During the campaign, voters are looking into rumors about the candidates far more than their policy positions
Steve Skinner, the head of information technology for a big Bay Area real estate agency, recently got his umpteenth call from Google. Would Skinner be interested in buying a package of e-mail, word processing and other software known as Google Apps for his company's 1,300 employees?
When Black Line Group, a Minneapolis accounting firm, wanted to drum up business, it hired telemarketers - lots of them. The effort was a bust, says Black Line marketing chief Scott Schmidt, largely because "so many companies have gate-keepers between the decision-maker and you."
After six hours of searching Hickory Hill Park Wednesday with an infrared-equipped plane, police were unable to find missing University of Iowa Professor Arthur Miller.
By now most personal-computer users know not to post their Social Security numbers on the Internet or respond to Nigerian e-mails seeking help with suspicious bank-account transfers.
In a crucial win for the free software movement, a federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material
How's this for the ultimate digital-age, small-business irony: Want the best possible environment for Microsoft Office? Try running it on a Mac.
Back in the good old days of the Internet, the hacker was a teenager motivated by high-tech pranks and bragging rights. Today, the online thief could be anyone with 'Net access after a quick buck.
At Nittany Embroidery & Screenprinting in State College, Pa., the employee-appraisal process was in tatters. To determine raises and bonuses for her 35 workers, CEO Erin O'Leary-Rallis relied on scribbled Post-it notes, hazy memories, and self-promoting testimonials from the employees.
The much-hyped, heavily funded new search engine developed by a former Google whiz leaves users unexcited
During the campaign, voters are looking into rumors about the candidates far more than their policy positions
Steve Skinner, the head of information technology for a big Bay Area real estate agency, recently got his umpteenth call from Google. Would Skinner be interested in buying a package of e-mail, word processing and other software known as Google Apps for his company's 1,300 employees?
When Black Line Group, a Minneapolis accounting firm, wanted to drum up business, it hired telemarketers - lots of them. The effort was a bust, says Black Line marketing chief Scott Schmidt, largely because "so many companies have gate-keepers between the decision-maker and you."
After six hours of searching Hickory Hill Park Wednesday with an infrared-equipped plane, police were unable to find missing University of Iowa Professor Arthur Miller.
By now most personal-computer users know not to post their Social Security numbers on the Internet or respond to Nigerian e-mails seeking help with suspicious bank-account transfers.
In a crucial win for the free software movement, a federal appeals court has ruled that even software developers who give away the programming code for their works can sue for copyright infringement if someone misappropriates that material
How's this for the ultimate digital-age, small-business irony: Want the best possible environment for Microsoft Office? Try running it on a Mac.
Back in the good old days of the Internet, the hacker was a teenager motivated by high-tech pranks and bragging rights. Today, the online thief could be anyone with 'Net access after a quick buck.
At Nittany Embroidery & Screenprinting in State College, Pa., the employee-appraisal process was in tatters. To determine raises and bonuses for her 35 workers, CEO Erin O'Leary-Rallis relied on scribbled Post-it notes, hazy memories, and self-promoting testimonials from the employees.
The much-hyped, heavily funded new search engine developed by a former Google whiz leaves users unexcited
Shares of Microsoft Corp. dropped more than 6% in after-hours trading after the software giant posted a fiscal fourth-quarter profit that fell short of Wall Street's estimates as it forecast lower-than-expected revenue for the following quarter.
It's happened to all of us: You print something from the Web, and all you get is a sheet of paper with nothing but a URL or something equally useless.
It was too weird to be true. In late 2006, a series of videos appeared on YouTube about a Willow Springs, Ill., resident named Kyle Bone who'd created a successful product called "the anti-shirt" - a shirt that exposed the area of one's torso that a normal tee shirt would cover and revealed the area that would otherwise be exposed. In short, said Bone, it cured the age-old problem of "farmer's tan."
Steve Ballmer was sobbing. He repeatedly tried to speak and couldn't get the words out. Minutes passed as he tried to regain his composure. But the audience of 130 of Microsoft's senior leaders waited patiently, many of them crying too. They knew that the CEO was choked up because this executive retreat, held in late March at a resort north of Seattle, was the last ever for company co-founder Bill Gates, as well as for Jeff Raikes, one of the company's longest-tenured executives. "I've spent more time with these two human beings than with anyone else in my life," Ballmer finally said. "Bill and Jeff have been my North Star and kept me going. Now I'm going to count on all of you to be there for me."
