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With the holiday shopping season now in full swing, video game publishers are seeing brisk sales and offering only a few surprises. Since December accounts for a major percentage of the industry's annual revenues, most video game publishers are playing it safe by promoting sequels to already successful titles Greg Kasavin, executive editor at Game...

Why do almost 80 percent of e-commerce and other software development projects undertaken in the U.S. fail to be completed on time, or within budget, or to function as anticipated? What is the biggest cause of these failures? Most problems stem from an unwillingness or inability to develop adequate software specifications at the beginning of an e-c...

In a move to beef up its security for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offerings, 3Com today announced it has agreed to acquire publicly held TippingPoint Technologies, a network security products maker, for about US$430 million 3Com will pay $47 cash per outstanding share of TippingPoint stock, which represents a 13 percent premium over the clo...

Gary Winnick, the founder and chairman of Global Crossing, the telecommunications company that became a symbol of late 1990s corporate excess, will not face a civil insider trading charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Winnick's attorney Gary Naftalis issued a statement saying that the SEC "has determined that no charges should ...

AMD and IBM announced a collaborative breakthrough in processor technology today, marking the first use of two new techniques that advance speed and performance without requiring more power Chip giant Intel has already produced processors with so-called strained silicon technology that offsets power and heat problems, but the AMD-IBM advance draws ...

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given a US$42.6 million grant to the Institute for OneWorld Health to create a cure for malaria OneWorld, America's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company, will work with the University of California, Berkeley, and Amyris Biotechnologies, according to a statement from OneWorld....

Reversing a stance its board of directors held fast for 18 months, PeopleSoft today agreed to be acquired by Oracle for US$10.3 billion, clearing the way for a merger that sparked one of the longest and most bitter business battles in the history of the tech industry The merger promises to dramatically alter the enterprise software market....

Ten days after the successful launch of Nintendo DS, Sony put its PlayStation Portable (PSP) on sale in Japan at a discounted price of 19,800 yen (US$189). It looks like sales are off to a good start Reuters reported that game fans stood in lines through a chilly Tokyo night to be among the first in the world to get their hands on one of the 200,00...

While mainstream America is flocking to sites like Amazon.com, Froogle and Yahoo Shopping, ethnic minorities are showing an interest in something different from the online shopping experience Research conducted by Insight Research demonstrates that meeting the needs of ethnic consumers is becoming financially rewarding for online portals....

2005 will see the next big battle for the home. The concept of the digital hub is slowly becoming reality, and both TiVo and Microsoft are making a run for the gold ReplayTV is all but gone. Apple seems to have taken a pass on the entire concept. Sony is a player but has never been able to gain the scale necessary to drive this market, even thoug...

As attention focuses on the increasing spyware threats to enterprise networks, vendors are beginning to view the enterprise landscape as fertile ground for anti-spyware protection Webroot Software, a developer of Internet privacy and protection software, recently completed the first audit of spyware in the enterprise. The audit found more than 20 s...

The number of mobile phone subscribers worldwide has doubled since 2000 to nearly 1.5 billion, with cell phone adoption growing faster than land line telephone service and Internet usage, according to a new report from the United Nations The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a wing of the UN, also said in its annual report that 2004 will...

Danish security firm Secunia has issued warnings about a vulnerability in most Web browsers that could open the door to hackers hijacking pop-up windows on trusted Web sites to launch phishing attacks The vulnerability can be exploited regardless of which Web site is the true "owner" of the pop-up window, according to Secunia. The fraudulent tactic...

With Yahoo's announcement of a free desktop search tool to be available early next year, and other search engine and software companies such as AOL, Ask Jeeves, Microsoft and others delivering similar technology, the feature is becoming a standard part of search All of the companies lag behind Google in market share and rollout of desktop search, w...

With the impact of the last major merger still rippling through the wireless communications industry, another major combination might be in the works, with No. 3 Sprint and fifth-place Nextel said to be contemplating a combination The merger would create a larger and more robust No. 3 wireless giant that analysts say would be better equipped to com...

Adding weight to the notion that two high-definition DVD formats may co-exist, leading manufacturer Thomson today announced that it would manufacture HD DVD-compatible discs as well as Blu-ray versions in its Technicolor division The company, however, took a step closer to NEC and Toshiba's HD DVD camp,saying it would manufacture players for that f...

In a move to cash in on the growing ring tone market, Napster has announced that it has forged an agreement with Dwango Wireless to go mobile Napster will work with the mobile developer and publisher of entertainment content to launch "Napster Mobile" across major North American carriers. The service will launch in the U.S. and Canada next year and...

Much attention has been focused on the promise of enabling large business-to-business transactions over the Internet -- and many corporations can testify to the Web's transforming power to streamline inventory management. However, there's a new revolution coming online, and it's called micro-commerce While some argue that micro-commerce defines pur...

The CRM systems of many companies fail because they don't properly manage the expectations of prospects and customers. What's been missing is the ability to capture the moment of truth with every prospect or customer and then bring these insights into a broader mosaic of what the many segments of a customer base like, don't like and expect from you...

The holiday season has arrived, and with it will come higher mortality rates. For a number of reasons, including stress and cold weather, more people die around this time of year. While many accept death as a natural certainty, there is a growing movement that aims to do away with it In The Scientific Conquest of Death, a group of well-respected ...