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The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a patent case that has held the software industry and patent attorneys in suspense for much of the last year. However, the decision, which came down on the last day of the court's term, was worth the wait for advocates in favor of the patentability of business pro...

U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a memorandum that proposes the government to provide 500 MHz worth of additional broadband spectrum for auction -- spectrum that is now controlled by the federal government and private companies. The goal of the proposal is to provide more wireless space for th...

Incorporating social media strategies into your marketing plan is no cut-and-paste job. You've got to know your clientele and what appeals to them, and you have to engage them in a conversation rather than simply spew offers at them. In fact, if you don't have the desire to commit yourself to social...

Twitter has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard users' personal information, the FTC announced Thursday. In what was the agency's first such case against a social networking service, the FTC charged that s...

There is a new mindset is pervading the world of digital assets, particularly in a cost-conscious economy. Organizations are looking to maximize the value of all their digital assets, both to reduce up-front costs and to increase ROI. Back in its early days, "Saturday Night Live" spoofed a real comm...

A judge has ruled in YouTube's favor regarding the video-sharing site's three-year battle with Viacom over alleged copyright infringement. On Wednesday, the U.S. District Court in New York ruled that YouTube had complied with the take-down provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in its ha...

Designing company websites has evolved into an art form, and much attention is paid to selecting the appropriate colors, using the right graphics, and making sure the content best reflects the corporate messaging and brand. These are absolutely areas of importance, but often companies design their w...

Microsoft has introduced several changes to the design and content of its entertainment results on Bing, including ways to link searches to the content they're looking for more directly. The changes are ultimately intended to make this portion of its search engine far stickier. That, of course, is h...

The White House on Tuesday released its plan to fight intellectual property theft, including more than 30 recommendations designed to encourage all branches of government to take a more aggressive stand against piracy. The Joint Strategic Plan, which was required by the 2008 PRO-IP Act, creates a ju...

Complicating the global financial crisis are many potential short and long-term impacts on B2B markets, particularly in the market where my own operations are based, China. From one perspective, the crisis could turn out to have been a good thing for small businesses, forcing them to become more eff...

Salesforce.com has made its latest product, Salesforce.com Chatter, generally available for its 77,300 customers. First unveiled as a private beta earlier this year, Chatter is a real-time social collaboration application and platform for the enterprise. It allows employees to send feeds and status ...

If I wanted to hack your e-commerce business, I'd have your help. It's a fact that no one runs a business from one location (or one computer) anymore. In today's world, work gets done everywhere -- in offices, in homes, in hotels, at airports, and while sipping mocha and siphoning Internet connectiv...

There will be half a billion personal computers sold to U.S. consumers between now and 2015, according to Forrester Research, which includes desktops, notebooks and laptops, tablets and netbooks in the PC category. That is a big jump from current levels -- a 52 percent increase -- Forrester noted in...

Barnes & Noble on Monday rolled out a new, low-cost Nook device and lowered the price on the existing 3G-compatible version of its e-reader. Available this week, the new Nook WiFi device is priced at just $149. The price on the existing Nook 3G, meanwhile, was slashed from $259 to $199, making ...

Social networking platforms can be powerful tools. Twitter strikes fear into the hearts of repressive regimes, and Facebook was nearly single-handedly responsible for the revival of Betty White's career. So how can something with that much influence be easy and unintimidating for a small-business ow...