Business

Master data management is a new approach to an old problem in companies: Merge all of the disparate, often conflicting and redundant records on customers and transactions into one authenticated master file. Industry analyst firm IDC is predicting the MDM market to grow to $10.4 billion by 2009, with...

MySpace has launched a pilot project that will help the popular social networking site identify uploaded content that may infringe on someone's copyright. Its new content management and antipiracy system, which it licensed from Audible Magic, can recognize certain uploaded copyrighted content, match...

Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Center said Friday it would license Internet search technology to Powerset, a relatively young startup that aims to build a better search engine than Google. PARC lays claims to some of the most important inventions of the digital era, including Ethernet, laser p...

Music company EMI Group is reportedly in talks with online retailers about providing its digital music catalog in an unprotected MP3 format, allowing downloaded songs to be played on multiple devices. The company is in talks with RealNetworks, eMusic, MusicNet and Viacom's MTV Networks. This follows...

Cisco announced Thursday that it will purchase social networking software maker Five Across, a developer of technology that enables companies to easily add social networking features to their Web sites. The sale price was not disclosed. "With the acquisition of Five Across, Cisco is taking an impor...

Alcatel-Lucent, the telecom gear-making giant created by their recent merger, said Friday it would slash its payroll by 3,500 more workers than previously planned after posting a sizeable loss for the fourth quarter. The Paris-based company reported earnings for the first time since the $11.4 billio...

Change is the order of the day in the m-commerce market. New smartphones and other handheld digital devices are hitting the marketplace in a torrent, as media convergence accelerates the drive toward "quad play" devices and network services. The telecom and media industries are undergoing a fundamen...

In response to Tuesday's open letter from Apple CEO Steve Jobs calling for major record labels to stop requiring digital rights management technology on music sold online, the Recording Industry Association of America is now calling on Apple to license the antipiracy technology it uses to protect mu...

Eastman Kodak announced Thursday it would cut 3,000 more workers from its payroll, bringing the total number of layoffs close to 30,000 as the once dominant photography company tries to reinvent itself in the digital age. At a meeting with investors, Kodak laid out plans to generate "profitable digi...

Information infrastructure giant EMC is selling, through an initial public offering, a sliver of its highly successful VMware subsidiary, a move that should strengthen VMware's position in the growing virtualization software market. EMC said it will retain ownership of about 90 percent of VMware and...

Coming off a record-setting year, momentum continues to build at the Intercontinental Exchange as it moves into 2007. The ICE has become a leader and successful innovator in the field of exchange-based energy and commodities trading. The Atlanta-based exchange last year carried out a series of signi...

The vow Tuesday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs -- that he would willingly remove copyright protection from songs sold at his company's iTunes store -- was cheered by those who've been arguing that digital rights management systems are a failure. Advocates for music-sharing freedom said they expect music la...

Networking gear giant Cisco Systems on Tuesday posted strong quarterly earnings and issued an upbeat forecast, which drove the company's shares higher and may raise expectations for the technology sector as a whole during 2007. Cisco said it earned $1.92 billion, or 31 cents per share, in the quarte...

Click fraud is a growing problem for online advertisers who rely on paid search services. Marketing experts are urging e-commerce vendors have to take proactive steps to combat it. Online advertisers pay the search engine company hosting their ad a set amount of money each time a computer user click...

Wal-Mart Stores has launched a new service providing movies and television episodes for sale online. The company will offer about 3,000 movies and TV shows on the beta version of the online download store, at price points that -- true to Wal-Mart's ethos -- are cheaper than many of those offered at ...