Robert J. Mullins

Samsung failed again July 2 in an attempt to stay a federal judge€™s order that it stop selling the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet and the Nexus smartphone until a patent-infringement suit brought against it by Apple is resolved, the San Jose Mercury News reports. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh, sitting in San Jose, declined […]

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced July 2 plans to open a satellite patent office in San Jose, Calif., the heart of Silicon Valley and the epicenter of IT industry inventiveness. The federal agency also plans to open satellite patent offices in Detroit, Dallas and Denver. The location of the San Jose office […]

Microsoft€™s $1.2 billion deal to acquire enterprise social media company Yammer still has some people scratching their heads about the synergy the two companies will generate, but Yammer could actually teach Microsoft a thing or two, an industry analyst says. Microsoft built its fortune by selling software licenses to computer makers, businesses and consumers. Yammer […]

No doubt you€™ve heard the adage that the three most important things in real estate are €œlocation, location, location.€ It also appears that location times three is also the prevailing theme in the release of three leading mobile operating systems from Apple, Microsoft and Google. At three developers conferences, all held in June in San […]

Google is stepping up its game in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space by introducing Google Compute Engine for hosting applications on the company€™s massive computing infrastructure. Compute Engine, which Google said June 28 is available as a limited preview for now, was introduced on the second day of the Google I/O 2012 developer€™s conference in San […]

Enterprise social media partners who saw Microsoft as a natural ally and partner in their efforts to get their services running inside corporate offices must reassess their positions now that Microsoft is acquiring Yammer, says Rob Koplowitz, a Forrester Research analyst. One example is Neudesic Pulse, an enterprise social media service that partners with Microsoft […]

Google wowed application developers at its Google I/O conference in San Francisco June 27 by introducing what it called an entirely new consumer electronics product, Nexus Q, a small bowling-ball-shaped media hub for the home controlled by an Android tablet or smartphone. Nexus Q was a surprise announcement that followed anticipated introductions of the Nexus […]

While major cloud service providers€”such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Google and soon Microsoft€”get all the attention, CloudSigma approaches the market by giving customers more choice on how they can configure their cloud is service. CloudSigma, which was founded in 2009 and launched its service in 2010, lets customers control their own software configurations, network […]

Industry analysts largely applaud Microsoft€™s $1.28 billion acquisition of enterprise social networking vendor Yammer, but worry that what makes Yammer a unique and popular social network may be lost as it€™s folded into Microsoft€™s other workplace productivity software. Microsoft and Yammer stepped forward June 25 to say that Yammer had agreed to the acquisition 10 […]

After more than a week of rumors, Microsoft and Yammer confirmed June 25 that the software giant will acquire the enterprise social networking site Yammer for $1.2 billion. Yammer will remain a standalone business led by its current CEO David Sacks and operate within Microsoft€™s Office division headed by its president, Kurt DelBene. Microsoft CEO […]