Articles by

PDF to Speech, an app from Practical Apps, is available for US$2.99 at Google Play. The Classic Text-to-Speech Engine from SVOX is available for free at Google Play.I've been looking at ways to optimize the time I spend sitting in traffic. The old days when listening to the radio constituted the sum extent of productivity achieved while staring a...

Google has rolled out version 1 of its experimental open source Go computer programing language, 14 months after it first announced the language back in 2009 Go "is an attempt to combine the ease of programming of an interpreted, dynamically typed language with the efficiency and safety of a statically typed, compiled language," Go team lead Rob Pi...

Sony is working on the PlayStation 4, which it calls "Orbis," and plans to release the device in time for the holiday season in 2013, according to a report in Kotaku The console can reportedly play 3D games at 1080p resolution, as compared to the PS3's 720p. It apparently won't be backward-compatible with games for the PS3 and will reportedly seek ...

Google has launched a new tool called "Account Activity," designed to give users a detailed glimpse into their Web usage across all Google sites and services. Account Activity is a personalized, detailed monthly report on Web activity with Google search, Gmail accounts, YouTube and social network Google+. It also indicates location and device info...

It appears that Yahoo and shareholder Third Point are digging in for a contentious proxy fight The companies have been tussling over who will fill four seats on the board of directors, with the two sides clashing on several points, including whether Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb should get one of the spots....

Research In Motion has said it will offer app makers a prototype of the next smartphone in the BlackBerry 10 line at an upcoming conference in May. Good news, but is it too little, too late? The phone will not be ready to roll into the market till late 2012. RIM ruled during the last decade, but it has fallen way back since the iPhone and Androids...

When I go to CRM conferences -- and I go to many -- one of the things I relish is the opportunity to speak to leaders about thinking surrounding social CRM (SCRM). That group is not limited to the pundits and authors most closely associated with SCRM; it also includes users at these events who have reached the decision to fully embrace it in their businesses...

Overclocking a CPU (central processing unit) sounds seductive, right? Adjust a few settings on your phone or tablet, and the device goes faster. Games play without laborious, stuttering, forced slow-motion effects, and everything loads quicker Well, like everything in life, these adjustments involve a tradeoff. Just as there are risks in taking you...

In its ongoing quest to keep Flash relevant in the face of strong competition from HTML5, Adobe on Wednesday announced Flash Player 11.2, featuring a silent updates option to enhance the platform's security Improving the security of Flash Player through silent updates is critical because more than 99 percent of malware installations succeed by targ...

The Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday released BrowserQuest, a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game written in HTML5, JavaScript and other open source languages. [*Correction - March 29, 2012] ...

The Federal Trade Commission this week urged Congress to impose new regulations on companies that collect consumer data related to their Internet browsing habits. Under the policy the FTC suggests, data brokers, or the holders of personal consumer information, must allow consumers access to that information. The commission also suggested that the ...

Microsoft continued to expand its television offerings for members of its Xbox Live Gold service Monday by adding HBO Go, Major League Baseball video and Comcast's on-demand video service Comcast Xfinity TV allows Xbox Gold members to access the cable carrier's expansive library of entertainment programming whenever they want it....

Effective landing pages are an essential component of successful online marketing campaigns and are probably the single biggest factor in determining whether or not you will convert a Web visitor into a prospect who is willing to provide contact information. Landing pages are custom-designed single Web pages a visitor arrives at after clicking on ...

Note to self: Write something nice about Microsoft Convergence 2012. They did a great job in Houston, and most importantly you can really see the CRM focus coming together with social, mobile, analytics, back office and a lot more. It's taken a long time because there are a lot of moving parts for Microsoft, but Convergence was impressive To get a...

I thought I had found image-manipulating Nirvana with GimpShop. But the wide world of open source software and the Linux community failed me this week. My quest for a better GIMP tool to give me a Photoshop-like Windows experience (as in Adobe's Photoshop) turned into a fool's folly. ...

Google is reportedly planning to launch its own third-party commenting system soon It will apparently be tied into its Google+ social platform, its Web services and the company's Web search products....

Nine months after shutting down operations -- and just weeks after several suspected members were arrested -- the LulzSec hacker community has apparently sprung back to life, hacking the website of military dating site MilitarySingles However, there's some controversy over whether that site had indeed been hit by the hackers....

Nokia's Lumia 900 will make its U.S. launch on April 8, at which point AT&T will begin selling the phone for a relatively modest US$99 ...

Major corporate realignments happen for any number of reasons. First and foremost, they aim to pursue and capture improved leverage of financial and human capital. Second, they can alter inefficient habitual behaviors and deconstruct unwanted corporate fiefdoms. Finally, they provide tangible proof to the markets of executive leaders' strategic vision. All these points are apparent in the plans HP announced last week.

The market for mobile information technology will grow sharply in the next few years as employers increasingly embrace both "at home" telework solutions and the use of other remote access capabilities, including smartphones and tablets. In a February forecast on mobile data traffic, Cisco Systems predicted that such traffic will grow at a compound annual rate of 74 percent in the U.S. between 2011 and 2016. The compound annual rate over that period for smartphone traffic will be 110 percent; for tablets, 91 percent; and for laptops, 34 percent...