Sprint Nextel plans to shed 2,500 jobs from its workforce by the end of 2009. Sprint Nextel is the latest technology company to have layoffs in a series of job cut in the past week that included Microsoft, Real networks, and Nokia Siemens.
UPDATED: The EC, antitrust arm of the 27-nation European Union, informed both Oracle and Sun about the decision because the deal includes the freely available and popular MySQL Web database. The regulators see a major conflict of interest in the world's largest commercial database company owning its largest open source competitor.
High court takes on the question of just what is patentable with business method patents coming under scrutiny. The court's ultimate opinion -- due in June -- could invalidate thousands of software patents.
A Microsoft executive accuses security company Sophos of sensationalizing claims that Windows 7's User Account Control is ineffective at fighting malware. Sophos counters that its goal was merely to show that UAC may not provide the level of protection some might expect.
DeviceAnywhere, a provider of mobile application testing technology, and the Symbian Foundation recently launched the Symbian Virtual Developer Lab (VDL).
The Microsoft SDK for Facebook Platform software development kit is designed to provide developers with a way to quickly and easily leverage the various features of the Facebook Platform through the Facebook Stream API with a range of samples, controls and templates.
News Analysis: The iPhone is under attack by a relatively inconsequential worm that has found its way onto jailbroken iPhones in Australia. It might not affect too many users, but it does underscore the fact that the iPhone isn't as secure as people like to think.
Google and the authors and publishers with which it is trying to settle a five-year copyright feud ask the judge hearing the case for another delay so that they can make the deal more palatable for the Department of Justice. Legal eagle Michael Boni of Boni and Zack adds that the parties in the settlement have met with the DOJ as recently as Nov. 6. What this latest delay means for the planned December or January hearing date is unclear.
HP is rolling out a host of hardware and software solutions, and a line of financing options, designed to give SMBs access to easy-to-manage and energy-efficient products that will help them as they take advantage of the economic recovery. Key among these are new SMB-targeted PCs, servers and storage devices, as well as collaboration tools.
Relegating the iPhone to the Island of Misfit Toys in a new ad, Verizon Wireless attempts to return consumer attention to the issue call coverage. In the United Kingdom, more than a quarter of ADC survey respondents say their work has suffered due to poor reception.
Microsoft announces during the TechEd Europe conference in Berlin that Exchange Server 2010 is now in general release. The latest version of Microsoft's messaging and collaboration platform for business includes multiple features designed to reduce costs, including low-cost storage, integrated archives and speech-to-text previews for voice mail. During the conference, Microsoft executives continue to focus on efficiency as an enterprise IT model.
NEWS ANALYSIS: Only days after creating the VCE and its legal business entity, the shared-equity Acadia startup, to scope out solution packages and market the new vBlock cloud systems, the market-leading companies appear to be moving into other trendy and fertile IT farmlands: namely, virtual desktops, hosted applications and new storage options.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, referring to an analyst report and other rumors that his company would release x86-compatible chips to challenge Intel and AMD, refuted that possibility, saying Nvidia was focused on expanding the reach of its graphics chips products. One analyst had suggested that Nvidia had been hiring ex-Transmeta engineers with the goal of producing x86 processors to protect itself against Intel and AMD, both of which are looking to integrate more graphics capabilities into their CPUs.
Google took aim at the mobile display ad market Nov. 9 when it bought AdMob for $750 million in stock. Google has made some headway in providing mobile search ads to the so-called third screen, but it has been lagging in providing mobile display ads, or in-application ads. AdMob fills those needs, ideally helping Google reach advertisers trying to engage smartphone users, and helping content publishers and mobile application developers get a cut of the money collected from ads paired with their content. This is key to Google's mobile Web strategy, where it's competing with Yahoo and Microsoft in the green field of mobile ads.
Gartner Research suggests that now is the ideal time to take a hard look at how IT functions within a business and that the coming year will be a game-changer in many professionals' careers, as long as the moment for change is seized.
Barnes & Noble will push back the ship date of its Nook e-reader into December for many pre-orders, apparently in response to higher-than-expected demand for the device. Even as Barnes & Noble gears up to battle Amazon.com's Kindle line of devices, it faces a lawsuit from IT startup Spring Design, which alleges that the bookseller copied its dual-screen format. The price of certain e-readers has been declining as competition heats up between various manufacturers.
In addition to Sprint's new investment in Clearwire's 4G WiMax technology, Clearwire partners Comcast, Intel, Time Warner and Bright House Networks also combine to invest $500 million.
