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Intel is reportedly preparing a new consumer ultra low voltage (CULV) platform aimed at small, highly portable notebook computers The new push will focus on ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) priced between US$700 to $900, according to Digitimes. Consumers should look for the new platforms in hardware beginning in the second quarter of 2009....

YouTube has started to dabble in downloadable videos, offering a new download option for President-elect Barack Obama's ChangeDotGov channel on YouTube. Some of the videos, particularly the "Weekly Address" series, now sport a "Click to download" link below the play button. Previously, all videos were offered as streaming videos that required an I...

Like many kids, I hated mowing the lawn. Also like many kids, I was the go-to guy for lots of family landscaping. The worst lawn to mow of all my relatives was my grandmother's: It was big, it was weedy and rocky, and (if you can believe it) she still had a push-mower But the strangest part of mowing her lawn was the neighbor down the street. This ...

Spend wisely and be bold, or stay home and keep cover. In 2009, these are the choices IT professionals at banks and financial institutions will face. While the current economic turmoil has many running for cover, hiding your head in the sand will not protect your company from these tough times As 2008 has shown us, mega-mergers and near failures ar...

Finding business value in Software as a Service implementations is a perennial topic of discussion, no matter how established the SaaS business model becomes. In part, that's because it's more a business than a tech issue, and companies tend to focus more on features and functionality during the procurement process, Rick Kotermanski, chief technology officer for Summa, told CRM Buyer.

Both Steve Jobs and Apple are unique -- well, almost -- in the technology market. Most companies spend their money on lots of product choices and hope to hit a sweet spot for a customer; Apple spends its money on marketing and design and drives customers to the sweet spot it creates. Most CEOs focus on financial performance, investors and big customers; Steve Jobs focuses on design, product presentation and driving employees and suppliers like cattle, leaving the traditional CEO roles largely to others. Apple and Steve Jobs are deeply intertwined, with no evidence of any real life outside or after Apple for Jobs, and no real successor to Jobs for Apple...

The Web 2.0 revolution has spawned hundreds of cover stories, thousands of companies, and millions of words of hype. But there's one thing it hasn't brought: Profits With the coming of the credit crunch and the global recession, hype won't pay the bills. That's why the next wave of Web 2.0 will be using collaboration to help businesses do more with...

Sony Ericsson is the latest casualty of the global economic slowdown The joint venture between Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony and Swedish mobile phone maker Ericsson announced dismal fourth-quarter financial results on Friday....

A new method of propagation has given a computer worm a fresh lease on life. The Win32.Worm.Downadup, aka "Conficker" or "Kido," first hit the world last year by exploiting the MS08-067 vulnerability that let it spread in loosely secured networks. Microsoft issued a patch for the vulnerability, but a large number of PCs have remained unpatched. No...

Nintendo's dominance of the console gaming market continued in December, according to sales figures collected by the NPD Group. The Wii set a new monthly record as consumers picked up some 2.15 million consoles in December alone. The good news continued for Nintendo; its portable gaming platform, the DS, also set a one-month sales record with more than 3 million units moving off of store shelves...

There is plenty to like about cloud computing, but there are also plenty of reasons to be wary. Part 1 of this two-part series suggests that it's not all about simplifying and cutting costs. Companies considering cloud services should take a sober look at some of the potential drawbacks before taking the leap Lower total cost of ownership and littl...

For users reared on GUI-oriented commercial operating systems, switching to open source POSIX-type OSes can be an onerous task. Whereas Linux, and FOSS in general, are built around the ideas of inclusion and sharing, the communities built up around the open source operating systems often face accusations of exclusive techno-elitism. Although there are assuredly a few smug members within the various FOSS communities and although shell fluency is more complex than simple commercial OS GUI administration, the scurrilous accusations of perceived superiority among open source communities and their members amount to little more than sour grapes...

It's a question fit for the asking in Seattle, home to some of the world's software, gaming and e-commerce giants: If technology is supposedly one of the villains threatening the nation's newspaper industry, can technology also ride to the rescue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer? I'm asking the question because the paper, founded in 1867, may not ...

More than 230,000 Facebook members got a rude awakening this past week when they were notified that they had been "de-friended" for a nice, juicy Burger King Whopper Facebook users who installed the "Whopper Sacrifice" application were rewarded with a coupon for a free Whopper if they de-friended 10 people from their "friends list," a directory of ...

A new simulation by Sandia for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration has found that trying to use too many cores for multicore supercomputing processing just leads to slower, not faster, computations. Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company....

Sprint Nextel subsidiary Boost Mobile announced it will begin offering a flat rate plan that includes unlimited calling, wireless Web, texting and walkie-talkie services for US$50 per month, available Jan. 22 Roughly half the price of unlimited plans offered by carriers such as Sprint, Verizon and AT&T, Boost's new plan ups the ante in its competit...

Salesforce.com has rolled out another cloud offering -- this time for the service space. Called "Service Cloud," the bundled applications, which include integrated social networking tools, are built on the Force.com platform. Service Cloud allows users to create an online community for up to 250 customers, set up a contact center with up to five a...

There are plenty of figures to show the efficiencies and cost savings that cloud computing can deliver, but here's one you're unlikely to hear during a sales pitch: The benefits of cloud computing are not linear with a project's progress. That means if you only complete about 80 percent of the project, you can't expect 80 percent of the expected b...

A trigger is a device that automatically executes a response to a certain event. In marketing, triggers are used to automatically deliver targeted messages, offers, recommendations or other treatments to customers on an individual basis at the most optimal point in time, based on any number of factors. A growing number of chief marketing officers ...

Creating strong passwords with letters and numbers is vital to keepingsecure access to computers and online accounts. Remembering them andeasily retrieving them are equally vital. A password is only as goodas the user's ability to remember it In today's world of mobile access and multiple accounts, that can be avery big problem. Until now, the avai...