David Needle

Service plans, extended warranties, model comparisons, salespeople trying to “upsell” you to higher-priced models have all conspired to make buying a wireless phone at retail an increasingly onerous chore, according to a report released this week by J.D. Power and Associates (JDPA). While many of these factors aren’t new, perhaps the most surprising result is […]

The battle over Sun’s ZFS file system technology is heating up with more lawsuits. In response to a patent infringement claim by Network Appliance, Sun announced today it filed a counterclaim that seeks a permanent injunction against Network Appliance’s product line, as well as monetary damages. In a blog posting, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said […]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Google didn’t become a multi-billion company by following others; to borrow the old Apple slogan, it tends to “think different.” That was evident Wednesday at Google’s financial analysts meeting here at company headquarters. The event featured panels by Google execs, product demos and a Q&A session with CEO Eric Schmidt and […]

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -– Google showed off new features in its popular Gmail e-mail program at a briefing for analysts at the company’s “Googleplex” headquarters. Some of the features will be coming “soon” while others are rolling out today, such as free support for the Internet Message Access Protocol, (IMAP) . Since its release in […]

Clearly Citrix didn’t buy XenSource for $500 million in August to have the provider of virtualization solutions plod along. The company is moving quickly to expand its distribution, inking deals with Dell and HP today to significantly expand it enterprise reach. A number of other XenSource announcements were made this week by Citrix at its […]

SAN FRANCISCO — What are the best smartphones for the enterprise? Several leading vendors made their cases here at the one-day Smartphone Summit Monday ahead of the big CTIA conference. Not in the room was Apple’s iPhone, but given its high profile, several execs on the panel discussed its impact. “We think the iPhone is […]

SAN FRANCISCO –- Spectrum, government regulation, Google and the iPhone were the topics in the air, as AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson participated in a Q&A session at the Web 2.0 Summit here today. He began with government regulators, saying they are holding back faster broadband access to consumers and have stymied some of the telecom […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Is the rise of the Internet slowly killing television? Not in the view of media execs here at the Web 2.0 Summit, who said TV is merely changing with the times. “Television viewing has gone up every year,” said Amy Banse, president of Comcast Interactive Media. “I object to this idea that […]

SAN FRANCISCO — How should the government handle the 700MHz spectrum auction planned for January? A lot depends on which interested party you ask. During a spirited debate here at the Web 2.0 Summit Thursday, Thomas Tauke, executive vice president for public affairs, policy and communications at Verizon, joined the stage with wireless advocate Ram […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Millions of people use eBay every day to purchase or sell goods online. But eBay CEO Meg Whitman told a crowd of over 1,000 Internet execs and investors here the site is more than just and quickie place to buy and sell. “We’re going to do $7.6 billion in revenue this year, […]

SAN FRANCISCO — MySpace confirmed plans to open up its social network to developers, enabling them to build applications based on its platform, an executive said here yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit. But the company has yet to produce public APIs that would simplify third-party development. The news follows rival Facebook’s May announcement of […]

SAN FRANCISCO — It was a who’s who in the Internet industry as the Web 2.0 Summit kicked off here Wednesday. An afternoon of high-level presentations culminated with an onstage early-evening Q&A with News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and Chris DeWolfe, co-founder of News Corp. property MySpace. Murdoch amused the packed hall of Internet execs, […]