Cisco Systems Nov. 9 jumped into the hosted e-mail and enterprise social networking arenas, challenging Google, Microsoft, IBM and a legion of smaller startups. But what is new here? Guido Jouret, CTO of Cisco's emerging technologies group, explains how Cisco solutions such as Pulse and Show and Share are different from existing offerings from Cisco's competitors. In short, Cisco's network chops afford it integration opportunities that elude the other vendors.
The iPhone 3G and 3GS will be available at select RadioShack locations this month, with a nationwide rollout to follow in 2010. The news caused RadioShack stock to jump.
The first known worm for Apple's iPhone is spreading on jail-broken iPhones in Australia. The worm takes advantage of the default password for SSH used by many jail-broken phones and places an image of 1980s pop singer Rick Astley on the device.
The mobile PC chip space, led by Intel’s Atom processor, fueled a record for shipments in the third quarter, with a 23 percent jump over the second quarter, according to IDC. The strong quarter was enough to convince IDC to increase its forecast for the year, to more than 300 million units being shipped. However, IDC analysts cautioned that a lot of the growth came from Atom purchases in China, which could slow the momentum if China decides it can’t keep buying such high numbers of chips.
Nokia is offering free replacement of recently made versions of three of its chargers, the AC-3E, the AC-3U and the AC-4U. The chargers, which pose a risk of electrical shock, are compatible with a Bluetooth headset, several phones and smartphones, and a desktop charging stand.
A mouse from OpenOffice.org and WarMouse, retailing for $75, offers 18 programmable buttons and default profiles for the five core OpenOffice.org applications.
Microsoft announces that it will purchase the Teamprise technology and other Teamprise-related assets from SourceGear to deliver cross-platform support for Microsoft's Visual Studio tool set.
Through a partnership between ConnectWise and SonicWall, cost-conscious companies will see tighter integration from the two companies' management applications.
Cisco Nov. 9 at its Cisco Collaboration Summit began its largest collaboration product launch to date. While the launch covers the usual Cisco strongholds -- IP phones to media servers to unified communications -- the company also rolled out hosted e-mail from its PostPath buy and enterprise social software. Cisco WebEx Mail is intended to compete with Google's Gmail, Zoho Mail, IBM LotusLive iNotes and Microsoft Exchange Online. Enterprise Collaboration Platform will battle IBM Lotus Connections and the swath of enterprise social software products from MindTouch, Socialtext, Jive Software and others.
D-Link announces its line of managed switches received IPv6-Ready Core Phase-2 Logo certification from the IPv6 Forum.
VMware is rolling out the latest version of its desktop virtualization product, View 4, which is built atop the vendor’s vSphere 4 virtualization platform and benefits from VMware’s partnership with Cisco and EMC. VMware officials say View 4 will improve the scalability and user experience in desktop virtualization environments while reducing costs.
Microsoft's Windows 7 sold well in its first few days of release, according to an analyst report, but declining revenues and suggestions of a slow-paced tech refresh suggest that Microsoft could face at least a few more quarters of stagnant revenues as it seeks to recover from the massive economic recession. This week saw Microsoft cut 800 more jobs from its payrolls, as it continues to consolidate and trim costs in an effort to streamline.
Are Apple and AT&T planning to launch a $99 8GB iPhone 3G S in time for the holidays? This rumor was offered by a popular source. True or not, what does it say about the Motorola Droid — and the growing crop of Apple look-alikes?
First the Russians will deliver the Mini-Research Module 2, followed by a Nov. 16 NASA launch of the space shuttle Atlantis. With only six space shuttle missions remaining to the International Space Station, NASA is focusing on getting a supply of spare parts to the ISS.
ComScore Nov. 6 said some 27 billion hours were spent on the Internet by 1.2 billion worldwide Internet users in September 2009. Microsoft Websites led the way, but 70 percent of the time spent on its sites was through Windows Live Messenger. Google came in at No. 2, with 9.3 percent of the minutes (2.5 billion hours). Yahoo was third with 6.3 percent of the minutes, or 1.7 billion hours, but dropped by 14 percent from its September 2008 share of almost 2 billion hours. Facebook nabbed the fourth spot, with 5 percent of the minutes, or 1.4 billion hours.
Get back to where you once belonged: A judge approves a temporary restraining order for digital music site BlueBeat.com over the sale of Beatles songs.
Verizon tried a Times Square promotion for its Droid smartphone on Nov. 6, the same day as the device’s release. Despite the small number of people who turned out for the event, Verizon and Google are hoping that the Android-powered smartphone will attract massive amounts of customers, and justify prerelease advertising that positioned the Droid as a robust competitor to Apple's iPhone. Some early reviews seemed to put the iPhone and Droid on relatively even ground in the capabilities category.
