Technology Industry Archive

Microsoft’s Windows 7 will introduce far fewer features (beefed up security and improved mobility behind the firewall just about sums it up) than one might expect from a new operating system. The new OS also ditches the concept of “Ultimate Extras,” a poorly-executed effort to up-sell users to the highest-cost version of Vista by promising to update their systems with new...

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Many have apparently given up on the near-term future of PC sales. Not so Jon Peddie, head of Jon Peddie Research. Involved in graphics, multimedia, and technology entertainment markets for decades, they’re well plugged in. What the firm has been hearing of late suggests that even vendors are hopeful for the higher ends of the PC markets, and so it issued a report on the subject. We...

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Competition is far from over in the chip sector, as illustrated by the recent flurry of moves by semiconductor manufacturers. Intel’s decision to outsource some chip manufacturing to Chinese foundry TSMC may seem curious given the current economic downturn, but TSMC fabs are set up to produce chips for mobile Internet devices (MIDs), a market for which Intel has serious aspirations with...

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A combination of new federal dollars flowing into the economy and the financial straits in which states find themselves is driving the market for governance, risk and compliance (GRC) software. The heady days (for GRC vendors) of Sarbanes-Oxley are pretty much over, because most public companies have now settled their compliance processes, but even non-public businesses are now gobbling up...

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According to a regulatory filing, Google’s top executives received million dollar bonuses for helping the company see at least some earnings growth in the financial black hole known as 2008. But let’s not forget that holiday bonuses went out the window at the company not three months ago. From one point of view, at least, the savings more than paid for the executive perk. The...

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Google’s motto may be “Don’t do evil,” but a recent attempt to defund a non-profit critic, suggests that “See no evil” and “Hear no evil” might be appropriate as well. Add other actions that have raised the eyebrows of critics, and experts think that the company is tarnishing its brand. The recent incident involved a privacy group called Consumer...

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On the heels of Informatica’s acquisition of Applimation, I asked Adam Wilson, Informatica’s vice president of product management and marketing, what he’s learned about the art of integrating technology from newly acquired companies. Informatica describes itself as a vendor of “enterprise data integration software,” which in essence means middleware that allows...

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Policy papers rarely break new ground, but they often help policy-makers justify their actions. The technology trade group IEEE just published one of those, ‘Ten Ideas for Policymakers to Drive Digital Progress,” that reads very much like a wish list the Obama Administration might have drawn up. The authors make the non-controversial point that new technology can often have...

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It was only last month that I had the Q&A with Jim Handy about the memory industry shake-up. The shocks are still continuing, as Spansion filed for bankruptcy. This follows the resignation of the CEO in the wake of the company trying to restructure its balance sheet, a 35 percent layoff, and Spansion Japan having already filed for bankruptcy. So what happens now? It was only last fall that...

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Democratic lawmakers say there’s gold in them thar hills. Or in them thar mountains of electronic waste from PCs, cell phones and other pieces of obsolete IT hardware. Paradoxically, it might be the hardware manufacturers themselves–Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba, Apple and Nokia, to name a few–who might be found using sifting pans in the very near future. The House Committee on...

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