Stuart J. Johnston

The advent of radio and television introduced the term “broadcasting,” meaning to send out a signal broadly to be received by many listeners or viewers. Now with the Web, a new term is gradually taking hold — “broadcatching.” Broadcatching refers to a user’s ability to download all kinds of digital content streams for later viewing […]

Microsoft announced Wednesday a set of initiatives aimed at aiding interoperability between competing online identity management systems based on information card technologies. As part of the effort, the company is sponsoring four open source projects focusing on information cards. Additionally, it is making more of its Web services technologies royalty free, with the promise not […]

CA’s Wily Technology division will ship Friday an update to its Customer Experience Manager (CEM) product that provides new troubleshooting tools, the ability to generate simulated end-user transactions, and “out-of-the-box” integration with CA Service Desk. CEM is Wily’s customer application diagnostics package for finding and curing bottlenecks in users’ interactions with Web-based applications. (CA purchased […]

AOL says it is shipping a preview version of what may be the first Windows Vista gadget that takes advantage of Microsoft’s new Silverlight cross-platform media player technology. The AOL Social Mail Gadget for Vista provides one-click access to e-mail, AOL Instant Messenger service, photos and video directly from the Windows Vista desktop, Roy Ben-Yoseph, […]

UPDATED: A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday that Google  did not infringe the copyrights of an adult photo publisher by displaying thumbnails of proprietary pictures in its image search engine. But while the ruling was hailed by advocacy groups as a victory for the so-called “fair use” doctrine and for the future of innovation […]

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates may have one foot out the door, but he hasn’t let go of his crystal ball quite yet. And he still has the name recognition to draw more than 100 of the world’s most powerful executives to the company’s annual CEO Summit. In a webcast of his keynote speech at the […]

IBM today announced a strategic initiative aimed at providing customers with one-stop shopping for tools and services for IT governance and risk management (GRM). But the company was very clear that the initiative is just the start, not the end of the journey. Under its GRM aegis, IBM  officials are presenting a mixture of existing […]

Microsoft  officials this week said they are readying the next major release of SQL Server, codenamed Katmai, but the question is whether it will be enough to draw customers away from long established competitors. Katmai is due for early access via a community technology preview (CTP) within the next month or so, officials announced, with […]

Lenovo announced Thursday it has signed a deal whereby the largest Chinese computer maker will continue to ship fully licensed copies of Windows and other Microsoft  products on all PCs sold inside China. Saying it “renews the strategic cooperation between the two companies,” the deal is a follow on from an earlier agreement signed in […]

Microsoft wants to bring business intelligence (BI)  capabilities to the masses. That was the main pitch Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, made to attendees at the company’s first ever BI conference in Seattle today. To show Microsoft  means business, Raikes announced expanded relationships with three key BI consultancies, the acquisition of a product […]