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Apple, HP Moves Suggest Tablet War Heating Up

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:04:14 -0500

Apple made its iPad available for pre-order March 12, effectively kicking off the long-brewing battle between various manufacturers over the newborn segment for mass-consumer tablet PCs. HP has already been firing broadsides at the iPad for its lack of Adobe Flash support, and competitors in the space have all indicated a willingness to speed for the bottom in terms of pricing. Meanwhile, e-readers have been adding PC-like features such as mobile applications, adding another competitive wrinkle to the situation.
- Apple made the iPad available for pre-order March 12, three weeks before the tablet PC is due to be released. With that announcement, the tablet PC mass-consumer segment kicks into higher gear, as the much-hyped devices readying to hit the market after months of anticipation. Apple faces competi...

Google Product Search Prepares For Mobile Shopping Boom

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:08:23 -0500

Google Product Search for mobile with local inventory lets people use their mobile phones to search and find products sold by Best Buy, Williams-Sonoma, West Elm, Sears Pottery Barn or other participating retailers. Users of Google Android, Palm WebOS or Apple iPhone services who have enabled the My Location feature can look for the blue dots in the search results to see if products are available in a local store. This service is a smart way to connect users to local businesses, which should bring more businesses into the Google Local Business Center and ultimately more advertising for the search engine.
- Google March 11 formally rolled out a feature for its Google Product Search for mobile application that lets shoppers see whether stores like Best Buy and Sears have products in stock at nearby locations. Google Product Search for mobile with local inventory lets people use their m...

Video Game Sales Slip in February, Nintendo Leads

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:08:03 -0500

The video game industry continues to struggle as hardware sales, software sales and overall sales fall again, tumbling 15 percent in comparison to February 2009.
- Sales in the beleaguered video game industry continued their decline, with February sales down 15 percent compared with the same period last year, the NPD Group reported. Overall sales fell to $1.26 billion from $1.48 billion in February 2009, while hardware sales and software sales saw declines...

Google Apps Marketplace Challenges Salesforce.com, Analysts Say

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 07:53:42 -0500

Is Salesforce.com angry that Google launched its Google App Marketplace? The enterprise application and cloud computing provider isn't saying so if it is and both Google and Salesforce.com claim they're getting along great. Still, while Google and Salesforce.com integrate on Google Apps, Salesforce.com did not join the Marketplace. After all, it has its own AppExchange store to tend to. Despite cordial statements from both companies, analysts see the Google Apps Marketplace as a definite challenge to AppExchange.
- News Analysis: Neither Google nor Salesforce.com will acknowledge any friction, but some industry watchers wonder whether Salesforce.com might be secretly chafing at the launch of Google's Apps Marketplace March 9. TheGoogle Apps Marketplace lets third party software developers sell applications...

Tracking the Rise of Dot-Com Dominance, Dot-Bomb Implosions

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:07:17 -0500

News Analysis: Like stock symbols on the world's financial markets, .com domain names come and go. They rise to prominence on the fortunes and aspirations of companies great and small. Some of them become the Web identities of rich and powerful companies that live on as household names such as IBM, Apple, HP, Amazon.com and Google. But many once instantly recognizable names have since faded or disappeared from the Web altogether through buyouts and business failures. Here is a look at the fate of some of the oldest and most respected names to appear on the Internet since the first .com name was registered in March 1985.
- In the 25-year history of the .com domain name, it's often been a case of quot;the last shall be first and the first shall be last quot; for many prominent Web URLs. After the .com domain was created in early 1985, many so-called dot-com companies rose to prominence with great ideas, blockb...

Disk Drive Revenues on Rebound, Researcher Says

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:19:04 -0500

The upswing for drives naturally follows that of personal computer shipments, which are starting to increase as the world economy improves and users choose to take advantage of newer, faster models at roughly the same prices as older machines.
- Following a decline in 2009, global revenue from shipments of both hard disk and optical drives is expected to rebound sharply in 2010, industry researcher iSuppli reported March 12. The upswing for drives naturally follows that of personal computer shipments, which are starting to increase as th...

IE Attacks Circulate as Microsoft Updates Advisory

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:01:02 -0500

In the face of ongoing attacks, Microsoft updates its security advisory for an Internet Explorer vulnerability a day after a security researcher published exploit code for the vulnerability on the Internet.
- Ongoing attacks targeting a new zero-day bug in Internet Explorer and the presence of exploit code on the Web prompted Microsoft March 12 to update its advisory. According to Microsoft, the IE vulnerability in question is due to an invalid pointer reference being used within IE. It is only k...

Zeus Botnet Activity Down but Far from Out

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:12:04 -0500

The research community celebrated briefly when more than 25 percent of the command-and-control servers tied to the Zeus Trojan went dark March 9. But will this takedown have a lasting effect?
- The Zeus Trojan was knocked off of malware's Mount Olympus this week when the upstream provider for six of the most notorious Zeus-hosting ISPs was taken down. The shutdown of Kazakhstani provider Troyak-AS March 9 is credited with cutting the number of active Zeus command-and-control serve...

