Nicholas Kolakowski

Microsoft plans to stop offering Microsoft Money Plus, its personal finance software, to consumers. First launched 17 years ago, the program joins Microsoft Encarta in the dustbin with other products the company has discontinued in 2009. “With banks, brokerage firms and Websites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need […]

NEW YORK-Aneesh Chopra, the nation’s first chief technology officer, discussed health care IT, the growth in national bandwidth consumption and digital security at the CEA Line Shows conference here June 11. “As CTO, it is incumbent upon me to achieve on the president’s goals that we harness the power of our nation’s innovation to advance […]

Google is aiming to produce renewable energy cheaper than coal, both through its own research and by investing in outside companies, with the goal of having such a system operational within a few years. “In, you know, three years, we could have multiple megawatts of plants out there,” Bill Weihl, green energy czar for Google, […]

The Global Language Monitor, an Austin, Texas, firm devoted to tracking worldwide trends in language, decreed that the millionth word to enter the English language is “Web 2.0.” “‘Web 2.0’ is a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services,” trumpeted a company press release. “It has crossed from technical […]

Google has received Civil Investigative Demands from the U.S. Justice Department over its digital books agreement with publishers, which critics argue violates antitrust statutes. Google has been scanning books with the intent of creating a massive and searchable digital library, from which readers can purchase volumes. A CID functions as a formal demand for information. […]

Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in an interview with Fox Business that aired on June 9, dismissed Bing, Microsoft‘s new search engine, as largely more of the same from the Redmond company. “It’s not the first entry for Microsoft,” Schmidt said on the program. “They do this about once a year. From Bing’s perspective they have […]

Top 12 Apps for the Palm Pre Smartphone by Nicholas Kolakowski FlightView This application allows Pre users to receive real-time flight status notifications on their device, have their flights added directly to the Pres calendar, and view maps of flights that are currently en route. Mobile by Citysearch Find neighborhood business listings and reviews with […]

TomTom and Apple announced a specially designed car kit for the iPhone, combining two TomTom products, at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on June 8. The first product, the TomTom navigation application for iPhone, includes TomTom navigation software such as IQ Routes and maps; the second, TomTom car kit for iPhone, features “secure […]

Microsoft announced that its IP Ventures program has launched InishTech, a Dublin-based technology company that will handle Microsoft’s Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services. It represents the first time that the IP Ventures program has created an existing Microsoft business, according to the company. The launching of the company came about through a combined effort […]

Google is rolling out Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, which integrates Microsoft Outlook into Google Apps Premier and Education editions. It marks yet another step in Google’s quest to expand its enterprise functionality. Features in Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, which was announced June 9, include synchronization between e-mail, calendar and contacts; free/busy […]

Three weeks after the launch of Wolfram Alpha, the search engine has undergone its “first broad updates” as part of an “ongoing, long-term development process,” according to its official blog. Originally launched on May 18, Wolfram Alpha offers a twist on traditional keyword-based search, operating as a computational engine that offers a definitive result to […]

A preliminary survey by comScore suggests that Bing, Microsoft‘s new search engine, has exhibited solid performance during its first week of public launch. The survey, which comScore released June 9, showed that the rate of searcher penetration for Microsoft sites increased by 1.7 percent in the period following Bing’s launch, to 15.5 percent, while its […]