Technology Industry Archive

Killings at tech firm over firing — Someone fired (not laid off) by SiPort allegedly went into the offices with a gun and killed three people. Killed were CEO Sid Agrawal, Vice President of Operations Brian Pugh, and HR Manager Marilyn Lewis. Our sympathies go to their families and friends. [Source: VentureBeat, GigaOM] Customer credit getting slashed — Not only are people more...

More...

Google gets into voice searching — Users of iPhones can make use of a voice recognition front end to Google’s search engine. It takes literally any question with answers coming up in seconds in the presence of a fast network connection. [Source: New York Times] Carriers lose control — Experts are predicting that carriers are going to lose control over what users do on the...

More...

Microsoft selling software over the web — Microsoft’snew web store sells all of the company’s software, from Office to Xbox 360 games. You can bet that its distribution and retail chain are finding this even worse than the regular diet of economic bad news as of late. [Source: TechCrunch] Game companies in the black with growing green — While other sectors of high tech...

More...

It’s official: Sun Microsystems is laying off 15 to 18 percent of its workforce. Such announcements from tech companies offer as little surprise as a single-day multi-hundred-point movement in the Dow. The tactic has become a management truism, with Wall Street often rewarding the “courageous” decision with an uptick in share price. The rationale is that companies will save...

More...

ADC claims key 4G patents — ADC Telecommunications has patents that, although not initially designed for wireless, are fundamental to LTE and WiMAX. Because it is not part of a standards body, it needn’t follow any guidelines on licensing (and royalties), and because it no longer makes equipment, other companies have no leverage in return. [Source: Fierce Broadband Wireless] HTC...

More...

Microsoft offer zero percent financing — Showing that having a whole lot of cash can be useful when the banks who lend to your customers don’t, Microsoftis offering zero percent 36-month financing on its Dynamics ERP and CRM offerings on purchases between $20,000 and $1 million. That’s for licensing — partner services and customization are available at standard financing...

More...

It’s been an interesting time for accusations of price fixing. Late in August, a class action was filed in California claiming that AMD and Nvidia were fixing prices of GPU processors and graphics cards — just before Nvidia settled a lawsuit on the same topic. And just yesterday, LG Display Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp., and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd. agreed to pay a total of $585 million...

More...

Business-critical applications continue their push into the mobile world and, increasingly, that world includes the iPhone - giving the popular device more respect as a business tool, instead of just a toy, and giving IT administrators one less reason to insist on the Blackberry as a preferred handset. Citrix Systems, which allows users to remotely log into their corporate networks,  is...

More...

Microsoft is reportedly close to landing Verizon Wireless in a search deal at the expense of Google. Why? Money. The Wall Street Journal reports Verizon Wireless is now favoring Microsoft over Google. The money paragraph (literally): Under the terms now being considered, Microsoft would share revenue with Verizon from ads shown in response to cellphone Web searches, with guaranteed payments to...

More...

AT&T wants to be in pictures — AT&T has decided to get into the online video business by creating an aggregation site called VideoCrawler. Using indexing and search technology from Divvio, it will pull in content from such sources as YouTube, Hulu, Google Video, and MySpace Video. It will make money off advertising, but also makes you wonder whether, by joining the ranks of...

More...