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Enterprises are grappling with the skyrocketing amount of data they have to handle as that data proliferates into the terabyte and petabyte stage Datasets that large are known as "big data" to IT practitioners....

Since it was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show last January, the Motorola Xoom tablet has been hailed as the strongest challenge yet to Apple's iPad However, it faces two possible obstacles to widespread acceptance: Its price, and its lack of a WiFi-only version....

Google has released a plug-in that connects Microsoft Office with Google Docs. Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office became available for download worldwide on Thursday. The plug-in brings multi-person collaboration through Google accounts to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel The plug-in syncs to Google's cloud so that multiple people can ma...

An issue that periodically makes its way into public discourse -- the impact and possible dangers to brain development and health posed by the ubiquitous use of cellphones -- is being revisited thanks to a newly published scientific study in The Journal of the American Medical Association However, rather than offering any definitive answers, the n...

Where should you invest, what should you avoid, why and when? These are the basic questions every investor wrestles with. There are so many companies in the wireless, telecom and healthcare industries, and they are no longer on the same track. Some are strong and growing rapidly and leading, while others are struggling. Even the leaders have things to be aware of.

As I've written before, social CRM best practices don't exist -- but only because in order to be most effective, each business needs to tailor its social CRM approach to its specific customers. However, that doesn't mean you're doomed to a long evaluation process and a tough spell of trial-and-error efforts that won't pay off for years. There are ...

Lasers amplify light. The name itself is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." It's only natural then that the world's first anti-laser cancels light, and could spark applications in optical supercomputing and radiation oncology. ...

HP reported its fiscal first quarter results for 2011 on Tuesday, revealing a strong performance in earnings and income. Its net income was US$2.6 billion for its first fiscal quarter, up from $2.3 billion a year earlier. Overall revenue was $32.2 billion, up from $31.2 during last year's first quarter The company's projections, however, jarred som...

Another company has lodged antitrust allegations against Google in one of the most feared forums -- at least for U.S. tech companies -- in the world: the European Commission. This time it is French firm 1plusV, a maker of specialized search engines for such topics as law and music, and parent company of Ejustice.fr, a legal search engine. The comp...

Microsoft released its first software update for Windows Phone 7 this week -- and promptly stubbed its toe The update reportedly caused problems with Omnia 7 and Focus smartphones, both made by Samsung. Some users complained that the update left their phones "bricked," or rendered completely inoperable....

Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level almost from the start of the Obama presidency. Now the administration has issued its strongest backing yet for cloud technology with the release of the Federal Strategy for Cloud Computing Officials are using the strategy not only to pull togeth...

The upheaval in the Middle East is roiling the energy markets, and that will affect CRM. Year-over-year, the price of a gallon of regular is up over half a buck nationally, and the average price for said gallon is US$3.18. As gas goes, so does jet fuel. The confluence of rising prices, political unrest and a recovering economy all contribute to the price rise. ...

One of the endearing traits of open source applications for Linux distros is that they rarely look the same, unlike on those other desktop computing platforms. That is especially the case with GTimelog Time Tracker, a tiny application that tracks what you do and when you do it during your work -- and if you wish, your play -- sessions....

Science fiction enthusiasts could probably connect over plans Microsoft announced Monday for Kinect, the company's interactive gaming add-on for the Xbox 360. A software developers kit (SDK) is on the way, Microsoft representatives told journalists at a sneak-peek event that featured a Kinect digital rendering right out of the classic simulation m...

Amazon on Tuesday announced the launch of video streaming. The service gives Amazon Prime members unlimited, commercial-free instant streaming of more than 5,000 movies and TV shows. In the Past, Amazon's Prime membership program has mostly been about free shipping -- members get free two-days shipping regardless of the purchase price for US$79 pe...

The finals of its highly publicized "Jeopardy" tournament found IBM's "Watson" computer system handily winning with a total of US$77,147 -- upwards of $50,000 more than the sums amassed by Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, its grand champion adversaries. Watson's $1 million grand prize will be split equally between World Vision, a community developmen...

Communication is the key to the success of customer relationship management, and it lays the foundation for customer satisfaction and business growth Today, we have a wide range of CRM communication channels that organizations effectively utilize for communicating with their customers to offer their products and services....

Cold fusion -- the largely discredited science of making more energy from less -- may be making a comeback. Controversial yet high-profile demonstrations in Italy last month purported to show a cold fusion device turning 400 watts of heat power into 12,400 watts. The eye-popping 31-fold increase -- also known as an "excess heat effect" -- illustra...

This story was originally published on Nov. 30, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. As the adoption of social media is growing astronomically, it is clearly becoming the next-gen customer engagement channel of choice for industry. The banking industry is likely to be the frontier in adopting next-gen technolog...

This story was originally published on Dec. 16, 2010, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. Trends have always come and gone, but when it comes to all-things-tech, the speed of change is faster than an Internet minute. It isn't that tech users are all that fickle; it's that the environment around them is constantly ch...