David Needle

Too much good stuff for even a lengthy blog post about last night’s Larry Ellison’s event. [In my earlier blog](http://blog.internetnews.com/dneedle/2009/09/ellison-sun-losing-100-million.html) I focused on his comments regarding Oracle’s purchase of Sun. “We’re keeping everything,” Ellison said in rousing affirmation of his plan to leverage Sun’s technology to transform Oracle into a systems company beyond just software. […]

Today marks the kick-off for a new DEMO conference, the closely watched, twice-annual showcase of new products and Web services that show director Chris Shipley says reflects a maturing industry. “I think we’re seeing a shift from the pomp and hype of Web 2.0, to the value of more social applications applied with more business […]

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Larry Ellison was on fire Monday night. Steve Jobs is the unquestioned master of the pre-rehearsed, carefully choreographed event speech complete with new technology props, but for off-the-cuff, tell ’em like I see ’em, entertaining bluster, Oracle’s CEO gets my vote. Ellison spoke before a packed hall at the Fairmont Hotel […]

When Netflix decided to try and make significant improvements to the system it uses to recommend movies, the company took a unique approach to getting the job done. Rather than hire more staff, it banked on a unusual form of outsourcing. The movie rental giant announced [the Netflix Prize](http://www.netflixprize.com/), promising to award $1 million to […]

The European Commission went public today with details of its antitrust investigation against Intel that resulted in a 1.06 billion euro ($1.6 billion) fine against the chipmaker earlier this year. The charges in the long-running investigation first came to light in May, when the EC slapped Intel with the fine, which it’s now appealing. But […]

Imagine you’re a tech startup with a great new Web service or product idea. You get enough funding to build out the staff and start developing the product in earnest. A year later, you realize the market’s changed; another company already offers 90 percent of the functionality of your SuperWebWonderWidget along with a bunch of […]

Sales of Apple’s OS X Snow Leopard operating system are booming at retail, according to market research firm NPD Group. The firm’s retail-tracking service reported that Snow Leopard has sold more than twice the number of units sold of Apple’s previous Leopard release during its first two weeks on the market. Snow Leopard’s sales are […]

Use Twitter to make phone calls? You betcha. IP communications company Jajah has released a beta of its “Tweet-to-Talk” service, JAJAH@call, that the company says lets users make calls via Twitter for free. The “@calls” are made without revealing the caller’s phone number and, conversely, callers don’t even need to know the number of the […]