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As the new year approaches, a look ahead tells me there are companies doing well now who undoubtedly will be doing less well and companies that you may never have heard of that nevertheless have the potential to be stars in '06. Let's talk about the companies at risk first, and next week, I'll review some of the firms I believe to be potential emerging stars. At the end of this column, and for every one from now until Christmas, I'll also include an unusual technology gift recommendation...

Results of two new studies -- based on surveys of senior level executives -- indicate that mobile telephony and computing are growing challenges for the corporate enterprise and that companies are struggling to keep up The remote and mobile workforce is exploding, according to the research, a summary of which was provided to TechNewsWorld. By 2008,...

Microsoft Research released today a program that can help sort through e-mail so that correspondence that you're most likely to want to see ends up where you're most likely to see it SNARF (Social Network and Relationship Finder) is a free, add-on program that works with Outlook 2003 and up. It "knows" which e-mail is coming from your contacts and ...

Sales of mobile phones that double as digital cameras have soared during 2005, with nearly 300 million such handsets expected to be sold before year's end, according to new projections from Gartner Camera phone sales will reach 295.5 million units this year and represent 38 percent of overall mobile phone sales, compared to 14 percent a year ago....

Raising the possibility that it will change course once again on a hotly debated move meant to give adult content Web sites their own Internet realm, the net's governing body has decided to shelve a plan to discuss how to create a ".xxx" domain The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) had intended to discuss how to proceed wi...

Skype yesterday released the beta version of Skype 2.0 and announced new collaborations with hardware and software providers "At Skype we want to make talking over the Internet the most natural, simple thing for people all over the world to do," said Niklas Zennstrom, CEO of Skype. "With the release of our new software, it's never been easier for p...

A former assistant to U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy joins the list of those who has a beef with the popular online, open-source encyclopedia known as Wikipedia John Seigenthaler joins Google Watch protest site creator Daniel Brandt in his claims that their bios on Wikipedia are not accurate. USA Today published an op-ed by Seigenthaler on No...

Experts are raising uncomfortable questions about Research in Motion's proposal to maintain the viability of its Blackberry wireless network through a technological "work-around" if the U.S. District Court in Richmond, Va. issues an order to shutter its services in the U.S The work-around -- as currently envisioned publicly by RIM -- may not actual...

When Eric Lituchy and wife Gina Ezratty first started talking in the late 1990s about a new dot-com business, the business idea seemed straightforward enough. Sell specialty products over the Internet. Satisfy gift-givers who want to honor life's milestones for special someones. Top off birthdays, engagements, graduations, and homecomings with delightful deliveries, from marzipan, to filets, to towers of fruit, made possible through a select network of suppliers...

The buzz in enterprise software and M&A circles these days is how easy venture capital is, relatively speaking, to come by today. VentureWire, Venture Capital Journal and the many blogs from venture capitalists underscore this point. The buzz is so strong that rumors are surfacing from within larger ERP companies of senior managers and directors considering making a run at their own companies...

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) this week released a document specifying the process and guidelines for revising the GNU General Public License (GPL). The FSF will release the first discussion draft of the GNU General Public License (GPL) revision in January 2006 The GNU GPL is the most widely used open-source license worldwide. Almost three qua...

Sony used to be associated with the popular Walkman music player, but these days it's more likely to conjure up images of nasty spyware. The company's anti-piracy measures have created a security problem for unwary Sony customers -- and highlighted the inadequacies of a key piece of federal legislation, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) O...

Two domain name registration trade groups are suing the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and VeriSign, alleging that a recently reached settlement between the two parties violate anti-trust laws The legal action is just the latest example of dissent within the domain registration community about the way ICANN conducts bus...

Microsoft is testing its new comprehensive security software and service, dubbed OneCare Live, promising a simpler solution to anti-virus, firewall and backup, but has not released pricing for the new product due out in final form next year The software giant said the comprehensive PC security service -- rumored for months in the security community...

The Grateful Dead found out this week what happens when you give and then take away: consumer uproar The Dead, a band who has always encouraged tape sharing of its multitude of live shows, a few weeks ago asked the non-profit Internet Archives to remove free downloads of their concerts from its site. Dead Heads were not pleased and showed it with a...

Research in Motion is facing added pressure to strike a new settlement agreement to end a patent infringement lawsuit that could lead to the suspension of the firm's popular BlackBerry mobile e-mail service in the United States A judge yesterday refused to enforce an earlier agreement between RIM and NTP Inc. that called for the case to be closed w...

Sun Microsystems this week delivered what it believes is a one-two punch in the battle to create the software platform of choice for the next-generation of the Internet. Analysts, however, are not sure the experiment will do anything beyond reducing pricing power in the field Based on what Sun calls "tremendous momentum" with the Solaris Operating ...

In recent days Massachusetts has softened its tough stance on what file formats it will store its documents in -- a stance that placed it squarely at loggerheads with Microsoft -- but, according to one state legislator, the software giant should not start breathing easy yet The policy adopted by the state contains a standard within a standard, asse...

Just as it helped spawn a movement toward its wireless technology with Centrino, Intel is looking to put the PC in the pole position for home entertainment with its Viiv platform that is now supported by more than 40 software, content and service companies, including TiVo Intel said its Viiv technology -- developer and device integration tools for ...

A new briefing released yesterday by Postini, the messaging security company, based in San Carlos, Calif., indicates that the recently discovered "Sober" virus is the largest viral attack on the Internet ever recorded, twice as big as any other virus on record "We typically quarantine about 50 million virus-infected e-mails in a month. This Sober ...