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Open source healthcare IT solutions are just beginning to become acceptable alternatives toproprietary software systems. As is happening in other fields, opensource medical projects are getting noticed as cost-savingalternatives to proprietary vendors The battle for supremacy between the two marketing strategies may gainnational political attention...

Think of it as the seamy underside of the bad economy: Harsh market conditions, corporate cost-cutting and a downsized, disgruntled workforce create the perfect storm for systematic and sophisticated attacks by underworld enterprises on data systems in respected companies worldwide. So here's what we have today: record data breaches, heists of inc...

There's good news and bad news in the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report, newly released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The good news is that Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. are still growing, topping US$23 billion in 2008. The bad news: That growth appears to be flattening Indeed, it did n...

The employment picture for high-tech workers is changing dramatically. Last year, the U.S. high-tech sector added 77,000 jobs, mainly in the software services and engineering sectors, according to "Cyberstates 2009," a report published by TechAmerica However, high-tech manufacturing and communications services continued to lose jobs in 2008, carryi...

You Googled "Conficker," and you read the stories about the computer worm that's vexing security researchers around the world. Your fears about your own PC soon hit critical mass, so you then Google "how to detect/remove Conficker." What you get is the latest example of social engineering from Internet criminals and Web hucksters; in attempting to run away from one bit of nasty malware, you could head right into the arms of another...

Search engine powerhouse Google has launched a new venture capital fund, Google Ventures The new fund will invest in early-stage companies across a broad range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean tech, biotech and healthcare, according to a company blog posted Tuesday....

Layoffs are an unfortunate but predictable byproduct of an economy in decline. As the global economic crisis stretches into yet another month, companies in nearly all industries continue the painful process of purging employees in an effort to reduce costs. After the automotive and manufacturing sectors, one of the hardest hit areas of the economy...

Companies deploy CRM solutions to improve business performance, maximize customer relationships and enhance customer service, but many deployments fail to meet expectations. There are many reasons technology rollouts fail, from lack of planning to lack of funding, but there's another, less-understood culprit: poorly defined business processes. Man...

Handcent SMS, an SMS messaging application by Handcent, is available free from the Android Market.I had an idea the other day: I wondered whether there was a text-messaging application available for Android that offered a soft keyboard similar to the iPhone's. I checked out the Android Market and found that Handcent's SMS app had the highest ratin...

Small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) require that inventory, customer relationship management, sales and accounting applications be available beyond the LAN (local area network) via the Internet. Local employees, telecommuters, business partners and customers must have unhindered access to critical applications or a company risks adversely affecting productivity and profitability...

Search engine giant Google has launched a new music search service in China in conjunction with Top100.cn, one of mainland China's top Internet music sites The new Google Music Search provides users with links to free, legal music downloads. Google, Top100.cn and several major American record labels will share revenue generated from online advertis...

A group of large and small IT companies and institutions have signed the Open Cloud Manifesto, pledging to work together to establish and promote open standards in cloud computing Officially, there are now 38 signatories -- a group that includes IBM, AT&T, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Rackspace and SAP.

Corporate network administrators can breathe a little easier as the world braces itself for what could be a massive Internet attack courtesy of the Conficker worm on April 1. International non-profit research organization The Honeynet Project, which works on Internet security, has come up with a new scanner to detect the worm on networks Over the w...

Virtualization is a hot topic in today's demanding "get-more-for-less"business environment. Consolidating numerous computer systems so theyrun efficiently on fewer servers is a standard operating procedure formany IT departments. However, virtualizing entire server banks is notthe only way to achieve more efficient deployment of computingresources ...

Every small vendor -- no matter the industry -- dreams of landing at least one big name Fortune 500 client. Such a client, of course, would lend it the necessary street cred -- not to mention revenue -- that all smaller companies need. It also might open the door to new product development and distribution possibilities. That has been the case wit...

I spent much of last week attending an event put on by HP, Intel and BMW, which launched HP's new professional workstation line on top of the new Nehalem processors from Intel. This took place at DreamWorks, where we were treated to an early screening of the "Monsters vs. Aliens" movie. This last was a showcase for DreamWorks' huge 3-D bet and one that I haven't been a believer in -- until now. Now, I think we are actually at the same kind of inflection point that led to movies, movies with sound, and movies with color -- all of which were thought to be passing fads initially but that we now can't do without. ...

Tesla Motors -- a Silicon Valley startup backed by entrepreneur Elon Musk, the South Africa-born cofounder of PayPal -- is making plans to roll out its second electric car. The company has released the details of its Tesla Model S. While production is, at best, two-and-a-half years away, car enthusiasts are gobbling up the specs....

Even if you were to limit yourself to the iMac product line -- as opposed to the heavy artillery computer graphics workstation, the Mac Pro -- you could easily spend US$1,600 to $3,200 for a souped-up machine. Mac addicts will tell you the price is worth it. What about everyone else, though? The price is steep, but the Apple brand -- strongly tied to the sex appeal and simply beautiful design of the Mac -- has enticed more than one casual buyer to spurn utilitarian Windows-based PCs...

Google is laying off about 200 staff worldwide in its sales and marketing organizations. The announcement was made in a blog post written by Omid Kordestani, the online search giant's senior vice president of global sales and business development In his post, Kordestani said Google's rapid growth led it to create overlapping organizations in some a...

It's been clear for some time that print media has to adopt a new business model or basically face extinction. What wasn't so clear, even a few months ago, is how fast the industry would decline. Recent events are a dramatic illustration of what appears to be a tailspin On March 16 of this month, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stated that it was pr...