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On the front line of the e-commerce tax are online travel companies, or OTCs, such as Expedia, Hotels.com, PricelineTravelocity and Orbitz. The issue is whether the OTCs should be collecting hotel room occupancy taxes on the difference in the price between what the OTC pays the hotel operator and the amount that customer pays to the OTC. For example, assume that an OTC in a jurisdiction with a 10 percent hotel room tax pays a hotel US$100 for a room night and then charges its customer $150. The OTC pays $10 in room taxes -- but must the OTC collect a 10 percent room tax on the $50 markup? Increasingly, local tax authorities are saying that the additional tax must be paid.

Pop quiz: If you can remember the last time you saw a "backpack" journalist -- a one-person band, an all-platform journalist, whatever you want to call them -- filing a story on a network evening newscast or a prime-time cable news broadcast, scream out that reporter's name. Loud. Louder, please....

Two nonprofit groups are protesting the Obama administration's pending appointment of Andrew McLaughlin to the post of U.S. deputy chief technology officer. McLaughlin's background as director of Google's global public policy constitutes a major conflict of interest with the government role he would be assuming, the groups contend. In a joint lett...

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker on Wednesday dismissed dozens of lawsuits against telecommunication companies that cooperated with the Bush administration's so-called warrantless wiretapping activities several years ago. The once-secret program allowed government agents to listen in on U.S. citizens' telephone conversations without having to get a warrant as required by law.

The media buzz around the Palm Pre is rising to deafening levels as the countdown to the Pre's release on Saturday proceeds Generally, early reviewers like its design and ease of use....

ICANN, the Internet naming authority, is up against the wall. It may simply drop its greatest revolutionary idea of offering a brand new type of designer domain name to accommodate the cyberrealities of the widely expanded Internet of tomorrow. This new proposed platform would surely revolutionize marketing and branding for big and small business...

The end of mainstream support by Microsoft for Windows XP ended onApril 14. That deadline came and left with barely an audiblegroan from the minions of enterprise, small business and consumerusers of the decade-old operating system The steadfast legions of corporate Windows XP users -- and theMicrosoft Office 2003 suite that also is no longer suppo...

As the market recedes further and companies look to shed cost in any way feasible, many look inwardly in order to find key areas for improvement. Aberdeen's research shows that the top business pressures forcing companies in the direction of legacy application modernization are largely internal (Figure 1) ...

The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the hiring practices of high-tech firms to determine whether they are colluding with one another, according to a report in The Washington Post, which cites unnamed sources. DoJ reportedly has the largest of the tech companies -- Apple, Google and Yahoo -- in its sights at the moment...

Desperate to gain more traction in the video gaming market, where it trails behind rivals Nintendo and Microsoft, Sony on Tuesday demonstrated a new motion-sensing controller to an audience of gamers The demo at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles showed off a device about the size and shape of a television remote control with a c...

It should come as no surprise to any IT manager that your organization's appetite for data keeps growing every minute. No sooner than a new set of storage tools is deployed, it becomes clear there's a need for more, and you start planning the next wave of hardware purchases. More hardware means more floor space, power and cooling -- it's a vicious circle.

Clara Shih is a friend I met through Salesforce.com. She recently published The Facebook Era, which looks at the relationship of social networking to front office computing. She is really busy these days promoting the book, and she recently left Salesforce to pursue new ideas in social networking and to form a company dedicated to the task. Shi...

As the most dynamic and commercial industry on Earth -- which has grown its annual revenues from zero to US$1 trillion in less than 25 years and today manages 4 billion consumer relationships -- mobile has propelled itself forward with a highly discriminating attitude toward openness within device technology. From the beginning, the need for inter...

EMC's all-cash bid to buy Data Domain is going to be hard to beat, according to Stifel Nicolaus analyst Aaron Rakers EMC's US$1.8 billion bid, announced Monday, is worth $30 per share in cash, a 20 percent premium over a previously accepted bid by NetApp of $25 per share. NetApp's bid included payment of $11.45 in cash and 0.75 shares of its stock ...

Microsoft is controlling the early buzz at the massive E3 video game convention with its Project Natal technology, which allows gamers to interact with their Xbox 360s without the need for handheld controllers. Along with the publicity, though, the company is creating a lot of questions regarding its ability to deliver on the innovation and promis...

Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer, which seems to be having an on-again, off-again relationship with netbooks running Android, is now reportedly working on one. Jim Wong, the firm's president of IT products, made the announcement Tuesday at Computex Taipei, Asia's largest computer exhibition.

Last month, the Pentagon began using a newly opened Twitter account to deliver on-the-ground news of events in Afghanistan, and the channel has begun to pick up traction. Like all Twitter messages, the military dispatches are short and to the point. A recent tweet, for instance, reported that "Afghan, coalition forces kill four militants, detain t...

The recession's effects on technology budgets, corporate belt-tightening and simple business survival have been well-documented, but less attention has been paid to how IT industry client and developer conferences can help end customers stabilize or even improve their situations. Make no mistake -- the economy is affecting attendance and participation at 2009 events. Organizations are trimming spending deeply, even radically, in order to bolster cash reserves and preserve financial resources -- but even a tourniquet needs occasional loosening to avoid severely damaging an already injured limb.

With consumers' inboxes perpetually filled with clutter, marketers are challenged to find new ways to break through with valuable, targeted messages that their customers actually want to open. The secret could lie in a largely untapped vehicle: transactional emails. The historical open rates of transactional emails hover around 70 percent becaus...

The Internet has become a critical component in today's fast-moving business environment and continues to play a central role in delivering mission-critical business applications and vital communications to employees, partners and customers. The Internet holds the promise for organizations to streamline operations, improve operational efficiencies and lower costs. As a result, businesses have come to rely on networked applications delivered over the Internet for day-to-day operations and as a means for gaining competitive advantage...