mail and text messaging, so have snail-mailed account statements and bills Consumers use online banking for its convenience and the control it lends them. They can push money from savings t...

Renault is marketing a car called the Logan -- a starter vehicle that retails for about US$6,300. A safety conscious consumer may pause before getting in -- but he shouldn't, or at least not more so than he would with any other car. Renault is not cutting corners in its manufacturing process. Instead, Renault is reverse engineering its landed costs to make sure its manufacturing and sources processes are done at the lowest cost possible...

I remember a day during junior high school when we spent a few minutes with our guidance counselor to discuss our ambitions for the future Student: I wanna fly jets!...

Fresh off its deal with PC manufacturer Lenovo for Suse Linux-based ThinkPad mobile workstations, Novell trumpeted deals with four, smaller "whitebox" PC makers to pre-install Suse Linux on their desktop and notebook computers The Linux vendor has inked agreements with European vendors ETegro Technologies, Maxdata and Transtec, and U.S.-based R-Cub...

Government officials have launched investigations into fraud cases that are costing electronic brokerages millions of dollars Two of the largest e-brokerages are reporting computer hacking incidents in which criminals apparently manipulated client accounts at TD Ameritrade and E-Trade Financial....

BT Group said Wednesday it would acquire managed security services firm Counterpane Internet Security in a move that could help the former national phone company of the UK advance its transformation into a global telecom services and network firm BT did not disclose the price it paid for the privately held Mountain View, Calif.-based Counterpane, b...

Customers looking to buy new PCs this holiday season can enjoy a special gift from Microsoft -- discounted or free copies of the Vista operating system and Microsoft Office 2007 productivity suite Microsoft on Tuesday announced programs to provide holiday shoppers with low-cost upgrades with the purchase of a new Windows Vista-capable personal comp...

Security-conscious online shoppers have long feared that thieves will snatch their credit card number and other personal information right out from under their fingertips as they nervously click the "buy now" icon on retailers' Web sites The proof is in the numbers: 80 million consumers who use the Internet do not buy online. The majority of these ...

You have to give credit where it is due, and today that means kudos to Oracle. More than 40,000 customers, analysts, press and others have converged this week in San Francisco for Oracle Open World (OOW), the annual user conference. It is mind-boggling to think that the 40,000 people in San Francisco represent only a small portion of the people all over the planet who know the company's products and use them in mission-critical business processes every day. More than that, it is a tribute to one man's vision of what information technology needed to become that started more than 30 years ago...

In an era when software companies seem to release new versions of their products every month, Xrayz Software is a true anomaly. It hasn't released a new version of its ClipCache software in three years ClipCache (US$24.95) is one of my all-time favorite programs. I use it religiously every day....