Software

Apps, Google's flagship product for enterprise IT, had a minor presence at this week's I/O developer conference, but some announcements at the show and in prior weeks deserve attention from customers of the cloud email and collaboration suite.

Forget Glass, self-driving cars or a smartwatch. Developers, not physical consumer products, were Google's darlings at the company's annual I/O conference this week.

A strong stock market could open the floodgates for more tech IPOs in the wake of Friday's solid debut of Marketo and Tableau, but not all segments of IT may be able to ride the wave.

Operators of two alleged tech support scams that charged consumers hundreds of dollars to supposedly fix their computers have settled charges from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Privacy laws protecting bank account holders are more important than providing information to aid in copyright enforcement, according to a Dutch court ruling this week.

The transformation of IT through new delivery models like cloud computing raises questions about the role CIOs and IT managers will play in a more business-oriented, on-demand world.

Selling technology for technology’s sake simply doesn’t cut it anymore. ARN recently brought together a panel of industry representatives to look at why selling business productivity, ROI and innovation are critical to the channel’s success and how these elements will be the force behind cloud computing take-up.

Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro challenged the fact that everything should be paid for by usage.

A critical question posed by Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro was whether the channel was innovating from a business model perspective to meet new demand for more accountability, ROI and solutions success.

Google did its best to court developers at this year's I/O conference with a much-needed integrated developer environment, API for better games and the ability to more easily translate apps. Their allegiance will become increasingly important as smartphone and tablet hardware sees fewer dramatic improvements.

Windows 8 faces a number of hurdles in the enterprise, but the biggest reason it won't replace the current corporate champion, Windows 7, is simple: IT shops don't think it's worth the upgrade hassle.

It became clear at Google I/O this week that Google is quietly but assuredly implementing CEO Larry Page's strategy to use Google+ to transform the entire Google experience.

Google laid out its plan for the future of search at Google I/O, talking about a search engine for mobile and desktop that not only answers your questions but has a conversation with you and offers information before you even ask for it.

Computers just aren't selling like they used to, and many critics, analysts, and longtime Windows users point the blame finger at one culprit in particular: Windows 8. Nobody's using Windows 8, they say. It's worse than New Coke, they say. PC shipments are cratering and it's all Windows 8's fault, they say.

John Swainson has one of the more challenging jobs in the tech industry right now. As president of Dell's software division, he's charged with sorting through all the software Dell has acquired and organizing it into coherent offerings that can further its effort to become a more profitable, software- and services-driven company.

As co-president of Oracle, Mark Hurd is tasked with selling an ever-increasing array of new software and hardware products, such as the Exadata database machine and Fusion Applications, while figuring out how to keep the company's vast installed base happy and fending off competition from the likes of SAP.

Since its introduction, the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface has created a fair amount of controversy. UEFI was created through an industry consortium as an evolutionary step up from BIOS, the simple firmware long used when starting a computer to initialize all the components and load the operating system. Among its advanced features, UEFI includes an option called Secure Boot, which requires that any software used before the operating system starts, or after it shuts down, has been signed by a certificate authority.

NetSuite is one of the SaaS (software as a service) market's pioneers, having sold its growing family of ERP (enterprise resource planning), e-commerce and other applications since 1998. The vendor's results have been beating Wall Street's predictions, and may yet again in a few weeks, when NetSuite is expected to announce its fourth-quarter and year-end results.

For most people who identify themselves as techies, Tesla's Model S is something of a dream car. The all-electric vehicle accelerates fast, can maintain a high top speed, has a range of up to 300 miles, and packs a 17-inch flat panel display with a Linux-based computer system that provides access to just about every aspect of the car's performance and entertainment system.

If you're doing serious Web content engineering you might well choose an all-singing, all-dancing product such as Adobe's Dreamweaver. The latest version of Dreamweaver in Adobe's Creative Suite 6 (released just over a year ago) was really impressive with new features such as an improved user interface, support for jQuery UI widgets, better cascading style sheet Version 3 support and support for PhoneGap. All in all, a very cool and comprehensive Web development platform.

Until roughly six years ago, mobile computers and telephones were really separate things. "Mobile computing" meant laptops -- maybe with broadband wireless for some lucky executives. "Telephone" meant communication device. "Convergence" meant putting your cellphone into your computer bag to go through airport security.

On the ISS, Linux is in and XP is out and open source is the way of the future

Have you had a IT project go astray? Maybe you were lucky and it was a brief hiccup with minimal financial consequences. Or maybe you had a disaster of biblical proportions, such as the one that befell Levi Strauss in 2008.

On the face of it, the bill the Senate is considering to levy taxes on Internet retailers simply makes sense. The states are strapped for cash and we have a bifurcated system that requires local brick and mortar outlets to ante up while letting out of state online retailers off scot free.

OpenXchange's new word processor, OX Text, is the first in a set of Linux-based productivity apps. Can it compete with Google Docs and Office 365?

Toshiba's new KiraBook ultrabook offers a sleek, rich look along with high-end components, including a fine display and great speakers. The question is: Can you afford it?

HP 3PAR StoreServe 7400 combines high scalability, high performance, and a big bag of tricks for easing storage management

Lenovo's Atom-based Windows 8 tablet-laptop hybrid is lightweight and usable, but build quality doesn't cut it

Today's video editing apps have made many pro-level features available to anyone who wants to use them. We review four of the best known video editors to see what they offer and how easy it is to use them.