Articles by

They are early Christmas presents from Google to technology reporters and bloggers eager to swallow up any news regarding the tech giant: tweeted weekend photos of Mountain View, Calif., employees testing an experimental Android phone of Google's own design The photos, together with a Google blog post confirming that select employees around the wor...

This is a story without a happy ending. For months I, like many others, had been bombarded with fawning reports about the latest edition of Microsoft's operating system, Windows 7. Admittedly, I was skeptical. Then I tried out a new laptop running the OS, and I was sold.

The proposed US$30 billion Comcast-NBC Universal deal has entered the labyrinthine process of winning Congressional approval from the antitrust gurus and the Federal Communications Commission. Small cable operators, which apparently still exist, fear that they will be driven out of business by the sprawling new company that would combine NBC's programming with Comcast's vast network of 24 million subscribers. ...

I've often wondered what you would get if you combined Apple and IBM. The two companies have little overlap today in either customers or products, and both have what the other lacks to grow their respective markets significantly. While the cultural issues would likely make such a merger not only inadvisable but impossible to actually do, both firms could learn a lot from the other. ...

The war in the search engine market has evolved from a contest of speed and scale to one of innovation. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all tied in with Twitter for real-time search.

For all its graphics firepower and blockbuster action, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" couldn't blow up the perception that the video game industry is still reeling from the recession's aftershocks. Industry market-watchers NPD Group released November sales figures Thursday, showing continued year-over-year declines in software (down 3.1 percent), hardware (down 13.4 percent) and accessories (down 5.5 percent)...

Lunascape, a newcomer to the growing field of Web browsers, released its official/stable version of Lunascape 6 Orion on Friday, a little more than one month after introducing the Alpha version Orion is an innovative browser that could easily win over users from popular browsers Firefox and Opera. Orion's features can change the competing browser l...

In making a move meant to enhance user privacy, Facebook went about things in a kind of intrusive way this week. As you know, the site started out as a college-kids-only social network, and the content you'd find on Facebook at that time reflected the demographic in all its boozy glory. But now Facebook's for everyone, and it's a serious enterpris...

Plenty of industry observers are already issuing their predictions for 2010, but I think it is worth taking a look back at the past year's events to see how quickly the Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing marketplace is evolving. So, following are 10 events that I consider bellwethers of the rapid evolution process, which could be imp...

Companies are gearing up for a strong finish to 2009, and consumers are gearing up to acquire more high-tech gadgets from big box stores and online retailers at highly competitive prices. This is a great time to consider how companies can ensure customers are satisfied and successful with their purchases and how they can plan ahead for 2010. Pic...

Linux and open source middleware JBoss has made its mark in the enterprise, and it is just a matter of time before open source becomes mainstream in other functional parts of the IT infrastructure as well. Where exactly that will happen, however, is the interesting question. With most companies spending 10 to 20 percent of their revenue on enterpr...

The iPhone was calling me. It was daring me to run free down the aisles of the Apple App Store in much the same way my 3-year-old son does when he hits our neighborhood Toys 'R' Us. But my cellphone is my business phone, and I wasn't about to walk AT&T's network tightrope. I'd been a Verizon customer for nearly 10 years and was happy with the serv...

Despite plunging revenues due to the resistance of European regulators to its pending acquisition by Oracle, Sun Microsystems has rolled out enhancements to three key products in its Java platform: Java Platform Enterprise Edition 6...

You may have taken time out from playing "Mafia Wars," "FarmVille" or answering that "Which Muppet Are You?" quiz to update your privacy settings on Facebook this week. However, when you were clicking on your choices for who could see your updates and personal data, did you happen to notice any mention of those third-party applications involving games, quizzes and other outside software linking up to the world's largest social media network? How much access to your personal info do the developers of these apps have?...

Home entertainment systems could soon see much higher wireless transmission speeds -- possibly of up to 7 gigabits per second (Gbps) -- if the plans of the Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) Alliance continue on course The Alliance, members of which include companies in the chip, mobile phone and telecommunications industries, announced the completion of its...

The Hollywood trade newspaper Variety is putting its Web site behind a "pay wall" starting Thursday -- reserving its online content for paid subscribers and hoping its advertisers will stick around despite the smaller Internet audience ...

The amount of information consumed by Americans in 2008 totaled 3.6 zettabytes and 10,845 trillion words, according to a report released Dec. 9 by researchers at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), "How Much Information? 2009 Report on American Consumers." For an average person on an ordinary day, this represents 34 gigabytes of data ...

Breaking development news from iPhone or BlackBerry rarely goes unnoticed. The recent announcement of new developer-friendly tools for the BlackBerry platform at the RIM Developer Conference was no exception, generating interest and debate over what it all means in the battle of the smartphones. While the move could be considered a branding ploy t...

From early origins of cold-calling into purchased contact lists, to contemporary methodologies incorporating Web 2.0 enablers, companies seeking to steer highly qualified leads to their "closers" are faced today with a combination of competitive threats, information overload and hesitant buyer behavior requiring new strategies and tools to succeed. The never-ending economic pressure for sales organizations to increase productivity while "doing more with less" often results in organizational emphasis on segregating responsibilities between inside and outside sales teams...

Botnets embody the ultimate blended threat. Botnet code carries almost every conceivable form of malware -- from spyware to downloaders, rootkits, spam engines and more. To answer like with like, defenders must employ multiple layers of security. The good news is that time-honored techniques are still surprisingly effective against botnets. Taking...