Erik Sherman is a freelance writer, author, and photographer. He's been in or written about the technology industry for longer than he'll admit, but does take time out to write about other subjects, like food. "Will blog to hear his own thoughts" to such a degree that he maintains five...
A couple of privately-held social networking companies are taking the unusual but interesting and, I'd argue, smart step of letting their employees sell some stock now, rather than later. The move should go a long way to avoid the problem of key worker attrition while boosting loyalty. by Erik Sherman
For all of the availability of such online productivity suites as Google Apps and HyperOffice, applications that live on a computer's hard drive have remained king of the hill. But that's about to change, I think. Intel's acknowledgement of the netbook and nettop markets -- low cost computers designed primarily...
There's an irony in this week's news for Apple. Abundant consumer good will is evident on one hand. On the other are signs that the company dangerously close to burning bridges with newer customers who never grew up in the Apple brand cult and might have little patience when things...
With the New York Times article yesterday, the debate reemerges as to whether Verizon was wise in its FiOS strategy, upgrading the final customer link from copper to fiber optics. Frankly, I think you need to toss the usual stock market analysis aside and look at competitive fundamentals. Over the...
Muniauction v. Thomson Corp. and i-Deal is a case, decided last month by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit CAFC, that could open the door for companies to use a patented method, including but not limited to business methods, without technically infringing the patent. by Erik Sherman
GigaOM had a good post over the weekend about the top five ways business executives fail to work effectively with product and engineering execs, and that respect, ethics, determination, discipline and humility can solve the problem. I'd agree with that – you don't necessarily need a technical person at the...
It's official: the media declares that cloud computing is changing the world. For anyone who's made more than one circuit around the high tech block, this sounds like many other bits of jargon -- SaaS, MSP, ASP, web services, thin client, client server, even mainframe timesharing -- and for good...
Google must win the handset operating system wars because Android's true mission is to deliver ads, just as a magazine and its articles generally exist to deliver ads. But today's Wall Street Journal story that Verizon and Google and nearing a mobile ad deal shows the other side of the...
For about two years, Seattle-based Jott Networks Inc. has provided a service called Jott. People call a toll-free number, record a message, and see the words translated into text and emailed, either to themselves or someone on their contact list. (I tried it with a stanza of Gilbert and Sullivan...
One of the potentially clear areas of change in the face of a presidential election is foreign policy. As BusinessWeek pointed out, these are unpredictable times for military deployments and for the defense contractors that provide equipment. But any impact on defense spending won't stop there; many high tech companies...
Since March, there's been a legal brouhaha in patent circles, as lawyer Eric Albritton sued a blogger as well as the blogger's former employer, Cisco, for libel. Now the dispute is spilling wider, as the plaintiff has sent a subpoena to a well-known law professor and blogger, Dennis Crouch, who...
As the Patent Troll Tracker libel suit shows, blogging can bring up some intricate legal issues. Bloggers like Dennis Crouch can find themselves facing subpoenas. A few years ago, Apple sued some bloggers that revealed the date of a new product release; the company wanted the source of the information....
Although I posted the conversation with attorney Robert Clothier about some of the legal considerations of blogging, his was a view through the eyes of media law. There's also a whole other way of looking at blogging when it comes to corporations. Labor and employment lawyer Devjani Mishra, a partner...
Most companies start their existences in a general direction and then keep moving that way. But sometimes a company takes an unexpected turn, which might be hidden corporate DNA, a stroke of genius, or a mistake borne of managerial ego. Amazon's behavior suggests a major business model change is already...
Microsoft is moving ahead with version 8 of Internet Explorer, but the browser has picked up some interesting privacy features. But aside from privacy concerns, an additional consequence would be to make targeted advertising harder to achieve, which means pressure on Google, a noted Microsoft rival. by Erik Sherman
There are times the US Patent & Trademark Office and large corporations can leave you scratching your head. As Om Malik reported, Microsoft has essentially received a patent on paging through a document by pressing keys on the keyboard, like page up and page down, for example. It's absurd, but...
Semiconductor design tool vendor Cadence Design Systems has given up on buying rival Mentor Graphics when the price became more than it could afford, or borrow. This isn't an isolated failed deal, but an indicator of the problems that the electronic design assistance EDA market has been seeing – a...
It sounds as though the reports that handsets powered by Google's Android software would be delayed until 2009 are wrong. Well, that is if the New York Times story is right and HTC handsets for T-Mobile are out before Christmas Whether it will be a true rival for the iPhone...
Erik Sherman is a freelance writer, author, and photographer. He's been in or written about the technology industry for longer than he'll admit, but does take time out to write about other subjects, like food. "Will blog to hear his own thoughts" to such a degree that he maintains five...
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