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Shoppers are increasingly turning to e-retailers for their product needs instead of wandering through the mall, hoping that they find the right product, and that it is the right size, color, price, etc. Recent figures from the Department of Commerce show that online stores' sales were up 12.4 percent in January, compared with a year ago Ensuring th...

Today's data-storage customer has lost his voice in a sea of vendor jockeying and positioning. This glut of vendors creates a noisy industry and a crowded marketplace, where all vendors sound the same and marketing materials are nearly indistinguishable from vendor to vendor Directly because of this confusion, many data storage customers have chose...

The FCC unveiled a set of digital tools for consumers Friday to figure out the state of national broadband service in the United States. One tool, the Consumer Broadband Test, measures broadband service speed and latency and is available in online fixed and mobile app versions.

Google has introduced a mobile version of itsProduct Search tool that lets users check on a product's availability in local participating stores. Product Search for mobile with local inventory lets a user see if, say, a Nikon Coolpix camera is in stock at a nearby Best Buy or Sears -- two of the retailers participating in the program -- and then p...

Users of Android smartphones now have a new option for browsing the Web: A beta version of Opera Mini 5 was released Thursday for the Linux-based Android platform ...

I've written a few times in this space about how IT professionals should embrace Software as a Service and the broader cloud computing phenomenon because these Web-based applications and solutions are delivering tangible and measurable business benefits to organizations of all sizes. IT departments benefit from this trend because it relieves them ...

Few marketers would argue against the importance of relevant, timely, personalized marketing communications. In fact, research has consistently proven the value of personalizing marketing messages by segmentation, targeting, or one-to-one messaging. Personalized email campaigns generate two to three times higher click-through rates than mass email campaigns and twice the conversion rates. Unfortunately, when it comes to personalization and one-to-one initiatives, many marketers are constrained by the quality of customer data and an inability to centralize disparate data for analysis...

The U.S. Census Bureau has started mailing out its forms, so I would like to take this opportunity to announce a new demographic category for those of us who will be writing "journalist" in the "occupation" box: Old New Media Dogs T-shirts and business cards are forthcoming....

Verizon will have the first handset running on its Long-Term Evolution (LTE) 4G network by the middle of next year -- about six months ahead of schedule -- according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The development of LTE means faster cellular data transfers than the 3G networks now in widespread use by U.S. carriers, though exactly when LT...

Google's proposed US$750 million acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob may be subjected to a protracted period of regulatory scrutiny. The Federal Trade Commission is seeking sworn declarations from at least two of Google's competitors, according to a Bloomberg news report.

Sony demonstrated its Move motion controller for the PlayStation 3 console at the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, following up on its first demo at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles last June. ...

Legislation signed into law on February 24 will have a profound effect on e-commerce and catalog companies that sell to customers in Colorado. Companies that do not collect Colorado sales tax must notify their Colorado customers that they are obligated to file a use tax return to pay the sales and use tax themselves. It also requires them to send ...

Service is becoming perhaps the most important leg of CRM. It's not just me saying it -- it's many others, including Paul Greenberg, who literally wrote the book on CRM. With the economy in the state it's in, that makes sense; keeping the customers you already have has never been more important. However, service has some internal cultural hurdles to clear before it gets the respect it deserves. Luckily, technology and the customer landscape are both shifting in ways that will allow more companies to realize the value of service and give it the priority it has long deserved...

In the Windows world, photographers looking for an alternative to Adobe Photoshop that will save them cash without skimping on power typically have turned to Corel's PaintShop Photo Pro. The program has consistently kept pace with the evolving needs of shutterbugs over the years and the latest "X3" version (US$99) of the software continues that tradition...

You've got apps for your phone. You'll soon have apps for your digital video recorder. Now, you can have apps for your Apps, as in Google Apps Google has launched its new Apps Marketplace for its Google Apps line of cloud-based productivity services. Initial participants include about 50 companies selling applications that hook into various Google ...

This month's Patch Tuesday arrived with a rather unwelcome security surprise. Microsoft had expected things to be somewhat sedate; however, instead of two vulnerabilities that it expected needed patching, it got hit with four, including a new zero-day Internet Explorer exploit.

In a move sure to make the grade with cyclists across the United States, Google on Wednesday added bicycle routes to its Google Maps service Biking directions and extensive bike trail data are now available for the United States through Google Maps, giving cyclists nationwide a way to customize their trips, figure out the most efficient routes, mak...

"Avatar" may be the box office champ in this or any other galaxy, and the first weekend of ticket sales for "Alice in Wonderland" has certainly put a Cheshire Cat smile on the faces of Walt Disney studio executives. However, all that monetary activity stems from watching those two movies in the plush, dark expanses of a special, 3-D-enabled movie theater.

I wasn't sure what the reaction would be to last week's column on customer experience. Maybe I hang around with vendors and other analysts too much, because customer experience is a hot topic among us, and it's generally seen as a good thing. However, judging by last week's mail and some further digging at the Harvard Business Review's Web site, it appears that there are at least two camps with decidedly different views on customer experience...

Some system utilities do a variety of things well. They come withtools to give users lots of solutions in one package. Other systemapps like the Atol File Manager perform a dedicated functionflawlessly without adding other specialties. Atol took a while to growon me, but now this app is one of my most-used Linux tools ...