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Google released on Tuesday a plug-in to its Google Apps arsenal thatcould be the last push needed to nudge some businesses into fully adoptingits cloud computing services The product, Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, works withthe Premier version of Google apps, which costs US$50 per business user per year,as well as the free educational ver...

It looks as though the Southern District of New York has opened a new front in the war on Internet gambling. Federal prosecutors have asked Citibank, Wells Fargo and two smaller banks to freeze funds in accounts belonging to two companies that process payouts on behalf of four offshore poker sites, including PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com, a...

The traditional model of providing software and services to customers through locally managed servers and storage is fast becoming obsolete. It is not only expensive -- the cost of buying and maintaining an ever-growing cadre of servers alone is prohibitive -- but also counterproductive. It prevents companies from focusing resources on the functions necessary to maintain and grow the business, like product development, marketing and customer relationship management. ...

Business schools have been discussing General Motor's loss of market shar for decades already, and the added denouement of the company's bankruptcy filing will no doubt drive many academic papers for decades to come The roots of GM's fall from grace are numerous, and it would be incorrect to attribute the fall to any single factor. Like Rome's fal...

Marking up Web pages is nothing new. Offerings like Sharedcopy, MyStickies and Stickis allow you to annotate any Web page and, in some cases, share those annotations with others. However, a new entry into this genre, Blerp, adds a new twist to the practice. Blerp, currently in its alpha phase, is the brainchild of the folks at RocketOn.

Computers are the cause of a surprising number of serious injuries every year -- usually to children. The number of acute computer-related injuries increased by 732 percent -- from nearly 1,300 to approximately 9,300 injuries per year -- according to a study conducted by the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children's Hospital from 1994-2006...

The Fedora Project on Tuesday announced Fedora 11, the latest version of its free open source operating system Code named "Leonidas," Fedora 11 takes another whack at virtualization, a technology market in which its sponsor, Red Hat, is working hard to carve out a niche....

The Federal Communications Commission has closed the first round of comment on its national broadband plan initiative, a requirement of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 The FCC must deliver a completed plan to Congress by February 2010 showing the way to more widespread broadband adoption nationwide....

Social marketing offers a new way to interact with consumers, but aside from being another channel, it requires a different mindset to achieve results. This is Web 2.0, where the consumer is in charge of the message and will angrily resist big brand pressure and broadcast marketing. Content needs to have merit to thrive in the social space, so cheesy slogans are out and well-thought comments and humor are in...

Sarah Betesh's career in customer service began in box office call centers at venues such as the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia. She moved on to Tickets.com and Vertical Alliance, at one point becoming a call center manager. However, in spite of her success, Betesh left her call center career behind in 2003. She now teaches autistic childre...

Employees are the lifeblood of any business, and the data they produce is critical to productivity. Unfortunately, during recent uncertain economic times, businesses of all sizes across America have laid off hundreds of thousands of employees. Yet when any employees leave during turnover, important data can be lost or forgotten. Such "orphaned data" can consist of any business information, application or intellectual property that has become unrecoverable because it was left on no-longer-accessible edge devices like laptops that were never backed up, or was simply never transferred to a backup-accessible server...

It applies to sports and smartphones: If you're an underdog, you will always be compared to the reigning champs until you knock them off their pedestal. The mission, then, for Palm during Saturday's retail launch of its Pre smartphone was relatively simple: Get as close as possible to an iPhone-style score, and don't commit any turnovers Given thos...

Trend Micro on Monday announced LeakProof 5.0, designed toreduce the complexity and cost often associated with the discovery,monitoring and blocking of sensitive enterprise data. New features are builtaround the Active Update service andlanguage-independent fingerprinting technology the company calls "DataDNA." Leakproof 5.0 will be available June...

China is stepping up the monitoring of its citizens' Internet activity. A new directive requires PC makers selling products in the country to include software that can filter out pornography and other online content the government deems inappropriate. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology order, which reportedly has caught PC makers ...

Part 1 of this series sketches the history of journalism in the U.S. from the pre-Revolutionary era to the present day.Part 2 recalls the emergence of the Internet and the growth of the long tail of online advertising. Part 3 delves into the rise of social media Ask someone about the future of journalism, and it's likely that most people will point...

Last week was one of those rare weeks when there was way too much going on to cover in one column. Microsoft stole E3 with what may be the closest thing to a "Star Trek" holodeck yet. Computex was all about battles between smartbooks and netbooks; Intel and AMD; and Windows and Android. ...

Not that long ago, the outsourcing of customer service to home-based agents was a small niche category, viewed as not quite on par with a bricks-and-mortar call center operation. For a number of reasons, that perception is changing -- starting with the lower costs involved in using a home-based agent network, and ending with the growing number of quality providers that have highly qualified staffs on hand.

When Palm's and Sprint Nextel's latest bundle of smartphone joy, the Pre, arrives Saturday, it will be entering an increasingly crowded market backed by parents that have a lot riding on its success The Pre -- which costs US$200 with a two-year service plan and rebate -- might be most important to Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Palm, the very company that...

Google this week released early developer channel versions of its Chrome browser for the Mac OS X and Linux platforms Google emphasized that both new versions are very much rough drafts intended for developers, not consumers looking for a smooth browsing experience....

The Federal Trade Commission has shut down an ISP that it painted as the worst of the worst in cyberspace. Pricewert, which has done business under a variety of names including "3FN" and "APS Telecom," is accused of actively partnering with criminals seeking to distribute illegal -- and downright stomach-turning -- electronic content including chi...