Nicholas Kolakowski

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff minced no words in describing the recent patent-infringement lawsuit leveled against his company by Microsoft, using the pulpit of a May 20 earnings call to compare the legal action to a late-night mugging. “The reality is that these patent trolls are unfortunately just part of doing business in technology these days,” […]

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Debuts on Google Android 2.2 by Nicholas Kolakowski Flash on Smartphones Several content publishers, including Sony and Warner Brothers, have apparently optimized their sites to work with Flash on smartphone screens. Easy on the Battery Adobe claims some 4 hours of continuous playback for games using Flash 10.1 on the Nexus […]

Flash Player 10.1 will offer smartphones and other mobile devices the same Web browsing capabilities as desktops, complete with streaming video and Website animations. That’s what Adobe officials claim, at least, and they were willing to support that assertion by sending eWEEK a Nexus One smartphone running the prerelease version of Android 2.2, dubbed “Froyo,” […]

Microsoft plans on releasing Windows Phone 7, touted as a complete revamp of its smartphone operating system, sometime near the end of 2010. Its introduction is an attempt to reverse several quarters of market-share slide in the face of fierce competition from Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones, and its user interface-concentrated around “hubs” that […]

Microsoft’s legal activities dominated its week, particularly its filing of an intellectual property suit against Salesforce.com May 18, alleging infringement on nine of its patents. Microsoft may have publicly cast that action as a standard-issue patent-infringement case-a relatively regular occurrence in the tech world-but many analysts suggested a larger strategy at work. The amount of […]

Apple CEO Steve Jobs apparently hinted in an e-mail message that he believes Google’s VP8 WebM video codec is slow, buggy and at risk for patent violations. That e-mail was a response to one sent by a software engineer, asking, “What did you make of the recent VP8 announcement?” During the Google I/O developer conference, […]

AT&T plans on raising the fee for smartphone users who break their two-year contracts, from $175 to $325, starting June 1. That fee will gradually shrink over the course of the user’s contract, by $10 per month, and apply to new contracts. At the same time, the termination fee for purchasers of regular cell phones […]

Google has found itself facing additional controversy in Europe, as Spain, France and the Czech Republic all announced investigations May 20 into the inadvertent collection of data by the search engine giant’s Street View cars. That follows news that Germany and Italy will launch their own inquiries into Google and the Street View service, which […]

Sybase unveiled the Sybase Mobility Platform, a framework for bringing business applications and services such as banking and analytics to mobile devices, on May 20. The platform features mobile servers, applications and services operating in tandem. The more prominently featured initial applications include Sybase Mobile Sales for SAP CRM and Sybase Mobile Workflow for SAP […]

The Pakistani government temporarily blocked in-country access to YouTube May 20, a day after barring Facebook, and accused both Websites of sacrilege, following protests across Pakistan in reaction to a Facebook group titled, “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” That Facebook group asked users to draw and submit images of the Prophet Muhammad on May 20. “We […]

Microsoft filed an intellectual property suit against Salesforce.com May 18, alleging infringement on nine of its patents. Patent-infringement suits are a regular occurrence in the tech industry, and larger companies often use this type of suit as part of a broader strategy. The question is, What sort of motive lies behind Microsoft’s legal action against […]

Microsoft saw its reputation among consumers lift after the release of Windows 7, according to the newest American Customer Satisfaction Index released on May 18. Microsoft scored 76 out of a possible 100 for the first quarter of 2010, matching ACSI’s industry average for software companies, but also something of a reversal from when Windows […]