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When you work in the cybersecurity business, friends can make you their default -- read "unpaid" -- computer safety expert. Wen Tseng, research director for the Cloud Computing Alliance, really doesn't mind, however; it gives him a chance to confirm that scammers and hackers are increasingly relying on the friendship networks spreading through social media to do their damage to bank accounts and reputations...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it "the most transformative thing we've ever done on the Web," and Ginger McCall, chief counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, didn't disagree "I was stunned and shocked and somewhat awed by their brilliance," McCall told TechNewsWorld. "I watched the keynote and was just floored and excited at th...

Google has acknowledged its acquisition of tech firm Agnilux but has not provided any details about the transaction or even hints as to its purpose. The acquisition has prompted a far more spirited discussion than usually occurs when Google buys a company. Agnilux is something of an enigma -- but what is known about it suggests that it could help ...

The Garmin-Asus partnership Wednesday announced the new Garminfone, an Android-based smartphone that will be available on the T-Mobile USA network ...

Google may have been the primary target of a sharp attack by privacy commissioners from 10 nations on Tuesday, but later that same day, the company revealed a new tool that could effectively turn the tables on those and other governments Specifically, the company's new Government Requests tool is designed to reveal for all to see when government ag...

Salesforce.com's buy of Jigsaw is the latest, most indicative market mover in the transition to a lead generation economy Twitter's forays into a sponsored tweets business model announced last week at Chirp is another. Yahoo selling its soul to Microsoft for Bing is another. And just about everything that Google does is but another. And everything...

"Networks without Borders" are rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception. The demand for all access all the time, along with the rapid rise in remote, telecommuting, part-time and transient workers, has rendered network borders obsolete and made networks extremely porous. 21st Century networks more closely resemble sieves than citadels...

While we're on the subject of the customer relationship, it's important, even vital, that we do a better job of teasing apart customer types. It seems to me that the vast conversation about social CRM and the social customer has focused on the end consumer -- the business-to-consumer (B2C) relationship -- not the business-to-business (B2B) one. That's probably a smart over-reaction to the fact the about two-thirds of the economy consists of B2C transactions. ...

Linux provides more than one way to listen to music collections. Thebare-bones solution is to click on a music file from within a filemanager app. The high-end approach is to playback music with Amarok Amarok is a sound-system-independent audio player with a flexibleinterface that uses a browser-like design. Amarok does what a simplefile manager ca...

Robots haunt our art and our dreams. Science-fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote a whole series of novels around the idea of robotics -- the "Robot" series, one of which was made into the movie "I, Robot." The "Terminator" movies were all big hits, and science-fiction series such as Britain's "Dr. Who" and America's own "Caprica" and "Battlestar Galactica" all have robots, more or less humanoid, in their casts...

Saying they've grown increasingly impatient with online companies that pay too little heed to national privacy laws and expectations, data protection commissioners from 10 countries on Tuesday launched what they promised would be an ongoing effort to match worldwide enforcement with the growing global market in social network information "We've see...

Microsoft is targeting Realtors, insurance agencies and other small businesses that use a highly mobile, distributed workforce with Windows Intune, the new desktop management service it announced Monday Intune, aimed at businesses with 25 to 500 PCs, offers online PC management and security in the cloud as a service....

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday heard oral arguments in City of Ontario v. Quon -- a case that could significantly expand employees' privacy rights in the workplace. Questioning by the justices led some court watchers to conclude that the Court will decide it on very narrow grounds and likely side with the City of Ontario. If that does happen, employers will breath a sigh of relief, said Devjani Mishra, a labor and employment partner with Seyfarth Shaw...

Many IT analyst events qualify as exercises in ridiculous self-promotion, but IBM's recent Smarter Systems for a Smarter Planet event at the company's Almaden Lab had a more sublime goal in mind: to qualify the hot topic of workload-optimized systems and quantify their value to business partners and enterprise customers. Along the way, the company drew a firm line connecting these solutions to its Smarter Planet initiative.

The relationship between a business and its customers is determined by the interchanges that occur between them. These interactions are complex. They occur over a wide range of communication channels, such as phone, email, Web and text, including some outside of organizational control like social media. They cover a broad range of topics and are somewhat spontaneous in nature. Companies devote large sums of their budget toward providing a satisfying experience for their customers when they contact them. Given this focus and monetary commitment, why do the results often fail to measure up to expectations?...

Garrett Heaton can't speak highly enough of his bank "USAA is a FANTASTIC bank, and their services and customer service are top-notch," he says -- especially its Deposit@Home feature, which lets users scan checks for immediate deposit into their account....

The No. 1 complaint that I hear from organizations when discussing IT security is that they don't have enough resources to do everything they need to. It's no mystery why: Take an ever-increasing body of regulations and laws we need to comply with, add to it demands of customers and the business, mix in risky scenarios like home users using unman...

Facebook may be preparing to roll out a "universal Like button" that Web site owners can place on their pages to share content with other members of the social networking site, according to reports in two media outlets Monday However, an even more significant rollout may still be in the offing, according to Forrester Research analyst Augie Ray, who...

Up to now, devices designed to measure and enhance signals routed through brain circuitry have been hampered by the complexities of the folded surface of brain tissue. However, scientists have announced the development of a brain implant that conforms so closely to the brain's surface, it "essentially melts into place," according to a study published in Nature Materials...

In the past two months since it originally surfaced, the Blake Robbins v. the Lower Merion School District school spying case just keeps getting bigger It turns out the Lower Merion School District took "thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots" of students in their homes using the LANRev "peeping tom" technology on school-issued laptops, acco...