Susan Kuchinskas

Amid feverish speculation, on Oct 4, Google and Sun Microsystems announced they would work together to promote the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), the Google Toolbar and the OpenOffice.org productivity suite. Despite some of the yawns the deal inspired, it carries the hallmarks of something big, maybe not exactly Google Office or a Google-hosted version of […]

Does the world need another browser? Flock, a Palo Alto startup, thinks ”social browsing” makes the difference. A preview of the new Flock browser, built on the Mozilla project codebase, was released late Friday afternoon. Flock adds some of the most popular tools from social networking sites: Users can tag bookmarks instead of creating hierarchies […]

RFID could make for happier Wal-Mart shoppers, a study showed. University researchers found a 16 percent reduction in so-called ”out of stocks” at Wal-Mart Stores that were using RFID to track products from the time they left the factory to when they were sold off the shelf. The independent study, released on Friday by the […]

Microsoft and JBoss announced a cooperation agreement on Tuesday in what is Microsoft’s first official embrace of open source. Under the agreement, the two companies will ”explore” ways to enhance the interoperability between JEMS and Microsoft Windows Server products. Another goal is to enable JEMS to better support the Windows Server operating system. Bill Hilf, […]

In just a year, blogging went from a preoccupation of the technorati to a mass medium. Podcasting is set to join it. Podcasting is an audio version of RSS feeds, a way of publishing Web content with metadata that lets users subscribe and receive new files as they’re posted. Using special software, users can download […]

Microsoft has been talking about Longhorn, the next generation of Windows, since its last Professional Developers Conference in 2003. At PDC 2005, to be held Tuesday through Friday in Los Angeles, it’s time to talk turkey. ”Microsoft has to give us a good idea of when this stuff really will be delivered,” said Directions on […]

Microsoft and Google squared off in Washington State court Tuesday about whether Kai-Fu Lee’s work at Google would violate a non-compete contract. According to Google’s opposition to Microsoft’s request for a preliminary injunction against Lee working for Google, Lee wouldn’t be in competition if he went to China to open a Google research lab there, […]

An independent spyware analyst is accusing Yahoo (Quote, Chart) of supporting spyware companies by distributing Yahoo Search Marketing ads to them. Consultant Ben Edelman faulted Yahoo for not letting its advertisers know where their ads might end up. “We know people pay very high pay-per-click fees when they think they’re getting traffic from Yahoo, because […]

Google ended a year of speculation on Wednesday, announcing a VoIP-enabled instant messaging client. The voice-enabled IM service actually went live on Tuesday afternoon, according to blogger Ben Guild, who was able to log on around 5:40 EDT. The new service marks another step on Google’s evolution from search service to Internet gateway. The free […]

Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium and inventor of the Web, spoke out late Monday against the U.S. Copyright Office’s plans to limit browser access to e-filing. Lee said the plan to offer access to online forms only to users of IE would go against a 1998 directive from the Office of […]