Dec 7th, 2008 - I like to follow news about Apple and its products as much as anyone. It's interesting and fun and watching the speculation is a kind of voyeurism, a way to get inside a company that keeps a tight lid on information, but much like baseball trade rumors, which I also love to follow, most of them... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - With much fanfare Sun announced its new JavaFX platform yesterday, but curiously in a video introducing the platform, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, made the browser the enemy of content owners, and set up JavaFX as the platform to give developers and content owners direct access to users. I'm not sure... (Read More)

Dec 4th, 2008 - Yesterday Adobe announced it would be laying off 600 employees worldwide, which represents, according to published accounts, 8 percent of the workforce. Reports suggested that Adobe was a victim of the overall economic slow down and the lower than expected earnings were due to selling fewer copies... (Read More)

Nov 28th, 2008 - Today is Black Friday and people are going a bit insane standing on sidewalks overnight waiting for the the big deal on their desired electronics. Everyone from WalMart to Target to Best Buy to the Apple Store is getting involved. And so are online retailers like Amazon. And to be sure there are... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2008 - According to a recent TechCrunch article, Microsoft is planning to rename its Live Search product, Kumar, which means cloud or spider in Japanese. What Microsoft needs to learn, and what the Get a Mac ads have captured so well, is that it's not about PR or branding or the name of the products, it's... (Read More)

Dec 6th, 2008 - The iPhone App Store has been open for just five months, since July 11th to be precise. Yet in this time, so an Apple advert running in the New York Times informs us, no less than 300 million applications have been downloaded. Now those are two hugely important numbers, 300 million downloads in... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - An alpha version of Opera 10, the latest in a long line of web browser clients from the Norwegian-based developers, has been made available to download. Anyone remember Opera? It used to be the next big thing, until the next big thing came along in the shape of Firefox that is. Opera did turn its... (Read More)

Dec 3rd, 2008 - We already know quite a lot about Windows 7: it has a distinct Office 2007 feel to the UI, it is likely to feature some kind of instant on fast booting process, and the OS itself should scale to some 256 processors. The launch of an official 'Engineering Windows 7' blog has helped with this... (Read More)

Nov 30th, 2008 - Microsoft has kept it fairly quiet, no press releases or launch trumpeting, but it now looks like the Xbox 360 has been upgraded with the new Jasper motherboard. The new Xbox 360 has been spotted in the wild by the eagle eyed Xbox Scene chaps and as a result we now know that it has a 65nm GPU... (Read More)

Nov 25th, 2008 - Hands up if you remember Opera Software, you know the Norway-based developer of alternative web browser clients. In the days before Firefox, Opera was the client most likely to shake up Microsoft and for a while seemed to be doing pretty well in that regard. Then Firefox came along and rained on... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - Is today the worst day of the recession? A lot of people seem to think so. I’ll get into that in a moment, in an otherwise light trading day for technology stocks. I think we’re seeing a run out of tech this week and into more stable companies, especially in the consumer staples marketplace. ... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - Investors were banking on a lousy jobs number, and the last two days of trading have reflected that point That’s what I’m hearing from the traders I know – shrewd peope I shared trading pits with back in the day – almost to a man (and woman) saying that next to the housing market, the next most... (Read More)

Dec 3rd, 2008 - It almost seems out of place – like a spritz of a lilly inching up through the crusted snow after a long winter – to report some good economic news these days. But there it is, in the form of an investment forecast by the investment bank UBS that says the U.S. stock market will rise, and... (Read More)

Dec 3rd, 2008 - Both the Dow and the Nasdaq are flirting with positive territory today, thanks in part to one biotechnology stalwart, Amgen, which is up three points in trading. Why? Well, the Street is getting excited about life sciences stocks again, as several research reports hit the street suggesting that... (Read More)

Dec 2nd, 2008 - It was the fourth-worst trading day in Wall Street history, with the Dow off 679 points (about 8% of the index's total value) and the Nasdaq falling almost 9%, to 1,398 for the session. There's a lot to point at here, but the main culprit seems to be the fact that a leading economic group has... (Read More)

Dec 1st, 2008 - Call it a tale of two headlines: "Microsoft and Yahoo in talks again on online unit": 30 Nov 2008/Reuters "Microsoft-Yahoo deal "total fiction:" 30 Nov 2008/Reuters So which is it? One of the key players originally mentioned as a possible replacement for Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has told a... (Read More)

Nov 30th, 2008 - An update on the report from the UK’s Financial Times and The Telegraph that Microsoft is all set to buy Yahoo’s search engine division for $20 billion: more media outlets are carrying the story on Sunday night, including Drudge and CNET. But CNBC found an inside source who claims the deal is... (Read More)

Nov 30th, 2008 - The market’s four-day rally, where it has recouped 14% of its losses – the biggest pickup in decades – is about to get a legitimate curveball this week with a new report out from the UK-based Telegraph that Microsoft is in serious discussions to buy Yahoo. The proposed $20 billion deal isn’t for... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2008 - Trying, ever so hard, to find some good news amidst the doom and gloom on Wall Street. At least the market went up for a second straight session, with the DJIA up 400 points on Monday trading; that after rising 500 points last Friday. Investors seemed cautiously optimistic about the Federal... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - Proving that no holiday is sacred, The Register is reporting today on not one but two scams involving fake products to be on the lookout for this shopping season. Graphics card vendor HIS sent out an alert that, despite reports to the contrary, the company has not ventured into the netbooks market.... (Read More)

