Technology Industry Archive

For about two years, Seattle-based Jott Networks Inc. has provided a service called Jott. People call a toll-free number, record a message, and see the words translated into text and emailed, either to themselves or someone on their contact list. (I tried it with a stanza of Gilbert and Sullivan patter song, which the system got mostly right.) There is also some ability to let the service...

More...

Maybe I’m just old and cranky, but Intel’s plans for wireless recharging seem to beg for lawsuits and bad press. Mind you, I’m not saying that this is inherently dangerous, and there is technical elegance in replacing cords with magnetic induction. But I wonder whether people in charge of research take the two minutes necessary to consider the inevitable. When it comes to...

More...

For all of the availability of such online productivity suites as Google Apps and HyperOffice, applications that live on a computer’s hard drive have remained king of the hill. But that’s about to change, I think. Intel’s acknowledgement of the netbook and nettop markets — low cost computers designed primarily for Internet access — with a new chipset for sub-$200...

More...

There’s an irony in this week’s news for Apple. Abundant consumer good will is evident. Yet, there are signs that the company dangerously close to burning bridges with newer customers who never grew up in the Apple brand cult and might have little patience when things go wrong. The positive was a customer satisfaction rating. The American Customer Satisfaction Index, which runs out...

More...

With Monday’s NYT article on Verizon’s $23 billion FiOS plan for running fiber-optic cable to 19 million homes, the debate begins again as to whether the company was visionary or stupid. Frankly, I think you need to toss the usual stock market analysis aside and look at competitive fundamentals. Over the next five to 10 years, FiOS may prove to be a giant club in Verizon’s...

More...

Muniauction v. Thomson Corp. and i-Deal is a case, decided last month by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit(CAFC), that could open the door for companies to use a patented method, including but not limited to business methods, without technically infringing the patent. Muniauction sued Thomson and i-Deal for infringing its online municipal bond auction patent. A U.S. District Court...

More...

GigaOM had a good post over the weekend about the top five ways business executives fail to work effectively with product and engineering execs, and that respect, ethics, determination, discipline and humility can solve the problem. I’d agree with that – you don’t necessarily need a technical person at the top (though an affinity for technology is a smart thing to seek in a high...

More...

It’s official: the media declares that cloud computing is changing the world. For anyone who’s made more than one circuit around the high tech block, this sounds like many other bits of jargon — SaaS, MSP, ASP, web services, thin client, client server, even mainframe timesharing — and for good reason. The concept of running, from a single location, major computing...

More...

It sounds as though the reports that handsets powered by Google’s Android software would be delayed until 2009 are wrong. Well, that is if the New York Times story is right and HTC handsets for T-Mobile are out before Christmas. Whether it will be a true rival for the iPhone or Blackberry is impossible to tell yet, but this isn’t about one handset versus another. What is happening...

More...

A court ruling on the Jacobsen v. Katzer case this Wednesday had many declaring it a “win” for open source software. I spoke to a few lawyers about the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) decision for a better understanding of what happened and how it affects software vendors of all stripes, whether in the free or fee camps. Participating were Neil MacBride, vice...

More...