10 Ingenious Tools from Google Apps Marketplace

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:58:32 -0500

When Google recently launched the Apps Marketplace, some wondered just how useful it would be for businesses. Google has historically provided services that appeal to both consumers and the enterprise, but for the most part, its focus has been on more consumer-oriented products, rather than enterprise solutions. But with the Apps Marketplace, all that has changed. Google's online apps repository contains several programs that would likely appeal to many corporate customers and small businesses. Some are certainly better than others. And there are some rather novel apps in the Marketplace that go beyond simple functionality. Yes, you will find basic business programs, but you'll also find some highly useful and unique programs provide new ways to solve problems at far less cost than many commercial software packages. This slide show takes a look at some of the more exceptional apps in the Marketplace. They cant be pigeonholed into any one neat category, so you will find a variety of solutions in this roundup.
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Cisco Moving into Containerized Data Center Business

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:35:06 -0500

The Internet networking giant is moving its UCS into the portable container data center market, similar to what IBM, the former Sun Microsystems [now Oracle], Hewlett-Packard, Dell-Microsoft and SGI [formerly Rackable] have been doing for the last few years.
- One year ago, Internet pipefitter Cisco Systems entered the data center systems business with the introduction of the Unified Computing System, which features the company's first-ever application server and includes all necessary data routing. The UCS's network-centric data center infrastructure ...

Google Apps Marketplace Gets Down to Serious Business

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:13:11 -0500

When Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace March 9, it replaced the Google Solutions Marketplace as the main method of selling third-party apps with a more comprehensive offering for products that integrate with the Google Apps collaboration suite. Google Apps Marketplace, if it gains traction beyond its current 50 partner companies, appears destined to challenge Salesforce.com, which has been the dominant cloud computing provider for enterprise applications, and Microsoft, whose own online business apps remain a viable option. To familiarize you with the new and improved Marketplace, here is a brief tour.
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How to Use Enterprise Information Management to Increase Data Utility

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:10:43 -0500

Enterprise information management can help you gain a competitive advantage by helping you to find new marketing opportunities within your customer database, monitor trends in workplace productivity, ensure accurate data on financial reports, and even prevent money loss via fraud and suspicious transactions. Here, Knowledge Center contributor Jake Freivald explains the most important points to consider when implementing an enterprise information management system.
- quot;Water, water, everywhere�Nor any drop to drink. quot; So said Coleridge's ancient mariner about dying of thirst on a languishing ship, surrounded by the salt sea. I feel that way sometimes about data. In lean economic times, we want to capitalize on every resource we can find but the data that...

eWEEK's Products to Watch March 2010

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:01:25 -0500

Each month, eWEEK editors name new or newly updated enterprise-class products that we think should be on IT professionals' radars-products and services that promise to create efficiencies as well as competitive advantage. This month, eWEEK recommends checking out Netezza's Skimmer, SysAid's CSS 2.0, SYSPRO's SYSPRO 6.1, PGP's Key Management Server 3.0, Nuance's PDF Reader, Metastorm's Metastorm ProVision, Apptio's Budgeting and Forecasting module, ViewSonic's PJD6531w DLP projector, FalconStor's NSS SAN Accelerator, ADTRAN's NetVanta, Sunbelt's VIPRE Enterprise Premium, TIBCO's Spotfire 3.1
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Cisco IME Server to Expand Reach of UC Beyond Firewalls

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:58:09 -0500

Cisco Systems is preparing to launch its IME server, designed to extend the same sort of video collaboration that is found within a company to partners and customers. A new protocol proposed by Cisco, dubbed ViPR, will help Cisco's IME server work with third-party systems.
- Cisco Systems is looking to bring the advantages of unified communications, which primarily are seen within individual companies, to dealings between businesses. Cisco is rolling out a new appliance and a protocol designed to make it easier for companies to communicate with their business partners,...

Plastic Logic Delays Its Que E-Reader Until Summer

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 15:57:57 -0500

Plastic Logic, whose Que e-reader will be aimed primarily at business travelers and others looking for an ultra-portable way to carry documents, announced through an e-mail to customers that shipments of the Que will be delayed until summer. Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta reportedly cited the need to fine-tune the device and improve the overall experience as the reasons behind the delay. The Que is particularly notable for its price point, higher than that of other e-readers, which the company has defended as an appropriate cost for its desired businessperson demographic.
- Plastic Logic CEO Richard Archuleta reportedly sent an e-mail to customers who had preordered the Que, the companys e-reader, saying that shipments had been delayed until summer. In the March 11 missive, according to online reports, Archuleta blamed the delay on a need to fine-tune the device ...