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Microsoft has said it will release a patch on Thursday to fix the Internet Explorer 6 flaw that hackers used recently to attack Google and other large companies. The attacks have triggered a slugfest between Google and the Chinese government. While the flaw can also be exploited in Internet Explorer 7 and 8, most of the attacks so far have been ag...

Authors and publishers of select Kindle e-books will soon be able to earn royalties as high as 70 percent of a title's list price, net of delivery costs, under a new plan announced by Amazon on Wednesday The new option will be available starting June 30 for in-copyright Kindle books whose list price is both between US$2.99 and $9.99 and at least 20...

C-level executives and IT departments may be pleasantly surprised to find that there's a source of hidden gold that may potentially net your organization much needed licenses and other already-negotiated extras. While there are no guarantees, the chances are good that your organization's existing licensing contracts could net you a windfall similar to falling heir to unclaimed funds or finding treasure in Grandma's attic.

"Sustainability" has been the key issue capturing my attention this year, so it makes sense to tease apart just what that term means for CRM. To me, sustainability is about business processes that are repeatable and, more to the point, processes that both sides readily engage in. However, in addition to the processes being repeatable -- the easier part -- the customers must have a stake in wanting to repeat them, which is way different from readily engaging the first time...

If you are looking for a superior text editor, your search might just begin and end with a nifty program called "Geany." One of my biggest concerns when I switched from Microsoft Windows to Linux was finding an adequate replacement for my favorite text editor. For years, I used a commercial program called "TextPad," but it was a Windows-only produc...

Consumers are growing increasingly comfortable storing sensitive information on their computers, USB flash drives, and external hard drives, as well as using Web-based solutions to automate regular tasks such as shopping for holiday gifts, paying bills and tracking financial portfolios. The push from vendors encouraging their customers to move toward e-billing has also played a major role in more personal information being stored locally on personal computers...

Google's latest salvo in its dispute with China came Tuesday, with reports that it's holding off unveiling two new Android phones in that country However, this move may hurt Google more than it does China, which has a plethora of Android phones from different manufacturers....

Microsoft has said it will change Bing's search data retention policies, promising to hold users' IP address data for only six months instead of 18 The change in policy is due to a number of trends, including growing pressure from regulatory authorities, Bing Chief Privacy Strategist Peter Cullen acknowledged in a blog post, citing privacy standard...

Consumers will spend US$6.2 billion in 2010 at mobile application stores, while related advertising revenue is expected to generate $0.6 billion worldwide, according to new statistics from Gartner. Those numbers are expected to rapidly grow within the next few years, the analyst firm predicted: By 2013, worldwide downloads will surpass $21.6 billi...

Not surprisingly, most folks see CES as a watershed event for tracking the latest in current, emerging and future consumer electronics trends. So why did I travel to CES 2010 in search of products related to business IT? Pure contrariness is one reply, but let's also toss in the common, if sometimes subtle, linkages between consumer and business IT...

As financial institutions gear up for 2010, many companies are still on the long road to recovery after facing some of the most difficult challenges in years. Mortgage defaults and foreclosures, new regulations on credit card and bank fees, and the constant barrage of related news stories sent customer call volumes through the roof in 2009, as concerned consumers inquired about rates, terms, the threat of foreclosure and fees.

New software from Misys Open Source Solutions (MOSS) promises to provide what could be the world's first fully open source, standards-based platform for exchanging health information. The Misys Connect Exchange software was demonstrated and successfully tested last week in Chicago at IHE Connectathon, the healthcare industry's weeklong interoperab...

Have you ever tried to work when you're really sick? I don't mean a little cough or sniffles. I'm talking about a genuine, drag-out, "can't get out of bed" illness -- the kind where it hurts to stand up, let alone go into the office. I hate to admit it, but I've gone to work in that condition -- you probably have too (although pretty much everyon...

Following the news last week of a series of hack attacks on Google and other companies, the governments of France and Germany both issued warnings on Friday suggesting that Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is too dangerous to use Microsoft on Thursday acknowledged that a vulnerability in Internet Explorer was one of several attack mechanisms u...

The Gray Lady may once again ask for some green if you want to view something that's black and white and read all over Reports surfaced over the weekend that The New York Times is about to announce another attempt at a paid-access business model for its Web site, with management apparently deciding that a metered approach stands the greatest chance...

Google is reportedly looking into the possibility that one or more staff members at its office in China helped enable the attack on its infrastructure in mid-December. After the attack was discovered, some Google China employees were denied access to internal networks, while others were put on leave, and still others were sent off to offices elsew...

OK folks, Twitter may be a fad, but it is also a wealth of information into real people's problems, and I don't think it is going away anytime soon. In fact Google and Yahoo announced recently that they are going to begin crawling tweets, and they will appear in search queries. So yes, I am a fellow "twit," and proudly so, because I know how to us...

2009 was the first year since 2005 that the number of data breach incidents recorded actually dropped. If that makes you feel a little more secure -- there is a counter side. The same site reports on personal records that have been exposed: 220 million records in 2009 as compared with 35 million in 2008 There are two important trends to note here.

Pick a room -- any room. There are lots of choices of places to stay for travelers in the U.S. In fact, there are 4.4 million guestrooms across the country, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. And that's a problem. Competitors in the hospitality sector need some kind of an edge to gain new customers and, even more importantly, to keep their current customers coming back to the same hospitality brand whether the actual guestroom is in New York, Denver, or anywhere else.

Last week, I spoke about how CES was back, and I gave some of the highlights. However, there always are discussions and trends going on behind the scenes, almost-invisible products, and impressions that take a while to form that can be even more interesting. There was one keynote that came close to being the worst I've ever seen; Panasonic kicked...