David Needle

It’s DEMO time again. The twice annual industry insider’s conference kicks off today at a new location, Palm Desert, Calif. Web startups, computer companies, analysts, venture capitalists, press and PR folks will make up the bulk of the 700 attendees expected to attend. There are a total of 68 companies scheduled to demonstrate new technologies […]

Reporter’s Notebook: Time Magazine already voted you Person of the Year, so why not run for president? If you’re crazy enough to try, a new Web site is designed to help. The creators of u4prez.com said they can help anyone run a virtual campaign for president of the United States. The official launch is Feb. […]

CUPERTINO, Calif. — Why are IT departments investing more in virtualization technologies? Simple: “cost, cost and cost,” said one analyst attending a virtualization seminar at Hewlett-Packard’s research facilities yesterday. But there are learning curves involved with deploying virtualization in some IT environments; HP, like its IT services competition, has its eye on those opportunities. The […]

AMD reported fourth quarter earnings today that reflected continued unit sales gains but also increasing price pressure from its competition with Intel. AMD’s shares dropped 4 percent after it released earnings this afternoon. The revenue figures were complicated by the inclusion of revenue related to its $5.4 billion dollar acquisition of graphics chipmaker ATI last […]

Today Intel announced a faster Wi-Fi spec today that is close enough to final that it will appear in the next notebook computers. The Next-Gen Wireless-N, an embedded network adapter card for notebook computers, reaches speeds up to five times faster than current 802.11g Wi-Fi solutions and has up to twice the range. Intel also […]

How is Apple’s QuickTime media software like an offensive tackle in football? It’s like the tackle who makes it possible for the star running back to make big gains. Apple is using QuickTime to fast-track its way to your living room, and it’s pushing support of the emerging MPEG 4  standard, which is partly based […]

California State prosecutors have reportedly made an offer to drop felony charges against former HP  chairman Patricia Dunn, who resigned in the wake of the company’s pretexting scandal last year. According to the Associated Press, four other defendants in the case charged with felonies have also been offered deals if they agree to plead guilty […]

Apple executives had plenty to gloat about in an earnings call with analysts today. The company posted record revenue of $7.1 billion and a record net quarterly profit of $1 billion in quarterly earnings, well above estimates. The hot-selling iPod continued to fly off store shelves, with Apple reporting more than 21 million units sold […]

HP announced an R&D breakthrough today in chip development that could lead to the creation of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)  up to eight times denser than those currently being produced. The increased density would greatly reduce the amount of energy needed to power the chips. The company said the new chips could be built […]

IBM has pumped up its Blade Center H system with its Virtual Fabric Architecture, a set of technologies that includes what IBM said is the industry’s first 10-Gigabit Ethernet connectivity to a blade. Several other companies are part of IBM’s announcement, which includes a Nortel 10G Ethernet switch from Blade Network Technologies and NetXen’s 10G […]

Investment in IT continues to grow, closing in on $1.48 trillion by 2010, according to a new IDC research report. The study, from IDC’s worldwide vertical market research program, forecasts software spending alone will reach $327 billion by 2010, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7 percent. Healthcare, communications and government are […]

EBay announced it has agreed to acquire privately held StubHub, a leading online marketplace for the resale of event tickets, for $310 million in cash. The acquisition will enable EBay  to expand its presence and offerings in the online tickets segment. The online auction powerhouse said in a statement it plans to let StubHub continue […]