David Needle

Apple relaxed its iron grip on technical details related to the iPhone by scaling back the scope of the Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) its developers are required to sign. In a post at its developer site, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) said the NDA would now apply only to iPhone software Apple hasn’t publicly or commercially released on […]

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Enterprise collaboration tools provider Socialtext said it is upping the ante in the competition for corporate customers with today’s release of Socialtext 3.0. The trio of applications in Socialtext 3.0 are People, Dashboard and a major upgrade of the company’s Workspace enterprise Wiki. Company co-founder and chairman Ross Mayfield showed off […]

Microsoft CEO Steve BallmerPhoto: Lou Dematteis SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Microsoft’s normally exuberant CEO didn’t disappoint a packed hall of over 500 attendees at an event here Thursday night. Steve Ballmer was largely upbeat about Microsoft’s products and cheerfully responded to questions about product deficiencies and competitive threats as “challenges.” But he did start things […]

Microsoft CEO Steve BallmerSource: Microsoft Wither Windows 7? What’s Microsoft’s next move against Google? Is Yahoo still in play? These and other questions are likely to be raised to the CEO of world’s biggest software company tonight at an event in Silicon Valley hosted by the Churchill Club. Steve Ballmer will face a relatively friendly […]

Stanford professor Rajeev Motwani, a key adviser to Google founder’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page, strongly dismissed Hubert Chang‘s earlier claims of having helped to start Google. Chang had said in an online video that he provided the algorithm for PageRank technology that is central to Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) search engine. However, in an article […]

Who is Hubert Chang and what does he have to do with Google? Chang has emerged from obscurity this week with the audacious claim that he helped launch the search giant in 1997 along with acknowledged co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Chang posted his story on the video sharing site Vimeo and it was […]

The pucks haven’t hit the ice yet for the 2008/2009 season, but the NHL is getting fans ready with an overhaul of its NHL.com Website set to debut today. Key to the redesign is NHL GameCenter, a kind of “second screen” beyond TV coverage that will feature video highlights of select video highlights, real-time stats, […]

What’s next for the iPhone? Well, to borrow a phrase from the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, “Flame On!” That’s generally the idea behind Sonic Lighter, an “interactive sonic application” for the iPhone from the creative folks at [Smule](http://www.smule.com). Sonic Lighter won’t make you work faster or more effectively, won’t get you a better job by […]

Wi-Fi use in Europe is having a record year among business users, according to figures released this week by broadband management provider iPass. So much so, the continent has passed North America in the first half of this year for the first time in the iPass Mobile Broadband Index (MBI). Europe grew its use of […]

U.S. consumers now use their cell phones for text messaging more often than for talking, according to the latest research from the Nielsen Company. While U.S. phone users have been much slower to embrace texting than consumers in Europe and Asia, things are changing as the average U.S. user each sent or received 357 texts […]

Looks like Bill & Jerry are history. Microsoft has dropped comedian Jerry Seinfeld from its controversial ad campaign after three spots that paired him with company co-founder Bill Gates. The ads drew a chorus of criticism for their lightweight marketing of Microsoft, which is barely mentioned, as the duo takes a comedic stroll through Middle […]

Another hundred layoffs at Hewlett-Packard, in the wake of this week’s news that the computer giant will let go of more than 24,000 employees as part of its acquisition of giant services firm EDS, doesn’t seem like big news. However, these latest layoffs are specific to HP’s corporate marketing department and represent a big number […]