Category: Archive

Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hit a pessimistic note by saying that he expected to see IT spending growth, but not recovery.  Now, it seems that Microsoft is about to prove it’s still in recession mode, as rumors of imminent layoffs are circulating.

PayPal has opened its global payments platform called PayPal X, providing new APIs, a new developer portal, and some introductory services pricing to help developers take advantage of PayPal X to build businesses.

"The whole world is going digital, and the future of how we communicate, how we get information, and even how we transact, is in the hands of developers," said PayPal President Scott Thompson. "The network is the platform on which the potential of digital money will be fully realized."

eBay said Wednesday it is launching a new digital magazine called "The Inside Source" that will be focused on "insights and stories based on what more than 89 million active users are searching for, buying and selling" on the auction site.

The Inside Source content will be managed by an editorial team, led by Meredith Barnett, previously Director of Digital Media for Lifetime Digital. The content will focus on a variety of lifestyle topics, including fashion, technology, automotive, home and garden, pop culture and sustainability.

A company with a market cap of $51 billion has lent some weight to the idea that it’s possible to make money off Twitter.  Early this morning, Amazon launched a "Share on Twitter" feature designed to bring in buyers and reward the specific people responsible for doing so.

As you’re probably aware, many business owners and managers are hesitant to integrate social media into their business strategies. If you are one that does look for ways to use it, however, you may want to consider how you are using individual social networks.

It’s getting to be that time of year during which people grow much nicer and more family-oriented.  Or much more rude and antisocial.  Whatever.  Either way, Google’s making a special effort to ensure that it isn’t put out of mind over the next couple of months.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said today his office has sued online travel companies Expedia and Orbitz for failing to pay the right amount of taxes on hotel room rentals.

The lawsuit states that while the companies have been collecting these taxes from consumers all along, they have only been paying a portion of the taxes to the state and keeping the rest as profit.  Florida says the practice denies it of millions of dollars every year in tax revenue.

A little more information regarding Yahoo’s take on real-time search has emerged, and the details – scarce as they are – sound encouraging.  Another key point is that public testing of the real-time search feature may be just a few days away.

As we’ve said before, real-time search will be a tricky thing for Yahoo.  Google and Facebook have already made their first efforts in this field, and their partner – Twitter – has a rather higher profile than Yahoo’s pal, OneRiot.

Touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the U.S. showed a significant 159 percent growth rate during the past year to 23.8 million users, according to a new report from comScore.

The growth in touchscreen device adoption outpaced the already strong 63 percent growth in U.S. adoption of smartphones.

It seems that Google’s accounting practices may not be quite in line with accepted Turkish procedures.  In fact, Turkey’s government has determined that the search giant owes it a little over $47 million in unpaid taxes.