News Analysis: Google again finds itself in a no-win situation, this time with Google Dashboard. Some claim Google collects too much data in Dashboard, and others say it doesn't provide enough. Dashboard summarizes the data from the Web services associated with a user's account. It will list how many Gmail conversations we have going, how many Google Docs we have, Google Calendar appointments and even Web history if we've enabled it. But it does not include detail Google collects on us from its server logs, cookies and ads.
Beginning Nov. 9, sales associates for Best Buy Mobile will install Google Mobile App on all BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 smartphones through the Walk Out Working program, a free in-store smartphone setup. The deal makes Best Buy the first retailer in the U.S. to distribute Google Mobile App on smartphones sold in-store. However, Best Buy won't install Google Mobile App on the Motorola Droid or HTC Eris because it isn't available on Android. Google Mobile App support is missing in action on the iPhone, too.
NASA alerts the International Space Station's crew to approaching Russian Cosmos space debris that might force astronauts to sleep in Soyuz module.
You don't have to be locked in a cubicle for 60 hours a week to complete your technological work or to be successful. 37Signals, a Web software company that makes organizational apps like Basecamp, Ta-da List and Backpack, thrives by helping workers find more freedom with their time and recharge daily as they see fit while focusing on getting things done.
In an interview with eWEEK, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos says "there's no rational argument" for preventing Oracle from acquiring all of Sun, including MySQL with its open-source relational database software. The competitive pressure that MySQL exerts on the market will preserve the independence of the database no matter who owns the product, Mickos asserts.
Viridity, which will come out of stealth mode Nov. 9, is developing software designed to give IT administrators, facility managers and C-level executives high visibility into the utilization and energy consumption of their IT equipment and applications. The software will analyze the data and generate action reports that businesses can use to make their data centers more energy-efficient.
eBay settles lawsuits with Joltid and Joost in a $1.9 billion deal that gives Skype ownership over all software previously licensed from Joltid and paves the way for a group of investors to acquire the majority of the company. Joltid and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, who had earlier tried to buy Skype back from eBay, will join the investor group, contributing Joltid software and making a capital investment in exchange for a 14 percent stake in Skype. Silver Lake and fellow investors Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board will grab 56 percent of Skype, with eBay retaining the remaining 30 percent.
New legislation would allow the Universal Service Fund to be used for broadband deployment, expanding the USF from its traditional use as a fund to subsidize phone service in underserved and rural areas and Internet connections in schools and libraries.
WLAN vendor Aruba agrees to a one-time payment of $19.8 million to Motorola and its subsidiaries, Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley Communications. The out-of-court settlement also calls for a cross-licensing agreement between Aruba and Motorola for WLAN communication technologies.
Microsoft and the European Commission may be close to a deal on packaging Internet Explorer 8 with Windows 7, with Redmond agreeing to offer users an automatic "ballot screen" from which they can choose a rival browser. Such an agreement would alleviate the Commission’s antitrust concerns, but Google, Opera and Mozilla plan on asking the regulatory body for as-yet-unannounced changes to the agreement.
IBM is working to deliver technology that could lead to zero-emission data centers, says an IBM researcher at the USENIX Large Installation System Administration conference.
On a Website called Intel's Insides, graphics chip maker Nvidia offers a series of editorial-style cartoons that take shots at Intel over a number of issues, including the legal problems that are besetting the company. Intel is being sued on several fronts regarding its business practices, and also is dealing with lawsuits involving Nvidia and licensing issues.
Reframe It says Google's Sidewiki service is too close to its own Web annotation service for comfort. Reframe It CEO Bobby Fishkin argues that Sidewiki's features mimic Reframe It's right down to the icon buttons. Google denies any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, an intellectual property attorney says Reframe It could make a patent or copyright infringement complaint against Google, depending on its IP. eWEEK has published side-by-side comparisons of the two Web apps on Google Watch.
With the Adamo XPS, Dell says it is reinforcing its commitment to craftsmanship and design. It's 0.4 inch thin, features an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, unfolds itself and looks like nothing else on the market.
The negotiations over the International Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that concluded another round this week in Seoul, South Korea, prompts watchdog groups to complain to President Obama about Hollywood's influence over the talks and the lack of transparency surrounding the entire negotiations.
Two European financial firms argue that Cisco's $3 billion bid for video conferencing rival Tandberg is too low considering its performance and stock price. The opposition from Panta Capital and Scott & Associates comes three days before Cisco's Nov. 9 deadline on the deal, and joins stockholders with about 30 percent of Tandberg shares in saying the bid is too low. Cisco officials have called the offer fair.
|
News 
