David Needle

Google searches reference works, blogs, news sites, images, videos and much, much more. And since the company’s stated mission is to “organize the world’s information” can tapping into popular microblogging services like Twitter be far behind? Apparently not, at least according to the unofficial blog Google Operating System. In a weekend post, GOS said Google […]

I was heading out the door of the chummy TechCrunch 4th Anniversary barbecue in Palo Alto last night, when I ran into tech gadfly Fred Davis. Hadn’t seen Fred in many years and it was great to catch up, particularly, as always with Fred, he had some new cutting edge venture to talk about. Fred […]

Building 43 Building 43 is opening its virtual doors this evening. The Web site/small business resource, is the brainchild of well-known blogger Robert Scoble and backed by the cloud computing division of server company Rackspace called Rackspace Cloud. Scoble first gained notoriety several years ago for the Channel 9 blog he ran at Microsoft (NASDAQ: […]

Mobile phone makers shipped a whopping 35 million fewer devices in the first quarter of this year versus a year ago, according to figures just released by ABI Research. And it’s a trend ABI doesn’t see letting up for the rest of the year. “The industry and consumers have gone into protection mode,” Kevin Burden, […]

Microsoft is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free antivirus service for personal computers that will compete with products sold by Symantec and McAfee. A Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) spokesman said on Wednesday that the world’s biggest software maker is testing an early version of the product with its own employees. Microsoft would “soon” make a […]

Shelton Shugar, Yahoo’s senior vice president of cloud computingPhoto: David Needle SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Yahoo had some good news for the 700-plus developers at its second annual Hadoop Summit here today: It’s making available to developers the same distribution of Hadoop that it uses internally to help power its Yahoo search, home page and […]

More than one-third of information technology professionals abuse administrative passwords to access confidential data such as colleagues’ salary details or board-meeting minutes, according to a survey. Data security company Cyber-Ark surveyed more than 400 senior IT professionals in the United States and Britain, and found that 35 percent admitted to snooping, while 74 percent said […]

Click on the graphic for a view of Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. SAN FRANCISCO — In its most direct assault on Microsoft’s business applications, Google unveiled Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook at a media event here. The new Apps Synch plug-in is designed to help companies move off of Microsoft’s Exchange server, […]

Two thirds of businesses are unaware they will be able to use their own name in place of domain extensions such as .com, .org, or .net when Internet domains are liberalized next year, according to a survey. The change would let the likes of Nike (NYSE: NKE) or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) control their own domain […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Before a packed hall of more than 5,000 attendees, Apple kicked off its Worldwide Developer’s Conference with new MacBook Pro notebooks. Apple’s vice president of marketing, Phil Schiller unveiled new notebooks in its MacBook Pro line. Key to the announcements was rounding out its MacBook Pro line by upgrading the 13-inch MacBook […]

Building on its open strategy of making it Web platform accessible to developers, Yahoo announced an expanded range of Web services available at its sites. The third-party apps and widgets include personal finance (Mint.com) and e-commerce (PayPal), Picnik for photo editing and sharing, WordPress for blogging, and the Zumo virtual drive that stores e-mail files […]

What could possible be bigger news than a new iPhone? If you’re an Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) fan, the status of the company’s iconic CEO trumps all. Reports have surfaced that Steve Jobs has been spotted back on the Apple campus from his medical leave and is on track to resume his duties later this month. […]