Dec 2nd, 2008 - An new study by London-based Deloitte and the Cranfield School of Management validates what CIOs have known all along: "You're out of the loop, and when we want your opinion we'll tell you what it is." CIOs are caught in a tough situation right now. Technology is emerging at a lightening pace... (Read More)

Nov 30th, 2008 - Miami has hurricanes, Silicon Valley gets wildfires, and Seattle sits at the foot of a volcano. Where should your data center be? How about the heartland of America -- the Midwest -- where a growing number of server farms are springing up instead of corn or cattle farms. John Rath, a service... (Read More)

Nov 29th, 2008 - As if tech workers didn't have enough to worry about, now there's a study claiming people who work in high-tech industries are 50% more likely to develop heart disease than those working in other sectors. The research, conducted by the Taiwan Society of Lipids and Atherosclerosis, cites stress and... (Read More)

Nov 28th, 2008 - "With great power, comes great responsibility." -- Uncle Ben in "Spiderman" I read a fascinating question over at Ask Metafilter this week that I've been thinking about ever since. An anonymous tech worker writes that though he loves job, he's over-worked and over-wrought. His two-man department... (Read More)

Nov 25th, 2008 - If you've been thinking of ditching your old BlackBerry and getting a new Bold or Storm, but hate the idea of an upgrade or early termination fee, I have some great news for you. The best part of the new devices has been all its new browser has to offer. Now you can have the new browser on your... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2008 - These days, lots of things happen online in a New York minute. Motrin launches a new ad campaign and moms jump on it instantly. An earthquake hits China and Twitter knows about it before CNN. It's no surprise, then, that an entire online business can go from concept to live in the span of one short... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - Whether the ailing economy is real or imagined, you might be looking for ways to shed some pounds off your bloated IT budget. You should seriously consider Linux and Open Source software to put your 2009 financial appetite on a diet. Here are 10 reasons to choose Linux in a bad economy and none of... (Read More)

Dec 2nd, 2008 - I've looked at GoodOS (gOS) before in two other posts: The Netbook Market Booms with Linux Onboard and Three Linux Distros to Watch and Use but now they've taken the lightweight operating system (OS) one step further with Taiwan-based manufacturer GigaByte. The GoodOS team created a very... (Read More)

Nov 28th, 2008 - Fedora releases usually generate more yawns than a Ben Affleck movie for me but this time, they've gone the extra mile. I placed Fedora at number 7 in my 10 Best Linux Distributions post but now that I've seen Fedora 10, I may have to reorder the list and place Fedora at number 5 or 6. Is this... (Read More)

Nov 26th, 2008 - Steve Ballmer called Linux a "Cancer" in the past, ranted about patent infringement, accused Linux programmers of ripping-off intellectual property, and penned a deal between rival Novell to sell Linux. Wait, that last one doesn't fit with the others. Did you ever notice how someone is often... (Read More)

Dec 5th, 2008 - The IBM Internet Security Systems division, better known simply as ISS, has today warned of the 'perfect storm' of security threats which has been created by the global economic slowdown, an unprecedented level of cybercrime activity and both the cost and complexity of legal security... (Read More)

Dec 1st, 2008 - Now that, if you are a hardcore PC gamer, is cool. ASUS has announced the availability of what it claims is the world's first quad core gaming notebook. The G71 series is powered by the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9300 processor, and has had 'overspeed protection' removed to push it through the... (Read More)

Nov 27th, 2008 - Mobile phones have become many things, and I am just waiting for the first to appear which does away with that 'make and receive voice calls' requirement. Mind you, there is some argument that the iTouch does that, considering that it is an iPhone without the phone bit. But I digress. Nokia... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2008 - John Tu is the President and Co-founder of Kingston Technology which just happens to be one of the biggest providers of memory products on the planet, so when he talks about trends and developments in the memory market a lot of people start listening. Especially when he does so against a backdrop... (Read More)

Dec 2nd, 2008 - The fact that Apple is now encouraging people to use antivirus software on its systems is to be welcomed. I use a Mac myself but I'm regularly disturbed by the number of fellow users who refuse utterly to use AV because 'there aren't any viruses, they're all on the PC' is alarming. As Apple gains... (Read More)

Nov 28th, 2008 - There's the start of a cult of the personality thing going on in the UK technology sphere. Traditionally people have done their research on a gadget before buying it by remarkably old-fashioned means; they look in a magazine, they check online, they ask friends and get a consensus. It's a lot like... (Read More)

Nov 26th, 2008 - There is of course nothing wrong with Apple getting a slapped wrist because of its current advertising campaign for the iPhone in the UK. Essentially the ad demonstrated how simple it is to download and install applications to the phone, followed by how easy it was to surf the Internet and so on. ... (Read More)

Nov 28th, 2008 - 'Internet for Everyone' sounds like a laudable goal. Very Mom and apple pie. Who could be against that? The problem is that the name of an organization doesn't necessarily accurately depict what it's trying to do, and what Internet for Everyone is actually trying to do is far from clear -- and... (Read More)

Nov 25th, 2008 - Ever had some computer malware spit a bunch of porn onto your screen? Now imagine it happening in a roomful of schoolchildren. Now imagine it could send you to jail -- for forty years. That's what happened to Julie Amero, a substitute teacher in Norwich, Conn., in 2004. Using a computer in... (Read More)

Nov 24th, 2008 - If you ever had a big brother, you know that the same guy who gave you noogies could also protect you from a bully at school -- but you had to take the bad with the good. 'Big Brother,' in surveillance, is the same way. Government surveillance is getting easier and closer. In Arizona, police... (Read More)