The Flip Video Mino is the fourth generation of Pure Digital's popular straight-to-Web mini camcorder, designed to make shooting and sharing low-resolution videos very easy.
Think of software as a utopian tool. "Thirty-three years ago the company was founded on the proposition that software would be important," says Gates. "Looking at the next decade, the value that will be created by software and popular software platforms will be greater than ever."
When Jeremy Burton arrived as CEO at private-equity-owned Serena Software last year, he found a respectable but boring 25-year-old firm still profitably churning out mainframe-oriented products. But he also discovered some underplayed non-mainframe products as well as new technologies in R&D that could be killer in a mashup Web 2.0 world. Of course the company's owners at Silver Lake, wanted him to find ways to make the place grow. So he turned R&D loose to develop the new products, and then turned to Facebook to change Serena.
"Are you ready?" shouts Josh Ball, manager of GameStop No. 1,782 in Euless, Texas, near Dallas. He's standing before more than 100 fidgety young men and women lined up in the strip-mall parking lot outside his store. They've been here for hours in the warm spring air, waiting for midnight when the latest version of Grand Theft Auto - the ever controversial hoodlums-and-pimps videogame - goes on sale. It's getting close to the appointed hour, and these people can barely contain themselves.
He made his mark at Microsoft as head of the company's worldwide sales force at a time when it seemed everyone hated the company - most of all its customers. In 2 1/2 years Kevin Johnson achieved a miracle: He turned Microsoft's customer satisfaction numbers around.
Jerky might not top everyone's list of hot products for a cold economy. But recently I met an entrepreneur who is prospering in the jerky business against all odds. Her story is instructive for any business owner trying to swim against the economic current - which is most of us nowadays.
I used to think that hard-drive models would take over the camcorder market as miniDV slowly faded into the horizon. I've since changed my tune after using flash-based models, especially those that include some onboard memory.
Asus first released the low-cost, low-power Eee PC in the fall of 2007, winning rave reviews for the 7-inch $399 laptop, which cut overhead by using a tiny 4GB solid-state hard drive and a custom Linux operating system with preinstalled software such as Firefox and Open Office.
Something remarkable happened on Thursday - an Internet service provider and a peer-to-peer software company announced a collaboration and agreed to work together.
Software giant Oracle announced fiscal third-quarter earnings rose 30% from a year ago, in line with Wall Street expectations. But sales missed forecasts, a possible sign that big businesses may be starting to pull back on tech spending.
Roy Singham wants you to know that ThoughtWorks, the Chicago-based software company he founded 15 years ago, and where he is now chairman of the board, is a growing and profitable enterprise and not a socialist collective.
Since the early days of pop music, the music industry has been searching for the secret formula to writing a successful song -- for that special alchemy that separates a Grammy-winner from a dud. For a period in the 1970s and 80s, the self-styled King of Pop Michael Jackson seemed to have stumbled upon it, but somewhere along the line he, too, seems to have misplaced it.
Lloyd's Construction in Eagan, Minn., might not seem as if it needs flashy phone software. The $9-million-a-year demolition and carting company has been run by the same family for the past 24 years. Lloyd's takes down commercial and residential buildings, then hauls them away. What could be more simple?
A serious injury leaves a loved one in a coma. Relatives may face the hardest decision of their lives: to wait it out or turn off the life-support machine.
As anticipated, Apple announced a series of software developments Thursday to make the iPhone more useful to business customers while venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers said it is starting a $100 million "iFund" to finance startups developing applications for the iPhone.
In a dramatic about-face, Ask.com is abandoning its effort to outshine Internet search leader Google Inc. and will instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives.
Silicon Valley venture capital giant John Doerr said Thursdsay that his firm will launch a $100 million "iFund" to help finance the development of software applications for Apple's iPhone.
We're not even two months into the new year, and we've already seen Apple's remarkably slim MacBook Air and Toshiba's update to its featherweight Portege R500.
Microsoft is at a critical moment in its history and is taking brilliant steps to remake itself. Thursday's announcement that it would open itself up to far greater interoperability with other types of software, including open source, is the latest big move. But the bigger step is its $44 billion bid for Yahoo.
The Web used to be a place where we went to seek information. But with the rise of social networks, we're barraged with a constant stream of data, requested or not
A Microsoft-Yahoo ticket would significantly increase the Redmond, Wash.-based company's share of the online advertising you see on your PC. But it could also ramp up its presence on the smaller screen.
