Trends

The iCloud security issue that's been in the headlines all week should be a great big wake-up call to everyone. The cloud is coming; however, we are still in the very early days. Security threats keep growing, so it is important for both individuals and companies to be prepared. The news this week s...

Home Depot may have experienced a massive security breach -- possibly on a greater scale than last year's Target breach, which affected an estimated 110 million people. Home Depot on Wednesday said it was investigating the possibility, following security researcher Brian Krebs' Tuesday alert. Multip...

Smartphones, tablets and other wireless devices have made it possible for consumers to access the Internet from almost anywhere in the world -- but apps are the tools that specifically drive usage, by offering an easy-to-use interface. As a result, consumers are getting accustomed to accessing the I...

The U.S. government soon will be operating in the 2015 fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1. For information technology vendors, marketing to federal agencies will remain challenging during 2015 and succeeding years, as agencies work within a constrained budget environment. In the short term, overa...

Uber is attempting to polish its image with a defense of its driver recruitment tactics following publication this week of accounts of sabotage, dirty tricks and generally ruthless behavior toward Lyft and other competitors in the ride-sharing space. "We want to make sure everyone has access to Ube...

American Airlines this week withdrew its flight content from Orbitz Worldwide's websites, which include Orbitz.com, ebookers.com and CheapTickets.com. The companies are locked in a booking fee dispute. The issue is also a brewing source of discontent between the airlines and Orbitz's competitors, su...

Time Warner Cable suffered a massive service outage in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, leaving an unknown number of its nearly 12 million customers nationwide without service for hours. "As of 6 a.m. ET, services were largely restored ... . As of 8 a.m., all services were back to normal," said T...

Comcast has been trying to improve customer care. It has made some headway, but reliability of its services still is a big issue. I like Comcast people. During the last couple of years, their performance has gotten better. However, the quality of Comcast's service is still unreliable, at best, and p...

Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday signed into law a bill requiring that anti-theft measures be incorporated into all smartphones sold within California. The measure applies to phones manufactured after July 1, 2015. Though it doesn't specify the particular technologies used to enable that capability -- bot...

China is developing a homegrown operating system that could be ready as soon as October as part of an effort to wean itself from Western-made software, according to a Sunday report from the Xinhua government news agency. Following hard on the heels of China's announcement last month that it had laun...

Can an automated Google feature that ostensibly helps users with a search be a basis for libel? Courts in Germany, Italy and Hong Kong have had to field that question. Google's position is that there is no human intervention, and that its algorithm is based merely on what others have searched for, o...

SoundCloud on Thursday launched On SoundCloud, a program that will facilitate advertising on the site. Membership initially is by invitation only; SoundCloud will roll it out to a select number of artists. It later plans to bring on more advertisers and make the program available to the general memb...

Netflix on Tuesday announced that it has signed an interconnection agreement with Time Warner Cable, marking the fourth such deal the content provider has signed with a major Internet service provider. Netflix in recent months has signed similar agreements with Comcast, Verizon and AT&T. Though ...

The good news for Sprint is the stars seem to be lining up for a recovery. Change is occurring throughout the entire wireless industry. Every player -- including AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular and C Spire Wireless -- is changing. We will start to see lots of new...

Steve Ballmer on Tuesday severed the last of his official ties with Microsoft -- he resigned from the board of directors. Ballmer gave up his CEO role in February. Ballmer's other duties have become too pressing for him to focus on Microsoft, he wrote in a letter addressed to CEO Satya Nadella. "I t...