Technology Industry Archive

The financiers of technology projects are seeing defaults rise and that ups the ante for customers looking for credit and the vendors extending loans. The Wall Street Journal connects the dots. In September, 0.86 percent of equipment loans–that includes office gear–were written off. That’s up from 0.48 percent. That’s about the same rate as commercial real estate loans. Tech financing...

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Talk about a doom-and-gloom outlook for the tech economy. Tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis  - founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, Weblogs, and Mahalo.com - has fired off a pretty glass-half-empty message to startups, via his e-mail subscription list. It’s been about a week since Calacanis announced layoffs at Mahalo, his startup venture. Now, he’s warning that, in this economy, startups...

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Microsoft launches cloud version of Windows — Although the product name is Azure, you can bet that Microsoft is hoping to see some bump in the black ink from this new cloud-oriented version of Windows. It’s supposed to help developers create applications for deployment “in our cloud,” according to vice president Amitabh Srivastava. Unfortunately, developers who want a...

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In Apple’s earnings announcement the other day, it would be easy to overlook that it was starting to report results in both GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and non-GAAP forms. Accounting standards are a soporific to many, but when a company moves from one to the other, it’s time to pay attention — particularly when, like Apple, the company won’t be using...

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Amazon certainly orchestrated a coup in getting Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of the Kindle. But while that will continue the product’s momentum, it’s unlikely to be enough to revolutionize the book business. That’s because, as often happens, tech companies get too focused on what their technologies can do and forget to look closely enough at what consumers need to support...

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One way to get a fix on how the electronics market will do is by looking at projections for components and retail. If companies aren’t buying parts, then pretty much by definition there aren’t going to be enough products available to keep sales flat, even if consumers and businesses wanted to purchase. By that measure, things are looking grim for next year. Start with one of the...

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Handset companies ready for freefall — Sales for mobile phones next year could fall between four and 27 percent compared to this year, warn analysts. If that happened, it would end an almost 15 year growth streak broken only by a four percent drop in 2001. Existing users are taking longer to get new phones and first-time users can’t make up the difference. Most vulnerable are...

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Wireless security present but weak — A recent study by EMC division RSA suggests that in some major cities, at least New York and Paris, over 90 percent of wireless networks identified as belonging to businesses are running encrypted, with London behind at about 76 percent. However, some half of the networks in London and New York were still on WEP, an inadequate form of protection, and...

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Google’s founders have jet fighter — H211, a company owned by top Google officials, including founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, that owns and operates the planes used by the two as well as Google CEO Eric Schmidt has added a light attack jet from Dornier of Germany and Dassault-Breguet of France. According to Google, which has no direct relationship with H211, the jet is being...

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Every now and then the latest scheme for improving advertising and getting a better response comes along. There have been focus groups, brand studies, media retention studies, psychological profiling, minute examinations of physical responses like eye movement — anything you could think of. Now Google has taken up the query, partnering with MediaVest and NeuroFocus to use biometric...

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