Razer's new Lycosa gaming keyboard has several unique features. The rubber coating on the keys provides a soft, comfortable touch. You can switch between three backlight configurations via a touch-sensitive control pad. You can even use Razer's software to program each of the Lycosa's keys to work as a separate macro, either individually or in combination with one another.
Oracle and Sun both made impressive acquisitions of software companies this week. For its part, Oracle in buying BEA Systems is making the last great stand for licensed software - old school stuff customers buy and install themselves.
I'm no Apple lover. Sure, I dig the design coup that is the iPod Touch, the lovely software interface of the Apple operating system, the content of the iTunes service. And I truly believe Steve Jobs is a living, breathing American genius. But Apple's hardware has always been frustratingly limited, particularly for small businesses.
Is it just me, or does it seem telling that the innovative products coming out of this year's Macworld Expo are no longer Apple gear?
Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs unveiled movie rentals from iTunes, a superthin notebook computer and new software for the iPhone and iPod iTouch at his Macworld presentation in San Francisco on Tuesday.
Are Macs finally small-business ready?
Dear FSB: I have a small electronics service company serving clients of the major electronics companies like Sharp, Samsung and Pioneer. A customer buys a Sharp TV, has a problem and calls Sharp, and Sharp calls me to go service the unit.
Whether it's a slowdown or full-blown recession, most people agree we're heading into choppy economic waters. The question, then, is which sectors and which companies are best positioned to withstand the tempest? One answer is technology, especially companies that help their customers stretch a buck -including firms that run a software-as-a-service model and ones that are pushing the limits of computer-virtualization technologies.
How's this for irony? Choosing the software that's supposed to make our work lives easier is becoming horribly complex. Market hegemon Microsoft recently unleashed its most impressive riffs yet on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest, packaged as Office 2007 and built for the new Vista operating system. Meanwhile, Internet search-giant Google has come to market with a reliable and low-cost suite of web-based tools: word processing, spreadsheets, calendar, e-mail, and more, all packaged as Google Apps.
Ralph Fiol met the future of Internet search marketing at the bottom of the sea. Fiol lives in Miami and loves to scuba-dive. But a few years back he had a problem. "There was no smart way to quickly find wrecks I wanted to dive, get information about them, and take that information with me no matter where," says Fiol, 40.
Track increasing sales? What a kick! Track rising expenses? That's usually a thankless, frustrating job for an entrepreneur - and expensive for your company to boot. But help is just a click away, thanks to a flock of companies now offering T&E tracking services to the small-business market. The great innovation of recent years is the on-demand availability of the products, allowing employees to file expense reports and submit receipts via the Internet. Implementation is quick, from several days to three weeks, depending on the needs of the client, and the service is hosted on the servers of the provider, not the customer. Data from the system can easily be integrated into a company's accounting software.
The Asus EN8800GT is the first card we've reviewed with Nvidia's new GeForce 8800 GT graphics chip. You should be able to find this card for just less than $300 or so online, which puts its real world price a bit higher than Nvidia's suggested price of about $250.
For raw performance, AMD's Athlon 64 X2 chips have lingered behind their Intel Core 2 Duo counterparts all year. Only aggressive pricing from AMD kept its old dual-core CPUs in systems and on store shelves.
In its first appearance, CounterSpy was the only antispyware product that correctly identified every piece of spyware in our current active-detection test. It did very well in active scanning, on-demand detection, and complete spyware removal. We also like its overall look and feel.
Dear FSB: Where can I find quality software for owners and operators in the trucking industry?
Under its relentless CEO Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard is boringly, reliably, efficient. It may be the perfect company for an era when information technology is routinely and unremarkably inserted into more and more of the mechanisms of business and society.
Consider, if you will, the humble coffee mug - that's right, the one with the wacky slogan on it that you might be drinking from right now. By bringing a mug to work and using it, instead of chugging your caffeine fix from disposable cups, you can help reduce the 2 million tons of paper and plastic cups and plates tossed out in the U.S. each year.
In some ways, you've got to feel a little sympathetic for Sony. The company effectively invented the placeshifting concept -- the ability to stream TV programming from your living room to another device via the Internet -- in 2004, only to see it co-opted by smaller upstart Sling Media a year later. The latter company's Slingbox series of products have become the industry leader, popular enough for the start-up to be purchased by Dish Network parent EchoStar for a cool $380 million.
The current flood of excellent gaming laptops (Dell's XPS M1730, HP/Voodoo's Envy, and Alienware's m9750) means that PC gamers have plenty of choices when it comes to picking a new mobile rig.
