E-Commerce Times: E-Business Means Business

Thursday - May 17, 2012

Twitter has made an important overture to privacy advocates: It is giving users the ability to opt out of being tracked on the service by enabling the Do Not Track feature in the Firefox browser. Ed Felten, chief technology officer for the Federal Trade Commission, broke the news at an industry event Thursday morning in New York. The company later confirmed it in a message on Twitter. It is a significant move for Twitter, because tracking users with persistent cookies is controversial, said ESET Security Evangelist Stephen Cobb. [More...]

Pinterest: $1.5B Worth of Virtual Push Pins

Thursday - May 17, 2012

The image-based social networking site Pinterest has raised $100 million in a financing round, and this brings the value of the company to around $1.5 billion, an unnamed source told All Things D. Rakuten, one of Japan's biggest online retail operators, led the round of financing. It was joined by a group of investors including venture-capital firms FirstMark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. [More...]

Verizon Nixes Unlimited Data Grandfather Clause

Thursday - May 17, 2012

Verizon will reveal a new shared data policy this summer and end its unlimited data option, according to CFO Fran Shammo. Currently, the company allows customers who had a $30-per-month unlimited data plan before Verizon's switch to tiered plans last July to keep their unlimited plans when they upgrade their phones to LTE devices. That option will soon be eliminated. [More...]

OPINION
What's Next for RIM?

Thursday - May 17, 2012

RIM execs have invited me to dinner for an off-the-record discussion. I have asked a truckload of questions about them over the last few years here in this column and in media stories. Let me ask you: What are the big questions I should ask them now? What do you want to know about RIM? When it comes to RIM, the big question I want to start with is, how will it turn the ship around? [More...]

OPINION
People, Processes and Standout Service Experiences

Thursday - May 17, 2012

Customer service is a crucial part of the customer experience. That seems immediately obvious. And customer experience is the big buzzword right now, so companies are going bonkers revamping their customer service operations. Right? Would that it were so. Almost paradoxically, many businesses are still stuck in the mode of tweaking with utterly defective customer service processes. [More...]

OPINION
Why iPad Dominance Is a Lock for the Rest of 2012

Thursday - May 17, 2012

There's always a danger of reading analysis by others that matches your own personal experience and then simply using it to build up the foundation of what you know and believe. But hey, danger can spike adrenaline, and I like adrenaline, so check this out: Information technology research firm Gartner released a report about its worldwide tablet sales projections for 2012. [More...]

GM Steers Away From Facebook

Wednesday - May 16, 2012

General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook because the ad campaigns are not paying off in any measurable way. At $10 million, the company's ad spend on Facebook is relatively small. The reaction to GM's decision, however, has been disproportionately big. The timing of the news, of course, has much to do with the furor. Facebook is two days away from a blockbuster initial public offering. [More...]

Google Digs Up Old Direct-Sales Nexus Strategy

Wednesday - May 16, 2012

Two years after its initial attempt to sell Nexus smartphones directly to consumers flopped, Google is apparently trying to revive the strategy. This time, though, it's added a few new touches. It's going to work with up to five device manufacturers at a time to create a portfolio of Nexus-line devices that include smartphones and tablets. [More...]

Judge Takes Oracle Attorney to Task Over Importance of 9 Lines of Code

Wednesday - May 16, 2012

After months of legal wrangling between technology titans Oracle and Google, phase two of the case has headed to the jury, where 11 good people will decide whether Google actually infringed on Java-related patents, and more importantly whether this was a threat to Oracle's business. The two patents in question were actually acquired by Oracle when it bought Java maker Sun Microsystems more than a year after Google launched its first Android handset. [More...]

Federal Cloud Adoption, Part 2: Raining Contracts

Wednesday - May 16, 2012

The U.S. government's pursuit of cloud-based technology has been characterized by a blizzard of policies, directives, technical studies, proposed contract vehicles and conferences. The federal "cloud first" initiative, requiring agencies to give priority consideration to cloud solutions for IT operations, began in December 2012. Now, an idea of how much business is at stake for IT vendors has surfaced -- and it's impressive. [More...]

CUPERTINO BUSINESS REPORT
New MacBook, New Cloud, New Leaf

Wednesday - May 16, 2012

Apple computer users might soon have a thinner, lighter version of the MacBook, according to numerous reports. The new design will apparently still bear the "MacBook Pro" name but will more closely resemble an Ultrabook -- thin, light and affordable PC laptops. It will supposedly feature a high-definition screen similar to the ones found on iPhones and iPads. [More...]

INSIGHTS
The Rise of Open Source

Wednesday - May 16, 2012

SugarCon, the SugarCRM user meeting held in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, did some important things for Sugar. It was a coming out party of sorts for a company with a distinct business model and strategy, namely open source. It was also validation of that strategy and, for many, a new realization of what open source means. [More...]

Groupon Gets a Second Wind

Tuesday - May 15, 2012

Groupon delivered earnings that pleasantly surprised shareholders. The daily deal provider reported a net loss of $11.7 million, a huge improvement from the $146.5 million it lost a year ago in its first quarter as a private company. It also posted stronger-than-expected revenue for the quarter, at $559.3 million -- an 89 percent increase from the same period a year ago. [More...]

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