Google Wooing Enterprise Market, Desperately Needs Users

By releasing its new plug-in for Microsoft Outlook, Google has again signaled its interest in the business user market. It's also a signal that the company is stuck and badly needs to embrace an old tech rule: It's tough to make it in the productivity apps business if you only appeal to consumers. For Google, getting apps and services users is critical, because the company is hitting a market saturation point and needs new outlets to display ads.

• Jun 10, 2009

Mobile Advertising Hype Train on Full Steam

The number of wildly different takes on the "success" of mobile advertising is dizzying. But the big lesson appears to be that while somebody is selling something, it's probably not to consumers through their cell phones. Take a look at this array of pronouncements and findings about the state of t...

• Jun 9, 2009

4 Considerations in Enterprise Software Vendor Strategy

Bad economic times and a focus on reducing IT budgets have made this a tough market for enterprise software vendors. According to the new Forrester study, The State Of Enterprise Software: 2009, executives had better not plan on that changing in the near future. However, there is some good news for vendors, because it's not as though companies have stopped spending on software. There are also some other interesting insights, like few companies saying they're interested in SaaS or hosted solutions, and many looking for apps and app modules to use together.

• Jun 9, 2009

Is There Life After Office?

Attempts by several state governments to dump Microsoft Office have died quiet deaths because of internecine squabbles within the open source community, a testament to vendor greed and a depressing reminder that the public interest often takes a back seat to moneyed interests. In 2005, the Common...

• Jun 11, 2009

Apple Moves iPhone Into Defensive Pricing

Yesterday's announced price drop for the current 8GB iPhone 3G could be seen as Apple addressing the issue of being perceived as too pricy. Granted, that might be true for some of the Apple products. But the new iPhone price suggests something far different. Apple is undertaking the first true price war in its history, shifting into defensive pricing out of concern for market share and perceived upcoming strong competition from Palm in the handset market.

• Jun 9, 2009

Why Blogging Is On The Decline

Blogging is in some ways the poster child for Web 2.0, which when you boil it down is an expression that signifies the Web's evolution from a static publishing platform to a communications and collaboration medium. But blogging is now in serious decline, to be replaced by tools from the likes of Fac...

• Jun 8, 2009

Tech Law: DoJ investigates high tech hiring, Apple Sued over E-Commerce, More

Yahoo sues the NFL over the right to use statistics, photos, and other information in online fantasy football; the DoJ is investigating hiring practices at tech firms; a court awarded TiVO $103 million in its ongoing fight against Dish Network; Apple, eBay, and others are sued over e-commerce technology; the antitrust suit against VeriSign is back on; and Psion gives up its netbook trademark.

• Jun 8, 2009

EMC Flipping SharePoint On Its End

EMC realizes that it can't possibly compete head-on with Microsoft's SharePoint in the market for workplace collaboration tools -- and surveys show that Microsoft has an unassailable market share in this space -- so, EMC is trying to pull a jujitsu move on Microsoft, using the the document sharing p...

• Jun 8, 2009

Hardware Wants To Be Free

Over at Advertising Age, Simon Dumenco has an interesting post about how a free netbook as a come-on to a subscription-based content service (whether video or e-book) might be the savior of media. That struck me because I think he's on the right track but perhaps hasn't gone far enough. For consumers, at least, perhaps we're seeing the beginning of the end of directly paying for hardware, period.

• Jun 8, 2009

In Defense of Michael Arrington (Really. Well, Partially.)

The New York Times had an article Saturday about tech blogs running rumors. As I understood the article, the overall point was that such sites as TechCrunch and Gizmodo will print rumors because it is their way of gaining attention and competing with mainstream media organizations that have far deeper resources. The blogs reply that this is a process that helps bring the readers into the journalism. I say, what's wrong with printing the occasional rumor?

• Jun 8, 2009

User Controlled Ad Displays Via iPhone

Shortly after someone invented the cell phone, some other entrepreneurs developed the term mobile commerce. You can't blame them, as there would seem to be something compelling about tying doing business to a device that so many keep with them more religiously than their wallets. There have even been expanding efforts to let people buy merchandise in stores using their own handsets. And, of course, there's online advertising, after which Google and others lust. Now there's a new twist: using an smartphones iPhone to control an interactive merchandising display.

• Jun 5, 2009

Intel Wind River Buy Loosens Ties to Microsoft, Apple

Intel has been almost synonymous with PCs for decades. However, the acquisition of embedded systems vendor Wind River marks an historic shift for Intel, just as thoroughly as when the company originally exited the memory chip business. By acquiring top embedded systems software vendor Wind River, it not only turns its attention to the world beyond the personal computer, but goes into competition with major business partners Microsoft and Apple.

• Jun 5, 2009

Big Chip Decline in 2009, Rebound in 2010, Full Recovery Far Off

According to recent estimates from World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS), the global semiconductor market in 2009 will see an almost 22 percent drop from the previous year. And even though growth is supposed to return in 2010 and increase in 2011, a slightly deeper look at the numbers suggests that full recovery is years off.

• Jun 5, 2009

EFF Tool Makes Facebook TOS-Type Controversies More Likely

Back in February, Facebook faced a firestorm of user anger over its changed terms of use, when The Consumerist noted a change in the terms of service that gave the company virtually unlimited rights over user content. Now the chances of someone noticing similar changes at other sites is greater because the Electronic Frontier Foundation has started a new service called TOSBack, which tracks 44 website policies over 20 organizations (including itself) and notes the differences.

• Jun 5, 2009

Google's Microsoft Fight Starts With Smartphones

I recently described how Google's Wave, a collaboration tool based on the new HTML 5 standard, demonstrated the potential for Web applications to unglue Microsoft's hold on customers. My post quoted Gary Edwards, the former president of the Open Document Foundation, a first-hand witness to the faile...

• Jun 5, 2009

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