Nicholas Kolakowski

The Apple iPad may be two months away from its retail debut, but some of its effects are already being felt on the e-reader industry: Amazon.com found itself in a weekend dispute with Macmillan, publisher of bestsellers such as Hilary Mantel’s “Wolf Hall.” Macmillan wanted to raise the price of e-books to take into account […]

The possibility that Microsoft will debut some sort of smartphone reared its head again on Feb. 1 after a Spanish blog reported that the company would announce a “Zune Phone” at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later in the month. “Today we can confirm the existence of the Zune Phone from Microsoft,” reads a […]

The British Department of Health has issued a bulletin to its National Health Service staff recommending that they stop using Internet Explorer 6 until the necessary security patch can be downloaded, as part of a wider European pullback from the browser due to security concerns. Following news in January that a zero-day bug in Internet […]

The Windows Azure platform, Microsoft’s competitor in the cloud computing arena, achieved general availability in 21 countries starting on Feb. 1. As part of that rollout, Microsoft will begin charging for Windows Azure and SQL Azure starting at 12:00 a.m. GMT on Feb. 2, in order to give all countries in all time zones the […]

It will be the best and worst of times for IT vendors targeting the financial-markets space, according to a new research report from research firm Ovum. Government intervention will necessitate that companies add new layers of IT infrastructure to handle regulation and compliance issues; at the same time, though, the effects of the recession are […]

Apple finally announced the iPad, its tablet PC, at a Jan. 27 presentation in San Francisco. The high-intensity buzz that built online in the weeks and days before the device’s unveiling will likely continue for some time to come, as the same analysts and pundits who debated the then-vaporware’s possible features now turn their attention […]

Amazon.com is unlikely to see the momentum for its popular Kindle e-reader checked in the short term by the release of the Apple iPad. However, recent moves on Amazon.com’s part suggest that the company sees the iPad and other tablet PCs as something of a competitive threat, while some analysts suggest that Apple’s device could […]

Microsoft is betting its success in 2010 on a variety of initiatives, including the Azure cloud platform, the Project Natal gaming application and Office 2010. However, executives during the company’s Jan. 28 earnings call remained elusive about Windows Mobile 7, the long-rumored smartphone operating system that could potentially mean success or failure for Microsoft in […]

Microsoft reported strong earnings for the second fiscal quarter of 2010, with its revenues of $19.02 billion representing a 14 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago, but executives on the company’s Jan. 28 earnings call highlighted a certain dichotomy: while consumer spending was up, contributing mightily to the 60 million Windows 7 […]

Bill and Melinda Gates pledged some $10 billion over the next decade to help research and deliver vaccines to children around the world, making the announcement at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “We must make this the decade of vaccines,” said Bill Gates, according to a release issued by the Gates […]

Apple’s tablet PC formally made the transition from buzzed-about vaporware to an actual device, named the iPad, during a high-profile event in San Francisco on Jan. 27. The same pundits who spent months discussing possible features of the device are now busy debating the scale of the iPad’s impact on the market and whether it […]

Microsoft reported revenues of $19.02 billion for the second fiscal quarter of 2010, representing a 14 percent increase from the same quarter a year ago, when a massive recession battered the earnings of both the company and much of the tech industry. The company attributed much of that rise to sales of Windows 7, its […]