Trends

I've been traversing North America keynoting a series of cloud events hosted by Oracle. At every stop of the roadshow my comments regarding the opportunity to transform traditional product businesses into powerful information services via cloud-based alternatives has generated the greatest interest ...

Corning Gorilla Glass, which resists scratches and breakage, is the leader in providing the protective layer on smartphone screens. For a while, it appeared as though Sapphire might pose a threat, but no more. In the meantime, Corning has introduced Gorilla Glass 4, which is the best to date. Every ...

The observation that "80 percent of life is just showing up," generally attributed to comedian Woody Allen, has morphed into the admonition that "80 percent of success is just showing up." However, it appears that vendors who just show up with a generalized approach to marketing cloud technology to ...

Ericsson last week filed patent claims against Apple both with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas and the U.S. International Trade Commission. "Our suits filed yesterday assert 41 different patents," said Ericsson spokesperson Kathy Egan Wummer. "Of those, 14 are at issue in t...

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday adopted new open Internet rules by a 3-2 vote along party lines. The rules, which affect both wired and wireless access, prohibit broadband providers from unreasonably interfering with or unreasonably disadvantaging efforts of consumers and edge prov...

SIM card maker Gemalto, whose networks reportedly were breached by hackers from the United States National Security Agency and the UK's GCHQ, on Wednesday said the spies got nothing. The hackers stole cryptokeys for millions of SIM cards, according to The Intercept, which cited documents released by...

You may have heard of a company called Geek Squad, but what about PlumChoice or SupportSpace? Even if you don't know their names, you may very well be doing business with them right now. Who are they? PlumChoice, SupportSpace are both relatively small companies that do business with larger companies...

Apple must pay patent licensing firm Smartflash US$532.9 million for infringing three patents. U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who presided over the case in Tyler, Texas, ordered Apple to pay the penalty after a federal jury in Texas found that the company's iTunes software infringed on the pat...

After well over a year of bitter, often highly partisan debates, and despite dissension within its ranks and opposition from industry groups, the United States Federal Communications Commission is expected on Thursday to vote in favor of rules enforcing Net neutrality. The commission wants to regula...

Yahoo CISO Alex Stamos on Monday confronted NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers over the United States government's plan to require built-in backdoors in hardware and software made by American companies. The exchange took place at the New America Foundation's cybersecurity conference. Building backdoors i...

The major headline hacking event of 2014 involved data theft at a highly visible enterprise: Sony Pictures. Perhaps just as significant in e-commerce security was a 2014 federal court ruling which allows the Federal Trade Commission to continue penalizing commercial firms for failure to protect cons...

Electric-car battery maker A123 Systems earlier this week filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Massachusetts Superior Court in Middlesex County. A123 also sought a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to stop its former employee, Mujeeb Ijaz, from violating his non-disclosure and non...

The global access and entertainment services marketplace continues its pace of dramatic change, as broadband services have achieved new levels of penetration and speed worldwide. Emerging markets in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia are experiencing rapid growth, as many homes obtain high-speed...

Samsung has purchased mobile payments firm LoopPay to create its own digital wallet. Samsung already was an investor in the startup, along with Visa and Synchrony Financial. LoopPay's contactless magnetic secure transmission technology works with magnetic stripe readers. "The one major advantage L...

Customer satisfaction with retail has dropped for the first time in four years, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index -- except in the subcategory of e-commerce. All of the brick-and-mortar retail categories registered weak or flat customer satisfaction for the fourth quarter of 2014...