The Internet will never be fast enough. While under ideal conditions a packet of data travels over the network at the speed of light, it turns out that's too slow to deal with the complexities of modern software.
Having survived its freshman hazing, the Zune is back for its sophomore revenge, and the iPod has every reason to be frightened. The Zune 4 (4GB, $149) and Zune 8 (8GB, $199) offer a leaner, lighter version of Microsoft's full-size Zune 80 MP3 player (80GB, $249).
Google is a company convinced of its own brilliance and its clear vision of the future. Being a hotbed of Mensa members will do that to you. As will stumbling early onto an obscenely lucrative business model. The same thing happened to a company called Microsoft.
Tighter credit isn't stopping the world's biggest tech companies from continuing their acquisition binge. Software that helps customers understand what's happening in their businesses is, as an analyst says, "redhot."
The Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 is nearly identical to the QuickCam Pro for Notebooks Webcam, except for the fact that it's a better fit for laptops. This $99 desktop Webcam is larger than its laptop sibling, but its flexible, two-hinged stand works equally well resting directly on your desk or atop your desktop's LCD or your laptop's screen.
The StorCenter Network Hard Drives are the latest version of Iomega's home-targeted network-attached storage drives. They are basic NAS drives that offer up many of the same features that the competition offers.
In some ways, you've got to feel a little sympathetic for Sony. The company effectively invented the placeshifting concept -- the ability to stream TV programming from your living room to another device via the Internet -- in 2004, only to see it co-opted by smaller upstart Sling Media a year later.
On January 30th, Microsoft will drop a revamped Word that makes Kirstie Alley losing 70 pounds look like John Madden changing his tie. I have been testing this radically new Word for the last month or so. My verdict? Business users, get ready for #&!? frustration.
As if there weren't enough tussling in the technology world, two software giants are duking it out over - get this - bean counting. Internet-search giant Google recently cut a deal with Intuit, the 800-pound accounting software gorilla.
Like the name suggests, the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini is the tiniest member of the OneTouch 4 family of external hard drives.
In mid-October, Bill Gates unveiled Microsoft's own unified communications products aimed at corporate customers. He contends this technology will revolutionize the office as profoundly as the PC itself, and he may be right.
Abhishek Nayak just turned 20 yesterday, and he spoke on a panel of young people here in Delhi at the Fortune Global Forum. He's a committed programmer who hands out a business card that shows him as vice president of a company, even though he's primarily a student. On the card is that great quote from John Lennon's Imagine: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one."
The Microsoft LifeCam NX-3000 is an inexpensive, basic Webcam for laptops that delivers acceptable video quality and little else. The bundled LifeCam software is third-rate -- we prefer the apps that Creative and Logitech bundle with their Webcams -- although the design mirrors the Creative Live Cam Notebook Ultra, which we like.
Many business owners regularly talk to inanimate objects. Don't believe me? I'm guessing that in the last week alone you've begged your PC not to lose valuable data or implored your notebook to recover lost documents. While we all have one-sided conversations with our tech toys, we generally don't expect them to answer, much less complete tasks simply because we say so. But today's voice-activated software promises to do just that, claiming faster speeds and an impressive 99% accuracy level.
This is a historic moment in the history of technology. All at once, we are shifting to a mobile, ad-supported, on-demand, socially-connected, truly global network.
Last summer Jones devised a process to bring more ideas out of the filing cabinet and into active development. He assigned Lee Jorgenson, a 22-year-old former intern, to build a team of college students and recent graduates who would research what Jones boasts will be the next big thing in Christmas lights. (He declines to explain further.) Jones was so delighted with the team's prototype that Jorgenson now has the green light to hire as many as 25 more young techies to work on four additional projects.
Competition in the online office software market is heating up as Google and Microsoft go head to head and a host of startups seek space on the virtual desktop.
As the search behemoth continues to dominate, there are still more than a thousand other search engines vying for users
In 1978, Diane Greene took her master's degree in naval architecture from MIT and went to work for a San Francisco consulting firm that designed "large-jacket structures," the massive four-legged beasts better known as offshore oil platforms.
Nokia's $8.1 billion acquisition of digital maps provider Navteq marks a sea change in the mobile industry as software and services become as important as the phones themselves.
In an era where the Web is king, Microsoft is no longer regarded as a growth stock. But if the company's bets on new businesses pan out, it could become one again.
Microsoft is unveiling a Web component for its desktop-based Office programs that lets computer users store, share and comment on documents, but the software maker did not go so far as to let people create new files from scratch online.
