Technology Industry Archive

IBM’s planned acquisition of data analysis software specialist SPSS for $1.2 billion in cash adds an important element to its array of applications intended to help companies run more efficiently, while depriving rival applications vendor SAP of a key partner in a market segment that IBM claims is growing by 8 percent per year. SPSS technology is sort of the last mile of a kind of...

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Qualcomm has identified at least one significant difference between its proposed smartbook and the netbooks offered or announced by the likes of HP, Acer, Gateway and others. Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs told Kara Swisher during the Fortune Brainstorm conference that the company’s smartbooks will resemble smartphones more than PCs, especially in that “they will be on the network at all...

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The Wall Street Journal found something interesting in the Amazon acquisition of Zappos — a consideration that all tech companies should keep in mind when doing acquisitions. When the topic of money comes up, people often lie, and even more often stretch the truth. And that explanation is good to remember when considering the numeric dance that Zappos execs are currently undertaking. In...

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A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits. Dell settles employment gender discrimination suit — Dell has agreed to settle a gender-discrimination class action suit by former employees for $9.1 million, though apparently only $5.6 million will go for payments to class members and to cover litigation costs. The rest goes to raise...

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The tech industry has been good at making money when there was an air of mystery about technology and availability was almost considered a privilege. But now we’re seeing evidence that almost everything is dropping away in price to nothing. Is it time to start finding “day jobs?” Look at some of the evidence: As I’ve mentioned before, the price of hardware is quickly...

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There’s an old saying that IBM never enters a market if it doesn’t see a billion dollar opportunity. The company’s CTO for telecommunications research, Paul Bloom, corrected me during a phone call. It’s a billion dollars at the low end. And that’s why IBM announced last month that it was putting $100 million over the next five years into “direct research in...

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Richard Nixon taught us that the cover-up is worse than the crime. Tylenol taught us that everything is forgiven if you’re willing to fess up. So I have two questions for Network Solutions management: Why did you wait almost two full weeks before announcing that you suffered a data breach that affected your merchant customers? Did you do something different on June 9 to prevent further...

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Apple is set to launch a tablet-like device in October, in time for the 2009 holiday season. If it’s anything like what’s expected, its native features plus those that could be annexed from Google would be enough to swamp Microsoft on a number of fronts. The most comprehensive report, from the Financial Times, casts it as purely an entertainment device for showing movies, playing...

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The USPTO may be backing off the controversial rules changes that the agency proposed in 2007. A joint motion filed on Friday (coming via the email list of Foley & Lardner partner Hal Wegner) requested a stay of the en banc proceedings in the appeal of the Tafas v. Doll suit. The reason comes down to one big factor: a new PTO director: The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing...

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Google has engaged Microsoft in a long-term death-match on a series of fronts, as Dan Frommer and Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider noted this morning, in a piece on ten areas that Google and Microsoft are fighting it out. But I disagree with four areas where their handicapping doesn’t do Google’s strength enough justice. Operating systems Dan and Nick write: Edge:...

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