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I was so looking forward to getting the Facebook IPO out of the way, and then splat, like a ripe tomato in the kisser, we have to learn that the underwriters might not have shared some pre-IPO information transparently. Enough already! Bankers appear to be tone deaf to the fallout from their gross behavior. If you want an historical comparison, I think you need to go all the way back to the Renaissance and the Borgia popes. But no matter. ...

Few things scare me more than disk partitioning and GRUB configuration software. Both of those chores involve knowledge about hard drive operations and a good slice of luck. And both can render a computer unbootable with one slight user error. So discovering the latest version of Grub Customizer helped lower my anxiety levels considerably....

The growth of the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, in which employees use their personal devices in the workplace, is proving to be a huge headache for IT Often underfunded, understaffed and overworked, IT now has to cope with a plethora of different devices running different operating systems -- or different versions of an operating system. The...

Dell on Tuesday announced its latest all-in-one desktop, the 27-inch XPS One 27 ...

While it was widely assumed that Facebook would pull an about-face following its recent high-profile IPO and employ some restraint when it came to future acquisitions, the opposite appears to be happening. The social networking giant reportedly has several potential moves in play The biggest -- for now -- could be the acquisition of the popular mob...

The interagency Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications last week revealed that its Digital Outreach Team responded to pictures posted by al-Qaida supporters on Yemeni discussion forums. To counter the images of coffins covered by the U.S. flag, the center posted pictures of coffins draped with the Yemen flag, along with Arabic messages regarding the human toll inflicted on Yemen by al-Qaida...

A cyberweapon of unprecedented sophistication is ripping through computer systems in the Middle East, security vendor Kaspersky Lab claims. It has dubbed the malware "Worm.Win32.Flame" -- or "Flame," for short Other security vendors, including McAfee and Symantec, have issued similar warnings, and there are claims that it was created, or at least b...

New details have emerged regarding an upcoming Dell tablet device, which could be one of the first to run Windows 8. The tablet will reportedly run on a dual-core Intel Cloverleaf processor with 2GB of RAM and 128 GB of SSD storage. It will have a 10.1-inch display, according to information from Neowin.

Most of HP's webOS team, including Matt McNulty, head of the project,is moving to Google according to a report by The Verge citing severalunnamed sources. The departing team is said to be almost whollyresponsible for Enyo's code. Enyo replaced Mojo as webOS's softwaredevelopment kit in 2011 It is unclear what this move will mean to HP. In December ...

"Domestic Communications Assistance Center" is the kind of name you'd give to a couples counseling collective. At the FBI, though, it's the name that's been given to an agency designed to be at the cutting edge of digital snooping The mission of the DCAC, located at the FBI facility in Quantico, Va., includes intercepting and decoding Skype convers...

The trend toward an "always on, always connected" lifestyle driven by the use of social networks andmobile technology has, if nothing else, groomed consumers to become demanding in their expectationsof the online experience. Unfortunately, the e-commerce experience has changed little since early daysand, until recently, continued to be a process more to be endured than enjoyed.

This story was originally published on March 14, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Even before Google launched its new privacy policy earlier this month, consolidating separate privacy policies for more than 60 applications, legal issues had surfaced. ...

This story was originally published on Feb. 23, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. I have a lot of fun writing about CRM -- the ideas, the tools and how they're brought together as a coherent strategy. CRM is a foundation on which to build relationships, layer on additional sales and support tools, and create...

I've been up to my armpits talking about Facebook for most of this month, and maybe because I'munusually dense, just realized that Facebook is a new kind of dot-com. By this I mean its revenue andprofit are based on a series of false beliefs. Unlike the first dot-coms, which failed, Facebook does haverevenue and profit, but just like them it has b...

This story was originally published on March 7, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. With much fanfare, the Obama administration recently unveiled a blueprint to improve consumer privacy protections online in the United States....

The honeymoon is over for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg. In fact, it ended before it began Facebook's long-awaited and much-hyped IPO is just over a week old, and the blame game is onas the company has lost 16 percent of its value since the initial offering. Wall Street's take on Facebook has gone from jubilant to jaundiced....

Google has updated its Transparency Report to include requests to take down URLs that contain copyrighted material. Such requests, made by content owners or their representatives, are at the heart of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Until now, Google has only publicized government requests to remove content; the new data provides an interesting...

The Dragon was caught by its tail on Friday. The unmanned SpaceX spacecraft, which launched into orbit earlier this week, has successfully docked with the International Space Station, marking a first for a cargo-carrying private spacecraft The docking was assisted with the station's 58-foot robotic arm controlled by astronaut Don Pettit. The histor...

Faced with a public rally outside the venue for its shareholder meeting at the Seattle Art Museum on Thursday, Amazon announced it would withdraw from a conservative business group and improve workers' conditions at its warehouses The protesters wanted Amazon to quit the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which they accuse of violating l...

The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) is running up against what seems to be a chronic problem with Google: difficulty in getting all of the information it requested The CNIL was tapped by Europe's Article 29 Working Party to take the lead in analyzing Google's new privacy policy, which went into affect on March 1. On March...