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SugarCRM has just debuted a controlled release of version 6.5 of its flagship open source CRM offering. In many ways, the release is an iterative change -- it does not represent the same major shift in functionality and user interface as version 6 did, when it was launched in 2010. In one key way, however, the new version is significantly differen...

Instagram, an app from Instagram, is available for free at Google Play. Instagram, the popular photography and social networking app for the iPhone, with a whopping 27 million iOS users, recently became available for Android. Around 5 million Android users reportedly signed up for the app in the first few days of the Android release. Then social n...

If you've been anywhere near a consumer electronics retailer lately or have leafed through the consumer electronics circulars and ads that supplement Sunday newspapers, you've no doubt noticed the words "Smart TV" shouting out at you. And if you've been wondering what a Smart TV is, or whether whatever it is may be smarter than you are, read on....

Nintendo has reached a dismal milestone: For the first time ever, it posted a fiscal year operating loss -- down US$458 million for the year just ended. It is an ignominious turn of events for the company, which created legendary games like "Super Mario Brothers" and innovative devices like the Wii.

A hacker with the handle "Hardcore Charlie" has stolen source code for VMware's ESX hypervisor and posted it on the Internet A hypervisor provides a virtualization layer between operating systems and the underlying hardware, creating a virtual machine (VM). This lets users run multiple virtual machines on one processor. Hypervisors are key to virtu...

In a move that would be akin to unveiling an automobile's new engine in advance of an auto show, Samsung on Thursday introduced its new 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 Quad processor for smartphone and tablet devices. While the company did not say which devices would first use the processor -- which is based on the ARM Cortex A9 chip -- it announced that it woul...

As testimony unfolds in the Oracle-Google lawsuit, now in its second week, it appears that Google's defense against copyright infringement is vulnerable. That is not to say Google will not ultimately prevail in the end. Oracle has alleged that Google's Android OS infringes both Java patents and copyrights. So far, testimony has focused on the copy...

The Next Web, a network of online technology outlets, kicked off its annual conference Thursday morning in Amsterdam One of the morning's headline speakers was Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of the social news site Reddit, whose 25-minute talk discussed the ongoing -- and increasingly litigious -- battle over Internet rights....

Would it surprise you if I said the upcoming CTIA Wireless 2012 show will be very different from those in the past? I've been going to these wireless shows for more years than I can remember. Every few years, the show -- and in fact the entire industry -- changes. This is a great showplace for what is new and what is coming next in the wireless in...

CRM is not a small market. Nor is it a niche sequestered away in a corner of the larger CRM market. CRM is a US$13.045 billion industry in 2012, and it will grow to $16.694 billion in 2015, according to Gartner. No matter how you look at things, that's a lot of money With a projected growth of nearly 30 percent in three years, it would be easy to a...

One of the simplest ways to improve performance on a laptop is to add more RAM, or random access memory. RAM prices have been steadily dropping over the years, and it's now possible to see a significant performance boost with an investment of twenty or thirty dollars. If your machine is sluggish, you might need additional memory....

Mobile carrier Sprint Nextel reported deep losses amounting to US$863 million in the first quarter of this year, but the company's results actually beat Wall Street expectations. And since it began offering Apple's iPhone as of last October, Sprint added a net 263,000 subscribers However, this has come at a price. To acquire the iPhone, Sprint agre...

Constant hammering by hackers and mutilation by malware have motivated Facebook to enact new security measures It's now incorporating the malicious URL databases from Microsoft, McAfee, Trend Micro, Sophos and Symantec into its URL blacklist system, which scans trillions of clicks a day....

With the launch of Google Drive on Tuesday, the number of cloud storage service options for consumers has become bewildering Players include Google with Google Drive, Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive, Apple's iCloud, Dropbox, YouSendIt, SpiderOak, SugarSync, Box.net, Amazon Cloud Drive and Ubuntu One....

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt defended his company's actions regarding Java and Android as he took the witness stand Tuesday in Google's ongoing trial, in which the company stands accused of misusing Java programming code in the development of its mobile operating system. Oracle, which acquired rights to Java when it bought Sun Microsyste...

Salesforce.com has unveiled a new series of cloud computing initiatives for the government user base -- a highly lucrative niche for tech vendors, especially those that can present their products in a budget-friendly light. The new offerings, bundled under the name "Government Cloud," include a dedicated, multitenant instance of Salesforce.com's c...

In an initial determination, International Trade Commission judge Thomas Pender ruled that Apple was violating one of Motorola Mobility's patents for 3G wireless technology. Specifically, the ruling cited a patent that was issued to Motorola in 2001 for a "method and system for generating a complex pseudonoise sequence for processing a code divisi...

The tech industry loves the concept of new innovation to the point where product launches all too often call to mind infatuated elders showing off photos of their latest grandkids. But practicality tends to drive the manufacturing side of the IT business, with consistency trumping innovation. As a result, products arrive at market on time, retaile...

This might be the year we look on in hindsight as the time Oracle got its groove back. It is well known that CEO Larry Ellison thinks in 10-year cycles and about how the industry seems to morph like a caterpillar about every decade. He's not the only one. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, has referenced the decadal cadence, and others have too...

Sometimes too much of a good thing in free software can create bad impressions. For instance, some of the free stuff so easily available in Linux distro package managers is so archaic that newcomers to the OS might understandably shriek in horror.