Articles by

Alcatel and Lucent announced Sunday they plan to merge in a US$13.4 billion deal that will create one of the largest telecom and Internet gear makers in the world -- and one that may face tough scrutiny from regulators Exactly a week after acknowledging that they were talking about a possible deal, the two companies said they had reached agreement ...

IBM and 3Com have announced an agreement to complement 3Com's VCX IP telephony with System i, IBM's all-in-one mid-market computing platform. The partnership allows businesses with 100 to 2,000 users to have an integrated VoIP and systems solution complete with hardware, software, storage and security The IP telephony system can run on a single Lin...

The concept of virtualization is set to take center stage at this week's LinuxWorld conference in Boston. Among the competitive players are industry veterans Red Hat and Novell and startups XenSource and Virtual Iron Virtualization is a technique for deploying technologies. It allows multiple virtual operating systems to run on a single physical ma...

As the recent BlackBerry case focused the world's eyes on the arcane field of patents, I was reminded of the 1999 Amazon.com "one click" case, which caused so many to condemn the U.S. patent system.At that time, critics called the system "broken" and a "disincentive to innovation." Now, the system is under attack again, merely because our BlackBerries were threatened...

It's opening day in many Major League Baseball stadiums today, and in addition to wondering who's throwing out the first pitch, how much the beer will cost, and whether that rookie shortstop can hit the curveball, competitive and committed fans of this great sport are grappling with another burning question: How will my fantasy baseball team do this season?...

I spent a lot of time last week reading the Microsoft employee blogs and apparently there is some reasonably strong feeling among many folks who work there that the wrong "Steve" is running the company. This is, in my view, a "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" type of perception -- since "the other Steve," Jobs, that is, is neither known for being a good software guy nor being anywhere near as employee-focused as Microsoft's executives are. He does, however, have skills that Microsoft could use desperately right now...

The hype surrounding machine-to-machine communications -- known by the acronym M2M -- is surpassed only by the expense of network transport and the "exorbitant process" of integrating M2M modules into the machines they will monitor Cellular networks are the most likely the M2M enabler, according to a new report from Boston-based Strategy Analytics ...

Cognos has added a number of new reporting capabilities to the latest version of its Business Intelligence (BI) application, as well as a new stand-alone search engine product that will be standard in future releases Other new features in Cognos 8 include the ability to view Cognos 8 BI reports, analyses and metrics within Microsoft PowerPoint and ...

Germany-based chipmakerInfineon has announced that its memory chip spinoff, dubbed Qimonda, will officially launch May 1, ahead of the original schedule for the strategic move Qimonda -- conceived in response to the challenges of running two very different kinds of semiconductor businesses -- will remain under Infineon's umbrella until its Initial ...

A new study that is sure to revive an old debate says that long-term cell phone use may increase a person's risk of developing brain cancer The Swedish National Institute for Working Life said its examination of the health and cell phone habits of more than 900 people who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor showed a correlation with heavy cell ph...

Google continues to tinker with the concept of monetizing its popular maps feature through advertising What is new about its latest initiative is that icons for advertisers are embedded in the maps. When clicked, a pop-up ad appears with additional information about the advertiser, including its logo, contact information and other lines of text....

Sprint Nextel on Thursday announced aggressive plans for the expansion of its 3G network, which now covers over half of the U.S. population with mobile broadband data services By the end of 2006, the high-speed wireless network is expected to reach an estimated 190 million people nationwide and in Puerto Rico, making it the largest mobility network...

Lawyers for Apple Computer argued to a United Kingdom court that the iTunes Music Store is a data-transfer service, not a purely musical endeavor and as a result does not violate a long-standing agreement with the company that handles The Beatles business affairs The argument was made during proceedings in a case brought by Apple Corps, which handl...

In a move to extend the growth of its Linux-based products, IBM on Thursday announced a new initiative designed to help customers migrate from Microsoft Exchange to IBM Lotus Notes and Domino on Linux. Big Blue will sink US$300 million into an ad campaign to woo customers away from its industry rival The new "Migrate to the Penguin" initiative is a...

Have you been to Europe lately? If so, when you've crossed borders you've noticed that you no longer have to go through passport control and get your passport examined, then stamped. You can travel throughout the European Union just as you can travel throughout the United States, unimpeded by border control This, in my opinion, is part of a worldwi...

Google AdWords is the most commonly used lead generation tool in many small and medium businesses. Layer in small and medium vendors ofCRM's many varieties of applications, and the dependency on precise targeting for lead generation becomes even more important, due to the highly targeted messaging each uses Specifically, in CRM, many best-of-breed...

This week, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted to exempt much political communication on the Internet from the provisions of the McCain-Feingold finance law. This action is a partial win on free-speech rights, but bad news on government control of the Internet A few years ago, the FEC issued regulations exempting the Internet from the just-...

With last year's successful IPO and two recent acquisitions,Unica has positioned itself to ride the next wave of marketing automation technology development: the emergence -- finally -- of enterprise marketing management Analyst firms such as Gartner, AMR Research and Forrester have been predicting that vendors and customers would begin integrating...

The U.S. Supreme Court is now hearing arguments in eBay v. MercExchange. It is not examining the underlying dispute between the two firms -- indeed, MercExchange has successfully challenged eBay's use of its buy now technology Rather, the court is examining whether issuing an injunction against the use of the technology is appropriate -- specifical...

Microsoft has announced the repackaging of four hosted solutions from FrontBridge Technologies, a company that it bought in August 2005, as well as a new licensing model and road map for Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services (EHS) The rebranding comes as no surprise, said Joe Wilcox, senior analyst with JupiterResearch. Microsoft "wants to protect its...