Clint Boulton

Skype on Oct. 1 will launch the second Skype 4.0 beta for Windows with improvements to the way users view and access their VOIP conversations, as well as better instant messaging alerts. Skype 4.0 Beta 2 will be downloadable here beginning Oct. 1. The move follows criticism from users after eBay’s Skype division on June […]

For weeks, some of us have been watching the financial markets swoon, wondering when the bank trouble would extend to the high-tech sector.On Sept. 29, which some pundits are already calling Black Monday, we got our answer. Within a few hours of trading, Internet bellwether Google’s stock plummeted 8 percent and ended the day down […]

In what is clearly a case of politicians supporting its California crown jewel, members of U.S. Congress from California Monday implored the U.S. Department of Justice not to sue to block Google and Yahoo’s search advertising agreement.U.S. House Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and other Democratic members of U.S. Congress are siding […]

Less than two weeks ago, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters that Google was hardly feeling Wall Street’s financial crisis.“My guess is the drama is in New York, not here. It’s business as usual at Google,” Schmidt said.Google’s search, ads and apps machine may be turning a robust dollar, but the search company’s stock took […]

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison may like to race yachts out on the open ocean, but on the subject of cloud computing, the database captain of the world seems lost at sea.At least that’s what it seems like on the outside, but it’s likely all just a good-natured shot across the bow of everyday media hype.At […]

You can’t say Gartner is inconsistent.Another analyst from the venerable research company has written a report highlighting the value that social software, which ranges from simple e-mail to social networks, social bookmarks, blogs and wikis, can have for enterprises.Gartner analyst Jeffrey Mann isn’t just advocating the use of enterprise-tailored social software, such as IBM’s Lotus […]

Acknowledging that people are primed to pop off on politics, Twitter has created a special Election 2008 group, here.Twitterers old and new can sign in and comment about presidential and vice presidential candidates Barack Obama, John McCain, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.And they are. I’ve had the site open on my laptop for 5 minutes […]

The embers that stoked T-Mobile’s G1 fire may be smoldering from a lackluster launch, but Android is still red hot.Visa Sept. 25 agreed to build mobile applications that work with smart phones that run on Google’s Android mobile operating system.The announcement comes two days after T-Mobile formally unveiled the G1, the first smart phone based […]

Acting on eagle-eyed reporting from DSL Reports, the New York Times’ Saul Hansell challenged T-Mobile for its policy of capping data usage at 1GB per month for the operator’s new G1 smart phone, based on Google’s Android operating system.T-Mobile backtracked and removed the cap from its terms and conditions. T-Mobile said on its G1 Web […]

In its bid to map everything in the world — this sounds portentous but it’s no more a joke than Google wanting to digitize the world’s 30-million-plus books — Google has added transit information for the entire New York metropolitan region.Google Transit now includes maps and information on New York’s subway, commuter rail, bus and […]

Crow tastes lousy, but it’s the dish I’m eating now. I suggested Sept. 17 that the first T-Mobile G1 phone based on Google’s Android could ship 1 million units in almost the same amount of time as Apple’s iPhone.Had this device arrived before the iPhone, it would have easily shipped 1 million units in 70 […]

Now that the T-Mobile G1 smart phone’s red-hot hype has faded like summer, it’s time to see how experts in the industry are receiving the gadget. Some things we know for certain. The G1, the first gadget built on top of Google’s Android mobile operating system, costs $179 a pop for a two-year contract from […]