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For some time now, I've felt almost like the proverbial lone voice in the wilderness questioning the value of Groupon as an investment My primary issue with Groupon is that there is nothing inherently unique about its business model. Given that fact, I don't understand how a company that really has no way of fighting off competitors can be valued a...

InsideView will be announcing several upgrades to its SaaS social sales and intelligence application in the coming weeks. Some of the changes, including social profile features, have already gone live. The company has been turning them on over the past month, as soon as they were developed, Ralf VonSosen, vice president of marketing, told CRM Buyer.

Broadband service providers in the United States are celebrating the results of the Federal Communications Commission's findings on the contentious question of broadband speeds in the country The FCC has found that actual sustained download speeds are much closer to the speeds advertised by ISPs than was the case in early 2009....

Clearwire said Wednesday that it intends to add "LTE Advanced-Ready" technology to its 4G network. The announcement follows the successful completion of 4G tests that clocked download speeds above 120 Mbps. The deployment is subject to additional funding, the company said. Clearwire also reported its second quarter financial results and posted net...

Security vendor McAfee earlier this week revealed Operation Shady Rat, a long-running series of network intrusions and acts of data theft that preyed on organizations all over the world. However, the revelation of Shady Rat came as little surprise to some in the security community. "This is simply the latest example of something we recognized arou...

Google's chief legal officer went on the offensive Wednesday, posting a company blog entry that attacked Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and other tech companies for securing patents and undertaking legal activity that would block the development of the Android platform The post, penned by David Drummond, senior vice president and chief legal officer for ...

Motorola Mobility is one of the industry's more interesting stories. It is a story of rags to riches to rags, again and again. It was the leader in the wireless handset market for decades. Then it lost its way in the 1990s and has not had a long-term recovery since. Through partnerships with Google and Verizon, it seemed to be getting some tractio...

Some people are considering now buying a home because they realize that residential prices are quite low. They reason that if they don't get into the market now, they might miss the window of opportunity to purchase a home at a deep discount from previous prices. Others are looking to get into the market to buy a distressed sale, then profitably "flipping" the house quickly by selling it to another buyer. Both scenarios make sense.

By this point in the evolution of e-commerce, most e-tailers know the benefits of live engagement. Website visitors are three times more likely to make a purchase when they have the support of a sales representative. Just as in brick-and-mortar stores, interacting with a knowledgeable person in real-time creates a connection to the customer that i...

Field of Streams, Part 2 When ICE identifies a site that is violating copyright and/or intellectual property laws, it obtains a warrant from a United States court granting it the authority to seize the URL. At that point, ICE takes down the streams and throws up an intimidating warning that is overlaid on a red background with the word "SEIZED" wri...

Research In Motion announced five new smartphones based on its new BlackBerry 7 operating system on Wednesday. AT&T, Sprint and U.S. Cellular will all get new devices that maintain some of the feel of earlier products while offering functionality competitive with the leading smartphones on the market ...

Security vendor McAfee has released information pertaining to a years-long series of network intrusions and data theft incidents that the company has collectively dubbed "Operation Shady RAT." The data stolen falls into a broad range of categories: closely guarded national secrets, negotiation plans and exploration details for new oil and gas field...

Push Pop Press, a start-up digital publisher, announced recently it's been acquired by Facebook Push Pop, founded by former Apple engineers Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris, originally aimed to approach e-books by incorporating new designs, better imaging technology and interactive elements....

Visual product configuration software is increasingly allowing consumers to design their own products, from shoes to tattoos, before purchasing them. The ability to design-before-you-buy gives consumers a sense of power and independence -- and it's also just a lot of fun....

Google is goosing its still-nascent Google Offers with the acquisition of The Dealmap. The startup, which aggregates discounts from a number of daily deal sites, launched a little more than a year ago, and has already gained a following of two million strong. Google Offers debuted about two months ago and is rolling out on a city-by-city basis. It...

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Field of Streams, Part 1 Anyone who has watched a sporting event on TV has heard something along the lines of, "Any other use of this telecast or of any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without express written consent is prohibited." ...

Hulu is launching its first long-form original program this summer, a documentary series called "A Day in the Life." Six half-hour episodes, directed by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, will feature such people as jet-setting entrepreneur Richard Branson, rapper and songwriter will.i.am, comedian Russell Peters and musician Girl Talk.

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a system that combines facial recognition technology with social networking data and information drawn from other sources, raising new privacy concerns.The research team, led by Alessandro Acquisti, associate professor of information technology and public policy, will present its findings in full at Black Hat, a security conference to be held in Las Vegas later this week.

Blizzard's "Diablo III" still doesn't have a confirmed release date, but more details about the action role-playing PC game are starting to emerge, including the announcement Monday that the game will feature an in-game auction house using real cash for transactions between players There will be two versions of the auction house used to buy and sel...