Uncategorized

The U.S. government's program to consolidate federal data centers presents an opportunity for improving IT management that goes well beyond the objective of just trying to tidy up data center operations and save a little money. As a result of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, the num...

Google announced Tuesday that it is extending its Scan and Match feature for its online locker service to the U.S. Users with Google Play accounts will get a message asking if they would like Google to scan their hard drives for music. If it finds a match in its own library, Google will add the song...

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced that it has demanded nine data brokerage companies explain how they collect and use consumer data. The nine are Acxiom, Corelogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, Peekyou, Rapleaf and Recorded Future. These sites offer information on just...

Samsung said Tuesday that it will drop its pursuit of injunctions against the sale of some Apple products in Europe. Samsung wants to compete "fairly in the marketplace, rather than in the court," according to its official statement, but the move is an odd twist in the ongoing legal saga between the...

Both Apple and Samsung, which have been locked in lawsuits in the United States and abroad, won a little and lost a little in their hearing before Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, Calif. On Monday, the judge denied Samsung's request for a retrial seeking to reduce the $1.05 billion in damages a jury h...

We in IT love inflection points -- events that somehow amalgamate past events and/or indicate how and why the future will be significantly different. The world of personal computing is entering, if not an inflection point, then an inflection process. This is due to the confluence of two converging t...

A two-year FTC probe into Google could be coming to an end. The Federal Trade Commission may close its investigation into the search giant as early as this week, and it appears that Google will avoid a consent decree, according to reports. This would mean Google would not have to agree to any formal...

Google avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting close to $10 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company. Bermuda, along with a handful of other locales, is notorious for providing offshore solutions to multinationals eager to structure cash flow operations to thei...

Those delectable M&M's characters seen in commercials are making their way to the iPhone. An advergame app titled "M&M's Brand Chocolate Factory" recently became available on iTunes for $0.99. While many M&M's commercials involve the six characters in social situations trying to avoid be...

Those delectable M&M's characters seen in commercials are making their way to the iPhone. An advergame app titled "M&M's Brand Chocolate Factory" recently became available on iTunes for $0.99. While many M&M's commercials involve the six characters in social situations trying to avoid be...

AOL is shifting toward decentralization of its marketing efforts. The online company this week named Allie Savarino Kline as chief marketing officer of its Advertising.com unit. In the newly created position, she will have global oversight of Advertising.com and will handle marketing strategy for th...

Google has come up with a way to reduce the number of accidental clicks that occur when "fat fingers" meet the small screen. These unintentional clicks are the bane of mobile advertising, causing advertisers, publishers and consumers grief. Google's new confirmed click feature kicks in when a user t...

SolarCity enjoyed a much better IPO than some of its green industry peers have had in recent months. Its stock rose 47 percent on Thursday, netting about $92 million for the day. SolarCity opened at $8, skyrocketed to about $15, and closed at $11.79 per share. The stock continued to perform well on ...

SaaS has become an accepted alternative to traditional on-premises enterprise applications, and a broader set of cloud services is becoming a viable option for businesses seeking more flexible, economical computing capabilities. Adoption of these services is accelerating rapidly, because they are de...

Sprint Nextel has made a $2.1 billion offer for the shares of Clearwire that it doesn't already own, according to a regulatory filing. The news comes after rumors surfaced earlier this week that the company was in talks with Intel and Comcast to buy out their stakes. The offer, which works out to $2...