Articles by

Last week I was doing some research for a speech, and I remembered something from a weekend stint at a cooking school that I decided to run down. I was trying to make a point about customer experience when it occurred to me that the idea has ancient roots Hospitality law is a body of law that deals with the hotel and restaurant industry, and the b...

It appears that Wikipedia's reputation as the Internet's open source encyclopedia -- where any and all can contribute -- may itself be in need of some editing Media reports quote a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the user-generated site, as saying that the English-language version will soon start experimenting with designat...

Without a doubt, the growth of social networking has exploded in recent years and has added value to the Internet by providing yet another exciting way for citizens all over the world to connect and interact. In fact, social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and many smaller sites have become the preferred way many people communicate today as well as a growing business development tool.

The gaming console rumor factory is grinding away again, pushing out shiny new reports of Microsoft's alleged plan to cut the price of its Xbox 360 gaming system by up to US$100 in the U.S The rumors are based on an image posted by gadget blog Engadget purported to be of an advance Target ad sheet with a price of $299.99 for the 120-gigabyte Xbox 3...

Microsoft on Tuesday announced OneApp, a software application for feature phones Feature phones, which are essentially low-end mobile phones without any smartphone features, are widely used in both established and emerging markets. OneApp will give users access to mobile applications most often found on smartphones, including social networking, mes...

At four minutes and 15 seconds, a public service announcement produced in Wales, UK, clocks in at an unusually long running time, as TV spots like this one go. However, its length is not likely to be the reason why it sticks in viewers' minds. The video, produced by the Gwent Police Department to warn against the dangers of texting while driving, ...

Over the past decade, online gambling has expanded to become a multi-billion dollar business. There are over 2,000 gambling sites worldwide; however, none of these sites are based in the United States, as the U.S. possesses stringent gambling laws. Most notably, in 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which makes it illegal for U.S. financial institutions to transfer money to offshore gambling Web sites or to the online payment services which those Web sites use. As a result of the UIGEA, many non-U.S. Internet gambling Web sites halted their provision of services to U.S. residents...

It has been said that a great user experience in mobile phone offerings is a combination of good engineering, marketing and graphical and user interface (UI) design. More importantly, it is about keeping the balance between all these elements. This is why the term "trade-off" is a recurrent one in the mobile phone industry In the current state of m...

There's a lot to like about Amazon's new super-sized e-book reader, the Kindle DX. It has more than a few nettles, too. Since the original Kindle was introduced at the end of 2007, its fans have been clamoring for more screen real estate. With the DX, Amazon has met those demands in a big way. The reader's screen measures 8 by 5.5 inches, or 9.7 i...

Twitter's blue bird may be the social media darling of the moment, but Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says his company still has plenty to crow about In an interview with Bloomberg published Monday, Zuckerberg said his company plans to boost its hiring by 50 percent this year, thanks to technology workers looking for work after being let go by recess...

Nokia announced Monday it will return to the PC market, an arena it abandoned in 1991 to focus on the growing mobile phone field ...

Personalized Internet radio stations got a boost Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that Yahoo's LAUNCHcast music service was not interactive enough to be forced to pay hundreds of millions of US dollars in licensing fees The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said LAUNCHcast did not offer its users so much control over selecting...

The woman who can feel roughness or smoothness in her artificial hands for the first time in years; the child whose artificial leg lengthens as he grows; the previously armless man who can reach into a cabinet above his head to prepare dinner; machines that will some day register sensations in much the same way that people can -- thanks to research that will culminate this year in a major set of new designs, procedures and prototypes for artificial limbs, some of these miracles might eventually become commonplace, perhaps in another generation...

One business sector weathering the current economic downturn is that of business intelligence (BI). In fact, Hans Hultgren, director of the Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence program at Daniels College of Business, told CRM Buyer that business intelligence is growing and will continue to do so "The industry has not been impacted as much by ...

An unfortunate side effect of a celebrity like Steve Jobs getting sick is that a huge number of us are collecting stories to go into articles and books that would mostly show up after he passed. I ran into two new stories I hadn't heard before last week, and one of them was rather juicy and eventually tied into the "iPad." I also chatted with Best...

In a move that might finally open a moneymaking channel for the company, Twitter announced on Thursday that it will launch a geolocation feature as part of its microblogging service It will also offer a new API (application programming interface) so developers can add latitude and longitude data to any tweet....

A coalition of firms that oppose a settlement reached last year between Google and some representatives of the publishing industry over its Google Books project is growing. New members now reportedly include a troika of Web giants: Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo. The coalition, called the "Open Book Alliance," is backed by groups opposing the court s...

The old saying used to be, "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all." Then the Internet came along, and the saying changed to, "If you can't say anything nice, then invent a fake user name and go to town." The Web has allowed us to get away with saying some pretty awful things to each other without having to say them to each...

The growing demand for digital content products and value-added services is turning communications companies into super-enablers of all things digitally delivered. The many promising new revenue opportunities available are creating a mediacosm -- or a new market of converged communications, media and entertainment services. Mediacosm revenue opportunities are available by bundling traditional communications services with add-ons such as games, videos and Web applications. The emergence of this new market opportunity is driving communications and media companies to consider restructuring the core business processes they rely on to market, sell and deliver these products and services.

I regularly preach in this column about old-school newsies making the transition to digital journalism, and lately I've actually been trying to practice all that as well. I've spent the last three weeks becoming friends with my Flipcam, conducting interviews while playing videographer, parsing out the content to Web site and broadcast, using social media to let everybody know where they can find said content, and then presenting it all on a TV news set.