Technology Industry Archive

Google capital expenses dip — Who knew the company could dance? Google took its capital expenses for a dip that has had some analysts in a dither, shocked that the company could have restrained its spending. Infrastructure may be an advantage, but so is smart management, and perhaps the company is learning that spending alone is not a measure of dedication to operations. Company CFO...

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You may have heard of TopCoder, which has been providing contract programming through a competition model since 2001. What you might not realize is that some high profile companies have used their services – repeatedly. I had a conversation with Mike Morris, executive vice-president of software development at TopCoder, and with Nic Perez, technical director at AOL, who has used the vendor for...

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Good fortune hangs up on Nokia — In its latest earnings release, Nokia said that sales were down by five percent and profit by 30 percent. Although management says that gross margins improved and that its outlook remained the same, there was a bigger problem: market share drop. The company’s share dropped to 38 percent from 40 percent in the second quarter and 39 percent the year...

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Long and short of venture capital and Google-ization of start-ups — When the world is collapsing, it’s good to be able to laugh, otherwise you’re just miserable. And MattMaroon.com had a pretty funny parody set of presentation slides from a VC called Whiner Jerkins for all its web 2.0 investments. But the more serious post has a pretty good analysis of the flaws in...

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According to a new study, many areas previously seen as behind the times in security — South America and Asia, for example — have made great strides overall. Europe seems to be in a definite security slump, which is interesting given the strength of that area’s privacy laws. And, surprise, there’s a real gap in alignment between IT and business. PricewaterhouseCoopers...

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Intel joins ranks of the confident – Intel was supposed to be one of those companies whose stock would be headed into the toilet. Oops, maybe not. Its latest quarterly earnings report announced that net income was up 12 percent from the same time last year. Furthermore, it expects that the current quarter’s results will be in line with the range of analyst estimates. There are some...

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After much anticipation, Apple announced its new MacBook lines. The pricing has managed to create diametrically opposed views: Apple cut prices and Apple held prices. The reason is that Apple pretty much achieved both goals at the same time, using some new technology to reduce cost and old-fashioned pricing strategy. On one hand, Apple technically did cut its prices on the entry-level model...

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Good news, bad news on Web 2.0 — According to a recent Forrester report, businesses that want to use such social media tools as blogs, wikis, social networking, and RSS have something pleasant to anticipate: falling costs. Prices over the next five years are supposed to drop even as the average number of licenses will increase. The abilities are becoming software commodities and, as such,...

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WifeSwap is a popular ABC program in which the mothers of two families with different parenting styles trade domiciles for a week. And now the show wants to find a “superstar family of inventors” to add into the mix. “We’ve never featured families of inventors on the show,” says casting director Heather Teta. “Maybe Dad will be the inventor or Mom will be the...

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One thin-client per child — The One Laptop Per Child folk have been pushing for cheap machines, but the thin-client forces may have an economic upper-hand. The Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is purchasing $70 thin-client machines from NComputing for the 1.8 million children in 5,000 elementary schools it has. The total bill of $80 million includes hardware and software that will...

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