Michael Singer

Qualcomm is in talks to acquire a semiconductor design firm to help satisfy demand for its third-generation CDMA wireless devices, the company said Thursday. The wireless giant will pay about $19 million in cash for Spike Technologies, of Milpitas, Calif., and its affiliated companies. Qualcomm will combine strategies with Spike and incorporate the startup’s design, […]

The U.S. Patent Trademark Office has rejected all claims to patents for a Windows file format held by Microsoft. Under a reexamination process initiated earlier this year by the recently formed Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), The USPTO rejected all claims of Microsoft’s technology, which includes its internally developed FAT Allocation Table (FAT) file system . […]

Faced with mountains of inventory, quick thinking by some semiconductor manufacturers helped the market avoid its first decrease in chip sales since the war in Iraq began. The latest numbers from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) suggest that worldwide sales rose to $18.2 billion in August, an increase of 1.1 percent from the $18 billion […]

SAN FRANCISCO — Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is hoping to do to call centers and help desks what he has accomplished in the CRM space. The San Francisco-based firm debuted a new on-demand business model it calls Supportforce.com. The goal is to address the growing number of companies that are outsourcing their customer service divisions. […]

In what is being called “the most significant enhancement to the Java platform,” a consortium of Java-related companies launched the newest version of the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE). As previously reported, version 5.0 of the specification — also known as “Project Tiger” — is the basis for developing portable applications for the server or […]

HP is trying to make up for this summer’s dismal forecasts by finding contracts wherever it can — even offshore. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm announced a total of $1.5 billion in contracts this week, the largest being a marquee $500 million relationship with Nokia . The two companies extended their original 2001 pact for […]

Facing soft demand from major customers, semiconductor and software specialist Agere Systems said it will lay off 500 people and close three facilities to cut costs. The cuts represent approximately 7 percent of the workforce and include administrative, sales, marketing and product development. Offices in Maine, New Jersey and the Netherlands will be shut. In […]

Oracle is padding its portfolio with new software and services targeted for small- to medium-sized (SMB) companies in North America. The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based software giant also said it is expanding its Applications Sales Channel to partners in an attempt to develop a reseller market and boost partner relationships. Oracle has been offering SMB software […]

A letter to Sun Microsystems’ COO Jonathan Schwartz by the European Commission (EC) this week may set the stage for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to adopt the Open Office XML format (also known as OO.o XML) as an ISO standard. If it does, the stamp of approval would mark the largest ever validation […]

Perhaps you’ve been reading about IT service management (ITSM) and figure it can help your IT organization become more effective. Now what? How do you spread the word and get a bona-fide ITSM effort off the ground? The first step, experts say, is to identify why your company needs ITSM. The first scenario is when […]

HP is doing a lot of explaining after it revealed this weekend that it will no longer put Itanium processors in its high-performance workstations. The company said its decision was based on a lack of 64-bit software applications from Microsoft and the trend toward 64-bit extension Xeon chips coming from Intel and AMD’s Opteron. A […]

A Silicon Valley startup is preparing to make its official debut next week with a network service it claims will help boost production in data centers. After two years in semi-stealth mode, former Cobalt CEO and Sun Microsystems exec Stephen DeWitt is expected to launch Azul Systems. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company — whose name […]