Applications

Oracle has released a whopper of a critical patch update for October, with 127 security fixes across several of the company's products. Of these, 51 are fixes for Java SE, and all but one of those will allow remote exploitation of a computer without authentication. Oracle recommends the patch be app...

Amazon this week unveiled a new program designed to draw third-party developers to the company's platform. Known as "Appstore Developer Select," the program offers incentives such as promotional boosts to developers that optimize their apps or games for the Amazon Appstore and the Fire OS. "Mobile a...

As the prolific trend of adoption would suggest, the case for cloud is compelling from both a business and technology perspective. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the more compelling reasons from a technologist's point of view has to do with the ability to abstract lower levels of...

Because of the rapid pace of SaaS adoption, many security practitioners have found themselves scrambling to ensure the security of the specific technologies their enterprises want to employ. However, the dynamics of SaaS can make this a challenging exercise. This is because most of the options for s...

Barnes & Noble on Monday announced a suite of free video apps that will let users watch movies and TV shows on a range of devices, including tablets that compete with its own Nook. This comes just a month after the retailer announced that it would cease designing and selling its color tablets. A...

Barnes & Noble on Monday announced a suite of free video apps that will let users watch movies and TV shows on a range of devices, including tablets that compete with its own Nook. This comes just a month after the retailer announced that it would cease designing and selling its color tablets. A...

No matter how important or well intentioned, technology industry press releases are seldom entirely free of hyperbole. So in parsing any announcement, it's good to keep an eye on 1) what is being done; 2) who is involved; and 3) how and why the world will be different if they succeed. In the case of...

Dell posted its Q2 earnings report Thursday, reporting a 72 percent drop in net income. The report comes in the throes of a long-running battle for Dell's future. Founder and CEO Michael Dell is leading an effort to take the company private through a $25 billion deal, but activist shareholder Carl I...

On its face, EMC's recently acquisition of ScaleIO seems pretty straightforward. The company said the deal will further strengthen its Flash portfolio by combining ScaleIO's highly scalable server software with PCIe Flash card solutions, like EMC XtremSF. ScaleIO will operate within the EMC Flash Pr...

What the heck is wrong at Microsoft? It may be an important company, but it's an older company that has definitely lost its way. It can recover but doesn't see how. The solution seems so obvious from the outside. However, there is a sense that arrogance is getting in the way of clear thinking. It is...

Over the past three-plus decades, it's hard to think of a business computing-related technology that's driven more fundamental value than virtualization, and it's for a very simple reason: Since hardware evolves at a far faster pace than software, systems tend to deliver far more performance than ne...

The U.S. Department of Commerce is planning a major upgrade of its customer relationship management capabilities, which is likely to include a multiyear contract opportunity for a cloud-based CRM system. The project underscores the increasing awareness of federal agencies of the potential use of clo...

Anyone who's ever made a presentation with data knows that making data presentable isn't always easy. That's part of the rationale behind Databoard, a new tool from Google that's designed to help users do just that. Announced on Tuesday, Google Databoard gives users a new way to share data insights....

There's no question that books have gone digital. Sure, there are still paper books aplenty in a smattering of brick-and-mortar bookstores -- and available online as well -- but there's no escaping the proverbial writing on the wall that book-selling behemoth Amazon now sells more electronic books t...

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," as the old saying goes, and this week Oracle took steps to do just that. Specifically, the database giant inked partnership deals with longtime competitors Microsoft and Salesforce.com in a bid to expand its reach in cloud computing. Announced on Mo...