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Research In Motion appears to have decided that the battle for the name "BBX" is not worth a lengthy court fight after a federal judge in New Mexico issued a temporary restraining order to block its use for the company's operating system in its next-generation BlackBerry phones and tablets. In October, shortly after RIM announced the new brand, Ba...

Androids and iPhones are not the only things that are new in wireless. Networks like C Spire and U.S. Cellular are starting to market themselves very differently to customers. They're using rewards and loyalty programs, which may play a larger role in winning and keeping business going forward. Will Verizon, AT&T and Sprint follow? C Spire just e...

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote famously in his essay "Self-Reliance" that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." These days, many people drop the "foolish" out of the statement and thus completely pervert the saying's meaning, creating a justification to bash the idea of consistency Consistency is a good thing -- it's the tendency tha...

One of the most-used leisure-oriented apps on my Android smartphones has been Google's free My Tracks ...

A glitch in Facebook's code briefly let people access private photographs of other members The bug was discovered by a member of an online bodybuilding forum....

The ICM Registry on Monday launched the general availability of .xxx domain names on a first-come, first-served basis. The .xxx domain is meant to function as a responsible alternative for sites that offer adult entertainment content and services, ICM noted. All .xxx sites will be appropriately labeled, giving Internet users a clear indicatio...

Microsoft will begin accepting submissions for the Windows Store, its Windows 8 app store, when it unveils its Windows 8 public beta in late February It also invited applications from devs to submit applications using the Metro-style touch user interface for inclusion in the Windows Store....

Amazon is planning to offer a limited-time discount for shoppers who use its free mobile Price Check app in brick-and-mortar stores. If the customer uses the app to check the price on an item in a store, then buys the item through Amazon rather than at the store, an additional discount is applied. The Price Check app uses location-based services t...

Cuts in mail service that will add an extra delivery day to most first-class mail aren't expected to have a significant impact on Netflix, at least in the near term The U.S. Postal Service on Monday proposed modifying its current delivery standard for first class mail from one to three days delivery to two to three days....

Someone in the mood for a steak can always go down to the grocery store or head out to a restaurant to get one. However, some shoppers prefer to stay home, go online, place an order, and wait for a couple of days for a frozen steak to appear on their doorstep, packed tightly in a Styrofoam container with dry ice ...

Forrester Research has been heating up the marketplace lately with a string of interesting reports and forecasts that impact CRM and the front office generally. One that I saw, "Capitalizing on Live Video Chat" by Diane Clarkson (Aug. 23, 2011) talks about the bright future of using video (obviously) rather than text chat in sales, service and support...

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It's about time to change the stereotypical tablet user from casual and hipster to high-management The post-PC world is now; tablets and other mobile devices are beginning to dominate the marketplace. An estimated 45 million tablets will be sold in 2011, three times the number sold in 2010, according to BMO. With that explosion in popularity, it ...

Motorola has announced two new Droid tablets, both of which will run on Verizon's 4G LTE network The Xyboard 10.1 and 8.2 will be available this month, both online and at Verizon Wireless stores....

Verizon will not include the Google Wallet mobile payment functionality in its version of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which is set to launch in the U.S. later this month The carrier cited security reasons for its decision.

Jakob Nielsen, the design expert dubbed "the guru of Web page usability" by The New York Times and "the Web's usability czar" by WebReference.com, didn't find too many user-friendly features on Amazon's new Kindle Fire, according to a report he published on his website Monday The device is too heavy for extended use, Nielsen said, and he has proble...

New enhancements to EMC's Atmos Cloud Delivery Platform are designed to ease the way enterprises and service providers implement and access public and private cloud storage. VMware vApp packaging should simplify installation, and improved visibility and reporting tools provide the means to expand cloud metering services and improve administrative reporting and controls.

Software programmers work hard to produce secure, error-free code. Of course, bad things can happen -- but really, with increasingly diligent effort, how many things can go wrong? Quite a few, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Because cybersecurity is a national goal affecting both the private and public sector,...

Open Source and the Open Road, Part 1 The connected car is on the verge of going where no vehicle has ever gone before. Presently, many cars enable drivers to pair their mobile music and phone devices with their vehicles' sound systems. But cars with telemetry that will connect to cloud-based navigation and entertainment services could soon be comm...

What a week it's been in the cybersecurity business! On Monday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a report that called for the establishment of a body with nationwide authority to oversee the securing of the United States' national power grid....