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Facebook has introduced a number of security improvements aimed at better safeguarding users' privacy. These enhancements came a day after Sophos published an open letterasking the site to tighten up its security. By all accounts, Sophos, which did not return TechNewsWorld's call, was not impressed. Not that Facebook hastily revamped its controls ...

In the competitive federal information technology market, Google thought it was a good idea to challenge the U.S. Interior Department on a potentially rich procurement for hosted messaging services. Google claimed that Interior failed to observe government contracting policies by focusing on Microsoft offerings to the exclusion of Google's products...

Young Kindle is getting a library card -- at 11,000 libraries. Amazon announced Kindle Library Lending on Wednesday. The new feature, which launches later this year, will let Kindle customers borrow Kindle books from more than 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will work on all generations of Kindle devices and Kindle reading apps.

Don't look now, but Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 R2 tied with IBM's perennially bullet-proof AIX v7. Both were rated by corporate users as the most secure among 18 major server operating system distributions Nine out of 10 -- 90 percent -- of the 468 respondents to ITIC's 2010-2011 Global Server Hardware and Server OS Reliability survey rated th...

Vendors competing for federal information technology contracts are required to meet a broad array of standards reflected in much of industry jargon, such as cybersecurity, interoperability and scalability. Technical factors are critical, of course. At a Senate hearing last week, however, it became clear that as the federal government strives to im...

Marketing has become the new hot spot in CRM. During the recession and even before, there was a great flurry of interest in customer service and related things. Consequently, we have seen a lot of attention being paid to customer experience, and much of the social-media-oriented growth in that period was centered on the existing customer As the e...

If all you do with PDF (Portable Document Format) files is view them, you have very little need for an application the likes of PDF Shuffler. But if you find yourself in desperate need of a tool to let you slice and dice one or more PDF files, then this little app may well be one of the best computing tools you will use on your Linux desktop....

It may be an increasingly digital, electronic and paperless world, but that doesn't mean it doesn't use a lot of energy. In particular, data centers -- those places that store, maintain, and manage all the bits and bytes that keep things humming -- use tremendous amounts of energy. Greening these centers, therefore, is one of the top priorities for many businesses...

Google is rolling out access in the U.S. to a tool that has already made a mark in other parts of the world: Map Maker. As the name suggests, Map Maker allows people to create and edit Google Maps It debuted outside the U.S. because Google didn't believe there would be much demand for it in the states, where there was already a wealth of online map...

Seagate will take over Samsung's hard disk drive operations as part of an expansion of the companies' strategic relationship announced Tuesday. The HDD deal is one of multiple transactions totaling US$1.375 billion, which will be paid by Seagate to Samsung, half in stock and half in cash. This could be Seagate's return fire at rival Western Digita...

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against the principals and others associated with three of the largest Internet poker sites (Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker). The 11 named defendants -- Isai Scheinberg, Raymond Bitar, Scott Tom, Brent Beckley, Nelson Burtnick, Paul Tate, Ryan Lang, Bradley Franzen, Ira Rubin, Chad Elie, and John Campos -- were charged with fraud, money laundering and illegal gambling offenses. A civil money laundering and forfeiture complaint was also filed against those sites and their payment processors...

Dell's announcement of new solutions and investments around its Virtual Era data center strategy provided clear insights into the company's future plans and direction. The new solutions include the following: vStart...

Computer software requires an enormous amount of support. That fact has enriched companies such as Oracle and SAP, which levy annual support fees of about 20 percent of the sale prices of their applications That's one of the things that just sticks in the craw of Clint Oram, chief technology officer and a co-founder of SugarCRM, as he told CRM Buye...

Mobile device developers are in a holding pattern with plans to plug in the much-awaited Google Android 3.0 upgrade. The delay is causing some bad feelings in the FOSS (Free Open Source Software) community. But it is unlikely that Google will carry many scars from the dispute Claiming it needs more time to solve technical glitches, Google recently ...

Information security pros working in the healthcare sector quite often experience a high degree of frustration and anxiety when it comes to the Security Rule's "addressable" implementation specifications. As any healthcare provider will tell you, the addressable requirements of the security rule tend to be among the more difficult to meet and more technically focused of the mandates with the Security Rule. ...

Dating website Match.com has announced it will shortly begin checking existing and new members against public sex offender registries. The move follows on the heels of a lawsuit filed by a woman who says she was sexually assaulted by a sex offender -- a man she met through Match.com The move is a departure for Match.com -- as it would be for other ...

On Monday, Microsoft opened Office 365 -- a cloud-based version of its productivity apps -- to the public for beta testing. The beta version contains Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. The trial is available in 38 countries and 17 languages. The Office 365 suite is billed as an always up-to-date cloud service. Th...

Companies planning to globalize should ask themselves two serious questions before embarking on expansion efforts. First, "Has there ever been an easier time to reach an international customer base?" And perhaps paradoxically, "Has there ever been a more complex time to optimize for global reach?" Certainly, the Web and social media platforms make...

Cisco pulled the plug on its Flip digital video camera earlier this week, putting an end to its line of popular, relatively low-cost dedicated digital video cameras ...

The Lithium Social Customer Suite is designed to help companies identify and manage a group of dedicated customers using social media channels. Referring to these types of social customers as "superfans," Lithium helps companies turn them into advocates for their products and services With the advent of social media, customers have found new ways t...