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Configure, Price, Quote systems have a name problem. When they debuted, their basic functions gave a name to the category that was self-explanatory, and it fit well. As with any good idea in technology, however, frequent use brought with it demand for more functionality that quickly outstripped the technology's charter -- a happy problem. Today's ...

Snap on Wednesday announced changes designed to combat fake news on Snapchat by separating content from professional creators from postings by friends and family. Stories and Chats from friends will appear on the left side of the camera, while Stories from content creators, publishers and other members of the community will appear on the right sid...

Four big tech players this week moved to improve their handling of open source software licensing violations Red Hat, Google, Facebook and IBM said they would apply error standards in the most recent GNU General Public License agreement, GPLv3, to all of their open source licensing, even licenses granted under older GPL agreements....

Apple on Wednesday released Security Update 2017-001 to fix a serious flaw revealed earlier via Twitter. The patch is available for macOS High Sierra 10.13.1. macOS 10.12.6 and earlier versions aren't affected by the flaw "This morning, as of 8 a.m., the update is available for download, and, starting later today, it will be immediately automatical...

Amazon Web Services on Monday announced Amazon Sumerian, a new Web-based platform to help developers quickly design and deploy virtual reality, augmented reality and 3D applications without the requirement for complicated tools and training. The platform lets developers build realistic VR, AR or 3D environments, populate them with animated charact...

Online sales hit a new record of US$6.59 billion on Cyber Monday -- a 17 percent increase from the $5.6 billion in last year's sales for the day -- making it the largest online shopping day in history, based on Adobe Analytics data released Tuesday. Mobile shopping also broke records, starting with the channel's first-ever $2 billion sales day. Sm...

Genesys on Monday unveiled a new integration between its customer management solution, Genesys PureCloud, and Amazon Lex at the annual AWS re:Invent conference, ongoing in Las Vegas through Friday The integration will help businesses build and maintain conversational interactive voice response flows that route callers more efficiently, by using art...

A popular technique used by website operators to observe the keystrokes, mouse movements and scrolling behavior of visitors on Web pages is fraught with risk, according to researchers at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy The technique offered by a number of service providers uses scripts to capture the activity of a visitor on a ...

U.S. retailers crossed a historic new threshold over Thanksgiving weekend as consumers set new records for e-commerce activity and embraced mobile shopping like never before The record-breaking US$5.03 billion spent online on Black Friday -- a 17 percent increase from a year ago -- was in line with expectations, according to Adobe Analytics. Consu...

It may seem obvious that a major consequence of self-driving trucks would be a lot of unemployed truck drivers, but the reality -- at least for those who drive tractor trailers -- could be better jobs. Autonomous vehicles have massive potential benefits. Models suggest that in the U.S. alone, between 30 thousand and 40 thousand lives would be sa...

Amazon Web Services has become the latest tech firm to join the deep learning community's collaboration on the Open Neural Network Exchange, recently launched to advance artificial intelligence in a frictionless and interoperable environment. Facebook and Microsoft led the effort As part of that collaboration, AWS made its open source Python packag...

In the security world, there is a truism that defense (protecting systems) is harder than offense (breaking into systems) because it's an asymmetric playing field. The bad guys need only find one path into an environment -- one place where everything hasn't been done exactly "just so" and perfectly -- while those charged with securing that environment need to protect against intrusions everywhere they have a technology footprint. ...

One of the few policies that President Donald Trump's administration has carried over from his predecessor is that the federal government needs to make vast information technology performance upgrades -- especially to cloud-based platforms That should comfort vendors seeking business in the federal market at all levels of cloud offerings -- hardwa...

Facebook on Tuesday raised the ante for messaging apps photo quality with the announcement of 4K support for Messenger "We're making significant investments in how people communicate visually on Messenger," wrote Facebook Messenger product managers Sean Kelly and Hagen Green in an online post. Starting Tuesday, "people can send and receive photos i...

Customer experience quality didn't improve in the retail industry this year, despite keen competition among online retailers, according to Forrester's U.S. 2017 Customer Experience Index The three highest-ranked online retailers -- Etsy, QVC and Zappos -- came within fractions of a point of each other, based on data released last week....

Apple's iPhone and Google's Android operating system hit the marketplace one decade ago. Ten years later, there's still plenty of debate over which is better. I've lately been asked which of three new flagship phones is better: Apple's iPhone 8, its iPhone X, or Samsung's new Galaxy S8, which runs Google Android? Smartphones have gone through some...

If you are like many, when you saw this headline you likely were surprised BlackBerry was still around. As BlackBerry phones left the market, the company fell out of sight. However, behind the scenes it has been moving into industries like automotive. Also, it remains the leading vendor providing mobile security to our politicians, military personnel and major corporations. ...

Business-to-business firms view increased online activity as an effective way to boost their growth, according to a new report fromCloudCraze Eighty-nine percent of the 400-plus B2B decision makers CloudCraze surveyed in the United States and Europe expected digital commerce would help their businesses grow....

Billions of voice-activated Internet of Things devices may be subject to external attack due to BlueBorne vulnerabilities,Armis revealed on Wednesday. Hackers could exploit BlueBorne to mount an airborne attack, using Bluetooth to spread malware and access critical data, including sensitive personal information....

BrightFunnel this week announced the integration of its BrightFunnel Revenue Intelligence Suite with Microsoft Dynamics. The integration will let enterprise B2B marketing teams analyze the impact of marketing investments on their companies' business, BrightFunnel said. They'll be able to accurately measure marketing attribution to pipeline and rev...