Technology Industry Archive

Earlier this month, I had a post on how Microsoft’s Bing had an 80 percent uptick in percentage of people clicking on ads. Now there’s some additional evidence that something is apparently going on in terms of search ad effectiveness, but what exactly that might be is up for question. What does become clear is that companies might have to consider an additional factor in deciding...

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Last week, I suggested that the Associated Press was run by idiots, not because I have anything in particular against them, but because management seems intent on doing things that will ultimately doom the organization. Its CEO has said that AP thinks it has the power to stop what, to me, at least, is the clear legal right to quote a headline and provide a link to an AP story. The problem as AP...

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No, Verizon Wireless isn’t about to start selling phones or chips, but it is going to start selling mobile apps, and that move will throw it into a whole new competitive set and further scramble a market that has been recently roiled by Google and is growing more competitive by the day. Verizon, which has more subscribers than any other carrier in the U.S., plans to preview its app store...

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It was another bad quarter wrapping up a bad year for Microsoft, with quarterly revenue, operating income, and net income respectively down 17 percent, 30 percent, and 29 percent. The company’s FY 2009 annual revenue was down 3 percent from the previous year — the first time I can remember the company having a year-over-year income drop. Annual operating income and net income were...

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Sometimes you see a business move so stupid, so clearly self-damaging that you have to wonder whether someone inside the corporation is trying to torpedo it. And that’s exactly what is happening at the Associated Press, as it gears up to wage war on every single web site and person that dares use any of its content. The only problems with what and how it is doing so are that it will...

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I came across this via InformationWeek: Zug.com decided to pull a prank on Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and teach a lesson about wireless security at the same time. The lesson was that there is virtually no security for wireless handsets, largely because of the carriers themselves. Phone records are apparently so easily available that even Seidenberg’s mobile number and somewhat more...

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Amazon released its Q2 results, and the numbers are very impressive. On a year-over-year basis, net sales increased by 14 percent — not too shabby, given the general economic climate, and even more impressive when you realize that taking exchange rate shifts into account, it would have represented 20 percent growth. A number of headlines I’ve seen focus on the 27 percent, or $58...

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Shortly after my piece earlier today suggesting that SpinVox needed a spin doctor, it seems that the company decided to take the title seriously. Someone posted a comment pointing to a SpinVox blog post as proof that the BBC article was flawed. And the vendor’s blog is going to be the accurate and fair version? It seems likely that the poster was either a PR person employed by the company...

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Often, one of the selling points of tech companies, especially Web-based businesses, is the cool factor of their technology. Not only can this help bring in the early adopters, but it gives investors the sense that scaling a business and leveraging money put in should be possible. But woe unto those who put an automated face on a very labor-intensive operation. And that’s where UK-based...

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Incredibly, SAP would still rather talk trash about software-as-a-service (SaaS) than bring its own innovative products to market. During an interview on SAP TV (approximately 57 seconds into the video), SAP’s CTO, Vishal Sikka, tried to portray SaaS as the “cheap” and unreliable bastard child of surviving dot-com era companies. Then, about two minutes into the sit-down, Sikka...

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