Michael Hickins

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which is responsible for accrediting testing labs that inspect electronic voting machines, failed to notify local officials that it has refused to accredit Ciber, which tests the software for most of the electronic voting systems currently in use. Ciber was allowed to certify software patches, such as the ones that […]

Video search application vendors are benefiting from the explosion of video on the Web, from user-generated content on sites like YouTube to mainstream media companies like CNN and ABC. One recent newcomer to the market is Blinkx. The company powers video search on Lycos.com and several other mass-market destination sites. It also has relationships with […]

Reporter’s Notebook: New government regulations often spawn whole new markets. A far-reaching reform of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) is proving to be no exception. The reform means that electronic documents in all forms, including e-mail, instant messages and even transcripts of video conference and VoIP  calls, are fair game for litigants during […]

CORRECTED:* Investigators may have found the smoking gun proving that officials at Apple  willfully broke the law when they backdated option grant dates. The price of Apple stock fell by almost 5 percent during the day in response to a report published in the legal publication “The Recorder” and posted on the legal newswire Law.com […]

Web job placement firm Monster Worldwide  named Phil Lochner to its board of directors. Lochner will join the board’s Special Committee, which was created by Monster Worldwide’s board of directors in order to investigate the company’s historical stock-option practices. He will also serve on the Special Litigation Committee formed to address issues related to the […]

It looks like one time through the unruly U.S. electoral cycle was one time too many for Smartmatic. After suffering through a difficult year on both regulatory and public relations fronts, the Boca Raton, Fla.-based technology vendor announced that it will try to find a buyer for its Sequoia Voting Systems unit, which it acquired […]

Google  is taking yet another popular feature and retooling it for the enterprise. The Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant took Blogger out of beta last week, introducing features that are intended to appeal to business users. One such feature is added privacy settings, giving users the ability to restrict access to their blog postings. Users […]

Internetnews.com editors provide an early roadmap for tech’s direction in 2007. Google  says its mission is to organize all the world’s information and make it accessible and useful to everyone. Now well on its way to accomplishing that goal on the consumer Web, the search giant will increasingly turn its attention to the business Web […]

Microsoft is looking out for 21st-century kids around the world. In a move geared toward getting more traction for its Office and Windows products in developing nations, the company has introduced software that allows multiple input devices, such as mice and joysticks, to function concurrently on a single PC. The Microsoft Research India unit developed […]

Motorola  announced that it intends to buy digital video distribution technology vendor Tut Systems  for $1.15 per share of common stock, amounting to approximately $39 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2007. Tut provides digital-video encoding, processing and distribution products. Notably, Tut technology supports MPEG-2 and MPEG-4, […]

Internetnews.com wades through the top stories and issues that rocked the industry in 2006 in this week-long series. This year will likely be remembered as the year that software-as-a-service (SaaS) finally came into its own. Players in this business model have gone from edgy to establishment while on-premise vendors have gone from dismissing on-demand software […]

Oracle  unveiled a new pricing model that should smooth the implementation path for customers thinking about buying its applications. The new structure will be applied across the company’s entire portfolio, including applications inherited with the acquisitions of JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel. The new scheme will also be applicable to Oracle’s homegrown E-Business Suite products. […]