Matthew Hicks

SAN FRANCISCO—Rather than viewing open source as a threat, IT software vendors must embrace the software development model and understand how it can fit into their core business, a Novell Inc. executive said in the opening keynote of the Open Source Business Conference 2004 here. “Those who fear the rise in open source just dont […]

The former executives of a company acquired last year by Google Inc. are reviving their approach for matching advertisers with the most relevant Web content. The executives from Sprinks Inc., which Google bought in October, are renewing their competition in the market for contextual ads now that they have joined smaller paid-search provider Kanoodle.com Inc. […]

Conferencing vendor Polycom Inc. on Monday unveiled the first fruits of its acquisition earlier this year of voice conferencing vendor Voyant Technologies Inc. Polycom launched a unified conferencing product line named Convene aimed at service providers. It brings together Voyants OCI voice conferencing bridges with Polycoms MGC video conferencing bridges and WebOffice Web conferencing portal. […]

Lindows.com Inc. on Friday stopped selling its products in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg after Microsoft Corp. asked a Dutch court to fine it 100,000 euro ($123,410) a day. A Dutch court in January had temporarily barred Lindows.com, of San Diego, from selling its Linux-based operating system in the three European countries, known as the […]

Shares of Norway-based Opera Software ASA began trading on Thursday on the Oslo Stock Exchange, rising steadily throughout the day to close at 11.40 Norwegian kroner ($1.61) a share. Opera, the Web browser maker that announced plans last month for an initial public offering, said ahead of trading that demand for shares outweighed supply by […]

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday upped the severity of one of three security patches it issued a day earlier, warning that it discovered another attack scenario for a hole in Outlook 2002. The Redmond, Wash., software maker increased the threat level of the Outlook security vulnerability to its highest level of four—”critical.” The Outlook 2002 hole […]

The major backer of the RSS format offered an olive branch on Tuesday to the proponents of a competing standard for XML content syndication known as Atom. Dave Winer, the co-author of the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) format, suggested in a Weblog posting that supporters of both formats work to merge RSS and Atom in […]

The buzz over local Web search is becoming more of a reality this week as search providers offer new ways to search for attractions and news close to home. Yahoo Inc. on Tuesday launched a new local feature on its Yahoo Maps site to make it easier for consumers to find local points of interest. […]

While a controversial back-ordering service for Web addresses moved another step closer to becoming a reality over the weekend, pending lawsuits leave its future murky. The board of directors for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on Saturday approved the back-ordering service, called the wait listing service (WLS), during their Rome meeting. The […]

A federal patent examiners initial review has found the Web browser patent at the center of a major verdict against Microsoft Corp. to be invalid. Eolas Technologies Inc. won a $521 million jury verdict last year in its patent-infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, prompting an outcry from the Webs major standards body. The World Wide Web […]