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Shopping for clothes online has always been challenging for shoppers, but Google thinks it can make it less so with its new Boutiques offering Boutiques uses a combination of cutting-edge search technology and expert opinion to enable apparel shoppers -- right now, limited to women -- to create customized boutiques for putting together just the rig...

Verizon has shown solid growth in recent years, but there could be signs of weakness in its quarterly numbers. I saw this a few months ago and decided to keep my eye on it. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is nothing. Maybe it is a temporary blip that won't keep repeating itself -- but something doesn't seem right. Verizon seems to be having some problems, especially compared with AT&T. So what is happening, and should we be getting worried? ...

For all the talk of social CRM, there's not so much talk of social CRM successes. Oh, sure -- there are scattered success stories, but there's not a wave of SCRM home runs being hit out there. As a result, there's been talk of SCRM having "jumped the shark" or "outlived its hype." In talking to users, however, it's clear that the promise of SCRM i...

The threat of terrorism weighed heavily on United States senators holding an oversight hearing on the Transportation Security Administration Wednesday The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation was looking into the TSA's use of aggressive screening procedures for air travelers, including the use of thorough pat-downs and scan...

Mega-retailer Best Buy announced on Wednesday it will offer free shipping on a number of specific items through December 21. Products with free shipping include CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs, as well as gaming software and accessories. iPods, iPads and iPhones are excluded, as Apple will not allow it products to be advertised as bargains in any mann...

China Telecom has reportedly denied accusations by a U.S. government organization that it was behind the rerouting of 15 percent of the world's Web traffic to servers in China for a short period earlier this year The Chinese state-owned carrier was pinpointed by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission as being involved in the inciden...

Hulu Plus emerged from its four-month preview on Wednesday, opening its streaming TV service to all and chopping US$2 off its price tag at the same time The service allows Hulu users to stream high-definition video to their computers, iPhones, iPads, select Samsung and Sony televisions and Blu-ray players, as well as the Sony PlayStation 3 and the ...

This year's holiday shopping season is poised to break e-commerce records as consumers accelerate their spending online. More consumers are very likely to purchase their holiday gifts online (58 percent) than at brick-and-mortar stores (41 percent) this year, according to Channel Advisor's 2010 Consumer Shopping Habits Survey. And more than 46 percent of North American retailers expect double-digit online revenue growth this holiday season, says eMarketer. ...

I spent part of last week in the Seattle area at a small meeting Microsoft organized for analysts. The purpose was to brief us on product positioning and plans, and much of the meeting was covered by non-disclosure. Consequently, I am at a loss for how much I can divulge in this setting, at least until things are announced. I am fine with NDA i...

It used to be that only hard-core film buffs carried video recording equipment on vacations. Unless your job required working with film, film editing software was not on most computer users' must-have list of tools. Maybe that is why until recently, few really useful film editing apps existed for the Linux platform ...

From the beginning of the social media revolution, it was obvious that the legal system was going to have trouble keeping up. It started when file-sharing sites like Napster trampled on copyright laws on their way to completely changing the way music is sold.

Google will enable contactless shopping with a smartphone in its Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" operating system, which is due to be released in a few weeks, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Monday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In a discussion about new features Google is working on, Schmidt mentioned the inclusion of a special chip that could re...

What can users expect from Facebook's new Messages system, which will be able to deal with messages from and different types of communication media? Will it really take in messages from different types of messaging systems -- email, SMS, text, etc. -- and output responses to those systems?...

System migration efforts among IT vendors are no surprise. On a daily basis, virtually every vendor actively tries to poach competitors' customers directly, through partners and via numerous incentive programs and product discounts. In addition, the decision to migrate is no simple technological issue, but one affected by a numerous mitigating fac...

In life and in business, the old saying "you never get a second chance to make a first impression" fundamentally could apply to everything -- except when it comes to display advertising. Remarketing has disproved that old adage time and time again by affording just that: a second chance to reinforce one's messages and value proposition after that critical first impression. ...

Local, state, and federal government agencies across the U.S. share the common goal of serving the public. They also share another contemporary fact of life: They are running out of money. As a result, efficiency is becoming a major goal in government at all levels, and information technology appears to be a key target for getting more bang for the buck...

Well, it's November again. And in addition to gearing up for turkeys, pumpkin pie and football, those of us in IT know it's time to gear up for something else, something probably much less pleasant: our annual budget cycle. It's time once again for us to enter into days-long deliberation sessions deciding what and where (in some cases whom) to c...

Everything about Facebook is big. A half-billion users, 700 billion minutes a month spent there. It has 900 million pages, groups and events, according to the Facebook stats page ...

Facebook on Monday announced what CEO Mark Zuckerberg described as the next generation of messaging It spans across a user's messaging systems, offering retention of a user's conversation history and a social inbox....

Former Internet behemoth AOL is dipping its toes back into the email pool and gearing up to take a big plunge The beta version of Project Phoenix, which became available on Sunday to users who sign up and request an invite, is expected to launch for real in early 2011. While the revamped service isn't intended to be all things to all people, it's n...