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Last week, Apple passed Microsoft in market capitalization for a number of reasons. I agree with Gary Marshall, who argues in "Apple beats Microsoft? Not so fast, Fanboys" that the two companies aren't even in the same race. I'd even add that the only reason Apple moved ahead in valuation is because we don't count stock owned by employees, and Bill alone has around US$40 billion of that. ...

Google has completed its acquisition of mobile advertiser AdMob, after what was apparently a very close decision by the Federal Trade Commission, which had been vetting the buy for antitrust purposes. With the legalities finally over, the speculation shifts from "will it happen?" to "what happens next?" As usual, Google, which rarely enlightens th...

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project announced Friday that it has teamed up with semiconductor manufacturer Marvell to offer kids in developing nations a computer for under US$100 ...

On May 3, SuccessFactors, a business execution solution, purchased CubeTree for US$20 million in stock and a $30 million cash payment, contingent on the performance of SuccessFactor's stock over the next three years. This article will analyze this purchase, provide contextual background on this deal, and provide recommendations to companies seeking to improve their corporate collaboration.

For the past several weeks, the world's attention has been riveted on the Gulf of Mexico, where millions of gallons of crude oil have leaked into the ocean and threatened both environmental and commercial interests. However, companies are every day dealing with their energy choices and costs, as evidenced by a slew of technology announcements recently angled toward lowering IT costs by better managing energy use...

Thanks to advances in computer-generated technology, the images simply jump out at you from the TV screen, as all good commercials should: massive sheets of orange fabric covering up the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and unfolding down the sides of buildings on the Las Vegas Strip, dropping from the top of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, being unfurled by shiny happy people all along an East Coast beach. The late British singer-songwriter Nick Drake's "From the Morning" lulls you into accepting all this as just another day in the U.S. right before the voice-over announcer brings us to the point with the (ahem) blanket statement: "AT&T covers 97 percent of all Americans."

The new privacy controls Facebook announced Wednesday were met with criticism the following day from privacy groups that called the new policies inadequate In a conference call on Thursday, representatives of the groups insisted on a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the social networking giant and regulatory oversight....

Symantec is planning to introduce two mobile apps and a Software as a Service security application under an initiative dubbed "Norton Everywhere." The two apps are Norton Smartphone Security for Android Beta and Norton Connect Beta. The third product, Norton DNS Beta, is a cloud-based service through which users are able to configure their routers ...

One of the most popular game providers on Facebook cut a deal Wednesday to bring its entertainment wares to Yahoo Zynga -- known for its infectious social media diversions "Farmville" and "Mafia Wars" -- announced a partnership with Yahoo that will expose the gamemaker's offerings to the aging portal's more than 600 million users, although some of ...

Amid all the controversy over online privacy, one thing has been treated as an almost universal given: Young people don't care about privacy the way their cautious, conservative elders do As it turns out, the meme is kind of wrong....

Social media strategies are not just for consumer-focused companies anymore. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and their ilk are finding their way into business-to-business firms. Solid waste service provider Waste Management, for example, has set up a Web 2.0 shop Interactivity is key, and social media are being used at Waste Management for educational...

Adoption is truly the CRM killer. If your employees won't use your CRM system, your investment is an utter waste However, the way many organizations look at adoption doesn't help matters. All too many adoption failures are attributed to the users -- those darned stubborn employees who can't be bothered to deal with change, even when it's for their ...

You might think that someone at Microsoft is a big fan of Dr. Seuss; naming the new Windows Phones the "Kin One" and "Kin Two" certainly conjures up images of critters that would assist the Cat in the Hat in wreaking havoc on Sally and her brother's house. But it's really Kin as in kinship; people joined by common ancestry (as Merriam-Webster's online dictionary defines it), or in a more tech-savvy sense, younger users joined by the common desire to share every bit of information they come in contact with via their smartphones...

Facebook on Wednesday announced an overhaul of its privacy controls intended to make them simpler. This follows a barrage of criticism and weeks of pressure from various organizations and groups regarding recent changes the social networking site made to its privacy settings "The number one thing we've heard is that there just needs to be a simpler...

There has been a reorganization at the top of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division: Its president Robbie Bach, who has been with Microsoft for 22 years, is retiring. Also departing is J Allard, senior vice president of design and development for the division. A 19-year company veteran, Allard will maintain ties with Microsoft, serving as a strategic advisor for CEO Steve Ballmer...

Apple, Dell and HP are all investigating the working conditions at a major Chinese supplier, following a rash of suicides at the plant, including one on Tuesday Li Hai, a 19-year-old employee at Foxconn Technology Group in Shenzhen, China, took his life on Tuesday after working there just 42 days, the Associated Press reported.

Voice over IP (VoIP) technology is getting a makeover, and service providers hope it will reinvent the industry. There's a shift away from VoIP toward hosted unified communications -- that is, integrated voice, instant messenger, email, workflow applications, CRM and procurement Eight companies formed the Cloud Communications Alliance at the Cloud ...

Last week was busy in a good way, and also in ways that we have not seen in a while -- and at least some of that busy-ness showed promise for the economy and our industry. In no particular order, Cloud9 Analytics announced it closed its C round financing, SAP held its user meeting in Orlando, Sage held its partner meeting in Denver, and Microsoft sued Salesforce...

It's difficult to talk about the Gxine multimedia player as a separate app fromXine. Both do pretty much the same tasks -- let you watch videos and listen toaudio files. Both of these apps hale from the same Linux library of codecs andother gutsy stuff, Xine-lib. The key difference between these almost identicaltwins is the family lineage each one serves...

This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised users that better solutions for privacy concerns will be released soon. It's the young executive's most recent attempt to quell anger over the company's decisions to force users to delete information if they wish to keep it private and to automatically share some data with third parties. Such moves have sparked outrage from many, and while all outrage might be equal, the strategies for dealing with Facebook are not...