Eric Lundquist

If you have the chance, read through Stan Gibson’s interview of General Motors CIO Ralph Szygenda. Ralph is as close to the dean of CIOs as you will find in the U.S. He was early at redefining the role of corporate technology to be based on service agreements with hard benchmarks, redefining the role of […]

The tech news lineup for the week of April 14. Mergers, departures, alliances and (groan) taxes. Mergers. Despite a lackluster economy, or maybe because of it, mergers and their harsher partner takeovers are in the news. Blockbuster shortcircuits Circuit City. This is in the takeover bid category. The $1 Billion proposed takeover was made public […]

When Robert Scoble declares The Era Of blogger’s control is over, you should pay attention. In a series of conversations that sound eerily reminiscent of newspapers complaining about the era of free content and the music industry complaining about ripped off content, the blogosphere is abuzz about what happens when your blog content gets hijacked, […]

Anyone else remember the Olds Vista Cruiser? Now there was a station wagon that had everything including a vista sunroof, third row seating and horsepower that at the highest end included a 455 cubic inch Rocket V-8. The Vista cruiser was designed to include everything you’d want as you, well, cruised along. Windows Vista reminds […]

While much of the focus on what has come to be called cloud computing has been on vast server farms and the technical underpinnings of trying to search all the world’s web content, the database that underlies the cloud has received a lot less attention. Big Table is an ongoing research project to create a […]

One of the unwritten rules of technology takeovers is that hostile takeovers are fraught with peril. When a company’s value is its intellectual capital and that capital walks out the door at the end of each workday, taking a heavy-handed approach to acquisition seems wrong. In any case, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has now put Yahoo […]

Microsoft’s proposed $40 billion Yahoo takeover always had the potential to turn into an ugly street fight. Steve Ballmer’s open letter to Yahoo posted on April 5 sets a date for the street fight to start. As Ballmer states in the letter, “If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we […]

Amid ongoing corporate difficulties, General Motors has been leaning heavily on CIO Ralph Szygenda to cut waste and speed innovation through a fully outsourced approach to IT. In 2006, GM awarded $7.5 billion in outsourcing contracts, and before 2011 the company will award another $7.5 billion. That “big-bang” moment in 2006 followed a stormy relationship […]

9:30 a.m., CTIA Show, Las Vegas It is the last day of the CTIA show in Vegas and the final keynotes are due to start in a few minutes. Why do the keynote organizers always feel compelled to have blasting musicto start the day? 9:37. Steve Largent comes out. Why the politicians? Largent is pitching […]

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said he will recommend dismissal of a controversial petition from Skype. Speaking at the annual CTIA convention in Las Vegas, the call for dismissal by FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin drew applause. In February, Skype petitioned the FCC to stop wireless carriers from setting limits on subscribers’ right […]

update: CNBC had an interview with Branson where he says it was no hoax. update: Google posts blog saying it all was fake Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are funding Project Virgle, designed to offer a Noah’s Ark type one way trip to Mars. When Branson called for […]

Retailers, e-commerce developers and security vendors should be paying close attention to the data breach case unfolding around the Hannaford Brothers Cos. Unlike many data breaches in the past that fall into the “smash and grab” category, the Hannaford breach (which may affect 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers) appears to have been a […]