Microsoft Corp., the No. 3 Web search provider in the U.S., is rolling out changes to its search engine aimed at narrowing the gap between it and market leader Google Inc.
Microsoft Corp. said it will release three versions of its Office 2008 for Mac suite in January, with the most expensive of the bunch aimed at creative professionals overwhelmed by the task of organizing their digital media files.
Open-source software maker Red Hat Inc. said Tuesday fiscal second-quarter earnings rose sharply, driven by higher revenue from subscriptions for its Linux operating software.
Apple on Monday warned iPhone owners who have used unauthorized programs to unlock the cellular service feature of their handsets that they may end up with a phone that doesn't work after the company's next software update for it.
Oracle Corp. kicked off its new fiscal year with its biggest increase in software sales since the dot-com boom and bust - highlighting a first-quarter performance that topped analysts' and its own expectations.
Google Inc. has expanded its online suite of office software to include a business presentation tool similar to Microsoft Corp.'s popular PowerPoint, adding the latest twist in a high-stakes rivalry.
Yahoo Inc. is buying e-mail service Zimbra Inc. for $350 million in an all-cash deal that may open a new revenue channel for the slumping Internet icon.
The verdict is in: Europe's tough antitrust authorities have the power they were looking for to crack down on U.S. companies they believe are illegally limiting competition and harming consumers.
A European court dealt Microsoft Corp. a harsh blow Monday as it rejected the company's appeal of a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling, and upheld a $605 million fine against the world's largest software maker.
Most dotcoms don't arise from anything so touchy-feely as a desire to lower America's divorce rate. But eHarmony is a singular Internet company - one that shows how many great business opportunities remain for those who can creatively apply technology to basic societal challenges.
What's it worth to you? A CD seller and software developer spins a pricing strategy that gets results. Brett Wickard's homemade pricing software is playing well for him and fellow indie CD retailers, struggling to survive as more music sales move online. Wickard, 38, is CEO of Bull Moose (bullmoose.com), based in Portland, Maine, with ten stores and about $15 million in annual revenue.
A group of states led by California asked a federal judge Tuesday to extend court oversight of Microsoft's business practices for five more years.
Technology consultancy Capgemini will begin recommending Google's online suite of office software to its corporate customers, bolstering the Internet search leader's effort to drum up more sales to big businesses.
A software glitch shut down e-mail service for some BlackBerry users Friday, and delays were still being felt hours after the problem was fixed.
Because anyone can edit Wikipedia, the Web encyclopedia's reliability varies wildly. Now a computer science professor hopes to give users a better baloney detector: software that flags questionable lines in Wikipedia entries.
At the same time it revamped its iMac, Apple also more quietly updated its smaller-scale Mac Mini desktops, adding a faster Intel Core 2 Duo processor in place of the old Core Duo chips. The result is more or less competitive performance compared to similar Windows PCs.
Microsoft Corp. has failed in a first step to win enough support to make the data format behind its flagship Office software a global standard, the International Standards Organization said Tuesday.
What began as a ninth-grade prank, a way to trick already-suspicious friends who had fallen for his earlier practical jokes, has earned Rich Skrenta notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a personal computer virus.
A group of anonymous software developers said they will soon start selling a program that will allow iPhone owners to use the hugely popular device on cell phone systems around the world and not just with AT&T.
Woody Allen once said that 80 percent of success is just showing up. You could also say that 80 percent of financial success is just keeping track.
This fall the business world will see the first tentative release of a product that Charles Simonyi has been working on, in one form or another, for most of his professional life. No, it's not word-processing software, which the Hungarian immigrant developed at Xerox PARC and then took to Microsoft in 1981, and which helped build him a fortune estimated at $1 billion. It's more audacious than that.
Disruption is easy to spot - in hindsight. The railroads were always going to be better than canals and wagon trains. The telephone was bound to edge out the telegraph. The transistor was clearly superior to vacuum tubes. In recent years, digital cameras have stolen the market for film, the iPod has started to replace the CD and Google seems to be disrupting just about everything else.
Last January, when Steve Jobs rechristened his company by ostentatiously excising the word "Computer" and leaving it as simply "Apple Inc.," he did so during the very same public event when he first showed off the iPhone.
Whenever a doctor, nurse or administrator in Georgia's DeKalb Medical Center sends an e-mail, the message detours through a special box in the three-hospital system's computing cluster. The box analyzes the e-mail, scanning for sensitive information like patient names, prescription histories and Social Security numbers.
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