Vivid

Is Salesforce.com Dara Torres or Michael Phelps?
Salesforce.com is on pace to become the next billion-dollar tech company, a milestone that may signal the end of the companys days an upstart. Is Salesforce.com still an underdog? Salesforce.com is the poster child for so-called software-as-a-service companies, whose software businesses access over the Internet through a Web browser instead of installing on tech equipment they own [...]

Wi-Fi in the SkyFinally
American Airlines Wednesday started offering wireless Internet access on select flights, bringing an end to the era when a cross-country trip meant escaping from the rigmaroles of the workweek for a few hours. Now your boss can expect you to work anywhere! Weve been anticipating Wi-Fi in the sky for years, largely because the major airlines [...]

Salesforce.com Tries to Buy Its Way into Call Centers
Salesforce.com acquired InStranet, which makes software used in call centers, for $31.5 million, according to the company. It’s a sign that Salesforce.com is ramping up its efforts to establish itself as a rival to customer-management systems from Oracle and SAP. Salesforce.com believes in no software. Unless its buying the software company. Salesforce.com is known for its [...]

A Bellwether Rings True
The rest of the world wants laptops, too. Thats one of the takeaways from H-Ps earnings. Look at H-P to get a sense of what businesses are spending on. Then subtract some. The computer maker Tuesday reported that third-quarter revenue was up 10% from the year-ago period to $28 billion. Net income was $2 billion, up [...]

H-P, Dell Target Corporate Marauders
Apparently business traveler doesnt sound cool enough the worlds two largest PC makers. A laptop fit for Mad Max Last week, when Dell introduced a set of business notebook computers aimed at people who travel for work, it said the new PCs were geared toward digital nomads. In a Web site it launched along with the [...]

Exploding IPods: The Next Front in Batteries War on Man
Is it time to panic? A possible battery defect has caused two iPod nanos in Japan to overheat, according to the AP. Would you say it’s time for everyone to panic? If it was just one of the devices from Apple wed be willing to write it off. But in the Internet era, two of anything is [...]

Platform Wars: Battlefield Mobile
During the platform wars of the 1980s, tech companies duked it out over which computer operating system would emerge from a crowded field. Now theres a new platform war being waged, but this time the battleground is mobile devices. The bad news for businesses looking to standardize on a winner: The most likely outcome is [...]

The Tech Sector Gets Kind of Good Spending News
Good news for the tech sector: Worldwide information-technology spending will top $3.4 trillion 2008, up 8% from last year. The bad news: Much of the growth comes courtesy of the weak dollar, not increased sales. Tech spending growth is strong thanks to a weak dollar Thats the word from tech-research company Gartner, which along with rivals Forrester [...]

At Intel, One Step Forward, One Back, for Openness
Tech companies have even rosier-tinted glasses than other businesses. Every new product or initiative is going to change the world. Until it doesn’t, or perhaps doesn’t even work–and no one spends much time writing news releases about that. The Centrino Atom…make that the Atom chip As Intel opens its forum for developers this week in San Francisco, [...]

Making Sense of Spaghetti Code
Take a look at this image. No, it’s not a piece of 1950s-era modern art, nor the results of a brain scan. Computer code as contemporary art The image represents the source code for a typical computer program, after it was analyzed using special software from a unit of Hewlett-Packard. The computer maker, borrowing on techniques used [...]