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Although it is not officially scheduled to be released until 2010, Microsoft is starting to talk up Windows 7, its next OS To that end, it has started a blog hosted by the two senior engineering managers for the Windows 7 product, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, and is promising to release in-depth technical specs in October, first at the Professio...

Facebook continues to feel the ramifications of its controversial Beacon advertising platform, which for a short while last year broadcast information about the social networking site's users' activities without their express permission A class action lawsuit has been filed against Facebook as well as several partners that participated in the progr...

Intel has announced revised details for next-generation USB 3.0 technology, dubbed "SuperSpeed." The updated draft specifications for USB 3.0 software and hardware interface provide a standardized method for USB 3.0 controllers to communicate with SuperSpeed USB (universal serial bus) software. The specifications give manufacturers and software de...

eBay is looking to expand its overseas reach with plans to acquire a minority stake in the South Korean online e-commerce market Gmarket The company has issued a statement that it is in discussions about a possible acquisition of Inter Park and Ki Hyung Lee's interests in the company....

T-Mobile may be partnering with cell phone handset manufacturer HTC to deliver the first smartphone running Google's Android platform, according to reports. An article in the The New York Times cited unnamed sources briefed on T-Mobile's plans who said the carrier could announce the phone as early as September -- and would almost certainly have an offering out in the wild as early as October, in time for the holiday selling season.

Every blogger should know the story of Heather B. Armstrong, nee Hamilton. In February 2002 she was fired from her job for blogging about her job. Blogs were relatively new at that time, and they were on few employers' radars. Hamilton, though, crossed an invisible line -- one not explicitly defined by her employer -- and paid for it. She coined the term "dooce" as a label for anyone fired for blogging. Five years later, most people online know the drill: Don't blog about work, unless your employer approves. If you do, hide all identifying details that could lead back to you...

Brand is always among the top factors for consumers when they purchase a product. However, rankings between the top factor categories change by specific product. Brand has power for gaming and laptops but lower importance for digital photo frames and NAS (networked-attached storage). Where brand power is high, price sensitivity drops, and strong a...

Information technology plays a vital role in today's business environment. Well-designed and developed applications are a key element for success -- particularly for organizations that rely on the Web and intranet for conducting business with customers and communicating with partners and employees. The process for launching new applications begins with software developers' handing off their applications to network professionals for deployment over IP (Internet protocol) networks. ...

Top United States Air Force officials announced Thursday they are considering putting the military branch's Cyber Command program on hold The Secretary and Chief of Staff of the Air Force have considered delaying current activity and development for the Air Force Cyber Command (AFCC) in order to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the AFCC's miss...

Intel will begin rolling out motherboards next month that support Remote Wake technology -- the ability for a computer to be turned on from sleep mode remotely. Applications that have already been designed around this technology include PC-based phone service and content delivery Users of computers with Remote Wake will not have to keep their compu...

A glitch in VMware's most recent update had customers scrambling this week. A problem caused by a bug from the beta version of the software that engineers failed to remove or deactivate left VMware users unable to power on virtual machines running the hypervisor software The bug, also known as a "time bomb," is code that developers insert in beta s...

Internet market researcher eMarketer has drastically lowered its estimates on how much businesses will spend on online video advertising in the near future The New York City-based firm expects spending on online video ads to reach US$505 million by the end of this year, down from the $1.35 billion eMarketer predicted earlier this year....

Open source developers now have newly clarified protection, thanks to an appeals court ruling over the validity of their licenses. A judge with U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Wednesday that programmers who "engage in open source licensing" and copyright their work do "have the right to control the modification and distribution" of their products...

Nvidia this week released second-quarter earnings that its CEO deemed "disappointing." However, future projections of growth, as well as an increase to its stock buyback program, boosted its stock price by about 10 percent on Wednesday as Wall Street decided to focus on the firm's future prospects. In Q2, which ended July 27, revenue sank to US$8...

George Orwell didn't specifically mention enterprise search in his visionary book 1984, but he made a statement that still resonates today. When it comes to relevant search query results, "it's not about the statistics." Sanity comes from the human element Until recently, this concept was mostly ignored by enterprise search solutions. Instead, sear...

CRM is not just about tracking and recording names, addresses and standard constituent information. Today, organizations' online presences and peer-to-peer technologies are making it possible for politicians, businesses and non-profit organizations to get personal with their voters, customers and donors. The "R" in CRM may stand for relationship, but in order to best connect with target audiences, "R" should also equal relevance.

"The 2008 Aberdeen Report: The State of the Market" reveals that investments in new enterprise applications are the top IT initiative for 2008. Aberdeen's research also shows that, on average, organizations are using six business-critical applications and are planning to roll out four new applications over the next two years. The research also shows that 58 percent of organizations surveyed are unsatisfied with the performance of their current applications. The top pressures driving the adoption of application performance management solutions are:...

A nationwide study released Tuesday by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) labor union found that Internet connection speeds in the United States have increased little over the past year. The nation's median data download speed gained just 0.4 megabits per second (Mbps), it reported At that rate, it will take more than 100 years before the ...

Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the top global social network with 132 million unique visitors for a staggering 153 percent growth rate, according to comScore. MySpace is second at 113 million visitors (3 percent growth year-over-year), and Hi5 grew its global audience 100 percent to land at 56 million unique visitors A new report from the online...

Microsoft's August Patch Tuesday security update was a whopper. The software maker released 11 fixes for 26 vulnerabilities, six of which are critical. The remainder were classified as important The batch of patches was the largest security update from the software company in two years.