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It's been difficult in recent years for many people and small businesses to get the loans they need from banks and other traditional lenders, but there are a variety of alternative models One is person-to-person lending, offered by companies like Prosper, which essentially lets individual people become lenders.

It's the beginning of the year, time for sales kickoff meetings and presidents' clubs at some location within 10 degrees of the equator. These signal events will reward those diligent and fortunate enough to have made or exceeded quota while focusing the attention of everyone on this year's mission. Typically that includes higher quotas and some new faces determined to ramp up before their draw runs out...

Asking a seasoned Linux user what music player you should use is akin to bringing up questions about religion or politics with your drinking buddies. A much safer strategy is, don't ask and don't tell. But if you insist, let me throw a suggestion into the fray....

In 2012, we will see the rise of the data center fabric. Within the year, multiple Ethernet fabric technologies will mature into shipping products. This is very timely because server virtualization is now giving rise to a whole new set of data center challenges that traditional switching technologies were not equipped to address. Fabrics will address these challenges with a faster, simpler, more agile infrastructure that will help IT managers virtualize more applications and deliver greater application performance at less cost. ...

Sony demoed a 55-inch prototype model of a next-generation television that it calls a "crystal LED display" at CES on Tuesday It's claimed to be the first 55-inch full HD self-emitting display using LEDs as the light source....

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer delivered his final Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote in Las Vegas on Tuesday. Ballmer talked up Windows 8 and discussed additions to the Xbox platform and new Windows-based Nokia devices. The presentation, which featured "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest, kicked off the annual show ...

Google has expanded its search engine to include personal results, profiles and Google+ pages related to a given search The new search capability, called "Search Plus Your World," was announced Tuesday....

AT&T on Monday announced a new API platform and app store, called "AppCenter." The online store will be opened later this year and will feature HTML5 software The store will sell wares for Android phones and iPhones. Unlike the Android Market or Apple's App Store, the platform will be similar to a magazine-like collection of stories, according to A...

AT&T on Monday announced a new API platform and app store, called "AppCenter." The online store will be opened later this year and will feature HTML5 software The store will sell wares for Android phones and iPhones. Unlike the Android Market or Apple's App Store, the platform will be similar to a magazine-like collection of stories, according to A...

World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking's physical condition is further deteriorating, and Intel wants to help the famous scientist continue to share his ideas with the world. Hawking, who at 21 was diagnosed with a motor neurone disease related amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as "Lou Gehrig's disease," has been confined to a wheelchair for much of his adult life.

As essential as open systems and mobile applications are for doing business, they also put significant strain on an organization's security systems and, in particular, the key line of defense: identity and access management (IAM) systems. Allowing a broad spectrum of users -- from employees to partners, to temporary workers, to customers -- to acc...

Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., is a neuropsychiatrist and director of the Semel Institute for Neuorscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, or at least he was when he published American Mania: When More Is Not Enough in 2005. In the book he quotes numerous economic thinkers and writers from the last 300 years, including Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) and Alexis de Tocqueville (Democracy in America), as he analyzes how we behave in modern business...

With the apparent resurgence of hacker community Anonymous, as well as concerns that cybercriminals may have recently penetrated the networks of a number of small utilities, two United States federal government initiatives to improve cybersecurity were launched this past week As of Jan. 6, companies awarded contracts and orders by the U.S. General ...

When the Consumer Electronics Show officially opens in Las Vegas on Tuesday, it will mark the last year of Microsoft's participation, the company announced in December. Apple has been missing from CES for years. Facebook will not be on hand. Google and Amazon will have little presence. The absence of key tech companies will leave giant holes next year...

Vizio will roll out five new PCs at CES 2012. Together with the company's HDTVs, these will constitute an attack on the multiscreen home entertainment market, which Apple dominates at the high end Vizio's plans are "part of the battle for the living room, where you've got all your devices able to share information and talk to each other, making the...

Sony appears to be preparing for a reshuffling of its top management, with the end result being the loss of power for current president Howard Stringer. The common denominator among the various reports that have surfaced is that Executive Deputy President Kaz Hirai will be elevated to president and Stringer will retain his current roles of CEO and...

Source code for two security applications from Symantec has been stolen and posted on the Web. The hackers claiming responsibility, who call themselves the "Lords of Dharmaraja," say they obtained code for the Norton Antivirus application However, it appears they actually obtained code for two enterprise products, Symantec End Point 11 (SEP 11) and...

Last week, an announcement from Lenovo got me thinking of Rory Read, AMD's new CEO, who made some cryptic remarks about AMD going into ARM and no longer chasing Intel. Now, there are a number of hybrid or crossover products that will be coming out this year, with the most interesting being a cross between a notebook and tablet. This design, and we'll probably see some examples at CES this week, will likely be the showcase for Windows 8. ...

Corning will be at the 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week, but unlike most of the exhibitors there, it won't be debuting a sexy new gadget Corning will be showing off Gorilla Glass 2 alongside the newest smartphones, tablets and other miracles in computing.

A colleague of mine recently remarked in frustration that IT often finds itself in the worst possible position: taking the blame for a host of problems -- including increasing costs, growing capacity needs and poor responsiveness -- while being limited by a lack of real influence and control over the solutions. This comment came as the result of ...