Articles by

Consumers have come to accept that songs can be purchased a la carte for 99 US cents via the Internet. That is a result, of course, of Apple's revolutionary introduction of the iPod music player and the iTunes music store several years ago. Before then, consumers had few options for downloading music onto digital music players -- and most of them were illegal...

A Wall Street Journal report that foreign hackers have repeatedly penetrated the U.S. power grid computer network has delivered a loud wake-up call Cyber-spies fromcountries including China and Russia have breached the electricalinfrastructure's computer network and left software tools behind thatwould have allowed them to control or destroy infras...

It's tax time again, and the online scammers are crawling out of the woodwork. Their goals are to intercept personal information about taxpayers nationwide, and in some ways, they may be benefiting from the IRS' push for people to electronically file their returns Some scammers are "phishing" taxpayers by sending emails that claim to be from the IR...

It's been nearly a decade since the Internet bubble burst in 2001, and the intervening years have seen the rise of powerhouse companies such as Google, MySpace and Facebook, which have helped broaden the scope of what was once referred to as the "Information Superhighway." The Internet was once limited primarily to email communication, file transfe...

I almost couldn't have imagined it. I give myself a little leeway, but after years of writing and talking about "new, new things" it didn't really dawn on me that at some point we'd be talking about a new, new economy -- but we are I was speaking with Brian Zanghi, CEO of Kadient, the other day, and our minds happened to convene on the idea that w...

The Linux desktop has traditionally been a very fragmented and niche market. The mobile Linux space is no different, with various efforts including LiMo.com, Maemo.com, Moblin.com, Ubuntu Mobile, ARM Linux, Mobilinux and others. While choice can be a good thing, fragmentation can be a strong detractor against any one platform gaining traction. Wha...

The wide area network (WAN) is central to the IT strategy of any multilocation business. Employees expect the WAN to be available when they need it, much like any other utility in the business. WANs have historically been built on "best effort" circuit or packet-switched IP networks such as VPN, Frame Relay, or Private Line connectivity This stra...

Is the Associated Press trying to shoehorn a 21st-century technology into a 20th-century business model? Or is it merely trying to protect content that allows Google and others to rake in money while it is left holding the lost-revenue bag? The answers to those questions may end up coming from a courtroom, as the AP announced Monday it would pursu...

A funny thing happened to visitors to the New York Auto Show on Tuesday -- they got to see a concept electric car created jointly by two companies: Segway and General Motors The prototype vehicle, named "Project PUMA" (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility), is an electrically powered two-seater with two wheels that can travel up to 35 miles be...

Part 1 of this two-part series looked at the reasons companies turn to outsourcing and offshoring. Part 2 will examine the laws governing the disclosure of layoffs and the state of the outsourcing market As the ongoing global economic crisis continues to impact the technology sector, many employees who once thought their jobs were secure are being ...

Traditionally, IT product marketing emphasizes immediate and short-term technical performance. This week's/month's/year's hot new products are compared side-by-side with those of competitors, benchmark benefits are extolled and shortcomings magnified. However, a confluence of global events is making IT customers much more receptive to hearing about longer-term issues, particularly those related to definable return on investment (ROI).

Software as a Service CRM implementations require more than just SaaS to succeed. SaaS customer relationship management must be integrated with other applications and data sources. The goal of SaaS CRM integration is an integrated view of customer data, which unlocks its inherent value and increases productivity Achieving that integrated view requ...

I wonder if Levi Strauss would have made billions selling his blue jeans if he had said that the zipper was "sold separately." I wonder if cell phones would be as ubiquitous as they are today if everyone had to learn to speak binary in order to communicate using them. I wonder how many people would drive cars if they had to produce their own fuel. I wonder...

In the beginning, Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP and the Web. And the Web was without commerce, and void. And darkness was upon the face of retailers. And the spirit of commerce, Jeff Bezos, moved upon the face of the Web. And Bezos said, "Let there be electronic shopping carts, and one-click buying." And there were sales. And the computer gods saw the sales, and saw that it was good...

Dell on Monday made a slew of announcements that considerably beefed up its offerings for the healthcare IT industry These include a mobile clinical computing solution, virtualized systems, cloud-leveraging solutions and partnerships with several other vendors. The computer maker is also teaming up with retailer Sam's Club....

While potential customers and the technology press await T-Mobile's G2 smartphone later this year, the wireless carrier is reportedly already knee-deep into the development of the next level of devices powered by the open source Android operating system The company will roll out a home phone and a tablet/netbook computer sometime in 2010, according...

Sun Microsystems has rejected IBM's offer to acquire it for US$7 billion, a move that took the tech industry by surprise and sent Sun stock plummeting Speculation is rampant as to why Sun Microsystems spurned the offer -- a move critics view as downright foolish in this economy -- as well as what the two companies may do next, and who else might h...

Does cloud computing cause a dilemma for application developers? Does it present problems that devs would not face in building software for earth-bound applications? Developers face common problems regardless of where their program's data isstored. However, the cloud environment presents a set of drawbacks that cloudapplication developers sometime...

Right now, about 2 percent of the contact center infrastructure market uses Software as a Service, saidinContact CEO Paul Jarman, citing research by Gartner. That statistic seems reasonable, given that the contact center infrastructure space has traditionally been dominated by on-premise players, but Jarman hopes to change that.

The gaming market has been broken for a long time, and the Conficker worm is a reminder that the PC concept is also becoming unmanageable. Developers want one platform to develop to; they don't want three consoles, two portable gaming systems, lots of phones and a PC. Users want something vastly less complex and really would like to go back to a time when they only worried about the price and where the on switch was. ...