Robert Mullins is a writer for eWEEK who has covered the technology industry in Silicon Valley for more than a decade. He has written for several tech publications including Network Computing, Information Week, Network World and various TechTarget titles. Mullins also served as a correspondent in the San Francisco Bureau of IDG News Service and, before that, covered technology news for the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal. Back in his home state of Wisconsin, Robert worked as the news director for NPR stations in Milwaukee and LaCrosse in the 1980s.
VMware is repostioning Socialcast as an enterprise social networking platform with what the virtualization company considers a competitive pricing system. Specifically, VMware customers will get a full-featured version of the product free for up to 50 users. With this new go-to-market approach, introduced on June 6, VMware is looking to compete in the expanding field […]
SAN FRANCISCO Google unveiled new features of Google Maps June 6. But during a demonstration of the new Maps features at a media briefing here, a Google executive deflected questions about Google Maps’ future on the Apple iOS mobile operating system. New features that are coming include 3D maps of major cities, a version […]
The IT industry is drawing attention to the transition of computer networks from the IPv4 standard to IPv6, declaring June 6 as IPv6 Day 2012, but a new survey shows that North America is behind other parts of the world in IPv6 adoption, though it’s poised for more robust growth soon. More than 2,000 organizations […]
Google announced on its blog June 5 the acquisition of Quickoffice, a maker of office productivity applications, a move that’s intended to give Google an edge over Microsoft in the mobile computing space. Quickoffice apps enable users to view, create, edit and synchronize documents on devices using any of the leading mobile operating systems on […]
Oracle is acquiring Collective Intellect, a company offering a cloud-based social intelligence application, which helps companies understand and respond to consumers’ conversations on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The Collective Intellect acquisition, terms of which were not disclosed, will become part of Oracle’s software as a service (SaaS) products and Social Platform […]
Software as a service provider Salesforce.com announced plans June 4 to acquire Buddy Media, a provider of a social media marketing platform, for $698 million in cash and stock, but a stock analyst warns that Salesforce faces formidable competition when Oracle unveils its cloud service offering later this week. The Buddy Media platform allows customers […]
If enterprises are going to embrace the coming Microsoft Windows 8 operating system, especially for use on tablet computers, they should strongly consider buying tablets built on the Intel x86 processor architecture rather than on the ARM architecture because x86 would be more compatible with their existing Windows environment, an enterprise software industry expert says. […]
Microsoft seems to have smoothed out some of the glitches in the Metro user interface in the upcoming Windows 8 operating system, but a look at the Release Preview version of the operating system, unveiled May 31, shows some work still needs to be done before the general availability release, analysts say. Microsoft unveiled the […]
Sales of servers running the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 operating system grew a scant 1.3 percent in the first quarter of 2012, dwarfed by the 16 percent jump in sales of Linux OS servers based on revenue, according to a report from IDC. An IDC analyst says the difference may be due to a couple […]
This reporter drives a 2001 model car and recently visited the dealer to get a new floor mat to replace one that wore through on the driver’s side. He was told the dealer stopped carrying that model floor mat in its inventory as of April 24. Microsoft Windows XP was released the same year that […]