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Not even 24 hours had passed following Google's sneak preview of its new social networking initiative -- Google+ -- before the grumbling began. Briefly, one of the key features of the service, which is still in field-test mode, is +Circles, which allows users to group people into different classes or categories such as work friends, family and so ...

California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law Wednesday that will require Amazon.com and other Internet retailers to collect sales tax on goods sold to California residents Mail order laws have long held that state sales tax doesn't have to be paid by companies that do not have a presence in the state where the goods will be delivered. That's s...

HP will release the TouchPad in select markets Friday, putting the webOS mobile operating system the company acquired when it purchased Palm into an HP-branded tablet ...

Specific Media announced Wednesday that the company, in partnership with recording artist Justin Timberlake, will buy MySpace from News Corp. in hopes of revitalizing the ailing social networking site The rumored price is around US$35 million to $40 million, less than a tenth of the $580 million News Corp. paid for the social network in 2005. That ...

I have been impressed with the recovery that Sprint Nextel has shown over the last few years, but now it has struck a deal with LightSquared that puts the cart way ahead of the horse. Is Sprint making a big mistake while trying to bounce back from another body blow it just took? I'll take a look at how its future may be shaping up thanks to these ...

We get so wound up talking about the value of online communities for social CRM purposes -- for instance, in building loyalty, identifying potential leads, and improving the quality of service our businesses deliver -- that sometimes we forget that they're really scaled-up versions of actual communities. The metaphor is almost perfectly realized f...

Under the legacy approach to software development, developers write code, which is then frozen, tested by another group, released and ultimately supported by yet another team again. Under this highly structured approach, large enterprise software applications are typically updated every 6 to 12 months, and up to several years can pass between major operating system releases. In enterprises, risk appetite and the desire for stability typically drive these intervals.

Zynga Game Network will likely file for an IPO on Thursday, based on a flurry of media reports that came out Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. Though an impending Zynga IPO has been rumored for weeks, details are now leaking out. Zynga is a leading developer of social games such as "FarmVille" and "CityVille," which are wildly popular on Facebook...

Microsoft has applied for a patent on technology that may let its user secretly intercept Voice over IP (VoIP) communications, amend the content and store it The application was filed in December 2009 and was recently made public....

Google took a second stab at social networking Tuesday with the launch of Google+, a program designed to interactively connect users and challenge worldwide social networking king Facebook The search engine giant failed with its first attempt at an online social network, last year's Google Buzz, which encountered difficulties in cracking the crowde...

French search company 1plusV has stepped up its battle with Google over how its algorithms rank sites, filing suit against the search engine giant in the French Commercial Court. It is seeking US$423 million in damages from business it claims it lost due to alleged antitrust practices by Google. At $423 million, it is the largest claim filed again...

There's a huge difference between the enterprise world and the social media community. While there are many signs of life on the social side, the rank-and-file Global 1,000 seem for the most part to be clueless. That's not an indictment, just a statement of fact, and maybe opportunity At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston last week, I got an e...

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Between the repeated attacks on the United States government's IT infrastructure by foreign hackers and incursions by LulzSec, a hacker community whose members wandered in and out of government cybersystems before publicly disbanding this week, it's not difficult to conclude that the U.S.'s federal IT infrastructure is the cybersecurity equivalent of Swiss cheese...

Each day, more than half a million Android devices fire up. That's the word from Andy Rubin, Google's VP of engineering. In a Twitter post Monday, Rubin also noted the number of Android daily activations is growing 4.4 percent week over week. It was only two months ago that Google touted daily activations at 400,000 If Android maintains this g...

Microsoft on Tuesday launched its newest cloud service, Office 365, in 40 markets. The service consists of online versions of Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Lync Pricing runs from US$2 to $11 per user per month....

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt foresees more troublesome days ahead between the search engine giant and the governments of the world. Censorship is on the rise around the globe, he said Monday, at a Dublin summit on militant violence that was organized by Google, according to press reports. How freely information should flow has been a th...

E-reader ownership jumped to 12 percent of adult U.S. consumers in May, doubling from 6 percent in the past six months, the first time sales have been in double digits, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project The growth spurt is outpacing that of tablet computers -- there are more adults who own a d...

Competing for federal contracts is tough -- and protesting the award of a federal contract may be even tougher. But a ruling by a federal agency appears to have improved the ability of all vendors -- not just IT firms -- to utilize key legal channels for protesting the award of federal contracts One of those channels is the General Accountability O...

Microsoft scored a victory Monday when defense contractor General Dynamics' Itronix division agreed to pay it licensing fees for using the Android operating system Itronix makes rugged mobile computers for military, law enforcement, first responder and field service use....