Ecommerce Times

Cisco isn't content to just sell products for the deepest, darkest innards of the data center. It's also got its eye on consumer technology. It already has Linksys, which sells stuff like home network routers, and Scientific Atlanta, which does set-top boxes. Soon it will add Pure Digital Technologies, the company that makes the Web-friendly Flip Video camera. Cisco has agreed to pay $590 million for the relatively young company, and it's also shelling out $15 million in bonuses to make sure Pure Digital employees stay put.

TomTom has responded to Microsoft's allegations of patent infringement with a lawsuit of its own. Close to three weeks after Microsoft filed complaints against TomTom in the U.S. District Court in Seattle and with the International Trade Commission, TomTom has filed a countersuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Its complaint accuses Microsoft of the unlawful use of TomTom's vehicle navigation software in Microsoft's Streets and Trips product. TomTom is seeking unspecified damages and an injunction.

The Pre can't come out fast enough for struggling smartphone maker Palm. The company reported dismal financial results Friday for the third quarter of its 2009 fiscal year. Revenue fell to $90.6 million, down 71 percent from $312.1 million during the third quarter of 2008. Losses surged to $95 million, up 74 percent from $54.6 million in losses during the year-ago period. Palm sold 482,000 smartphones during the quarter, down 42 percent year-over-year, while smartphone revenue fell 72 percent to $77.5 million compared to the third quarter in 2008.

The economic wolf is at your door, but acid-spewing aliens are threatening you and your squad-mates on some desolate planet. Or it's the ninth frame and you are one strike down against an opponent whose bowling prowess is considerably better than President Obama's. So those worries about jobs and the banking industry will just have to wait, OK? The same need for escapism that packed movie theaters during the Depression of the 1930s appears to keeping the video game industry thriving as the recession of the late 2000s drags on.

The recession is causing a massive consumer shift in Japan: No longer do its famously finicky and brand-conscious consumers assume imported and no-name electronics are as cheap in quality as they are in price. As products from toasters to laptops carry increasingly similar components and special features -- and as consumers increasingly seek bargains -- price is becoming as important a distinction among electronics in Japan as it is in most countries.

Printer and copier maker Xerox on Friday cut its forecast for first-quarter profit nearly 80 percent on restructuring costs and a slowdown in technology spending. Xerox, which also sells printer ink, now expects earnings per share in a range of 3 cents to 5 cents, down from its earlier forecast of 16 cents to 20 cents. Analysts expect, on average, 18 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters. In premarket trading, shares fell 28 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $5.34. In the last 52 weeks, the stock has ranged from $4.12 to $16.

Blockbuster suffered a fourth-quarter loss of $360 million to conclude another difficult year, but the struggling video rental chain has lined up critical financing to buy it more time to adapt to ever-fiercer competition from the Internet and cable services. Despite the tentative agreements with JP Morgan Chase Bank and two other lenders, Blockbuster warned Thursday its auditor is likely to raise doubts about the Dallas-based company's ability to remain afloat.

Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday warned it expects to post a first-quarter pretax loss as it continues to be hurt by falling consumer demand amid the global financial crisis. In a brief statement, the Sony and LM Ericsson joint venture also said it is taking a hit from distributors and retailers reducing their inventories. It predicted a first-quarter loss of between $465 million to $533 million. Ericsson shares fell nearly 9 percent to $8.64 in Stockholm after the announcement.

Data loss prevention has traditionally been considered an on-premise activity. Software as a Service, by definition, is not. However, DLP and SaaS represent major trends in email security with high visibility, and they are often driven by corporate initiatives and senior level decision makers. Similar to the discovery that peanut butter and chocolate go well together when accidentally mixed, when major trends occur in the same space at the same time, interesting new opportunities arise. We now see the emergence of a new market: DLP as a Service.

Once upon a time, business was done smartly and logically. New initiatives were part of long-term plans and all new ideas had to pass muster. Then came a period where a whiff of a trend meant change for change's sake, which was followed by a period most notable for its greed-fest. Combined, these last two periods had little to do with passing muster and everything to do with cutting the cheese -- from bloat to stinky profits. Now, companies around the globe are desperately seeking the recipe for a sweet market pie hoping all the while that it doesn't prove to be a formula for mustard gas.

Sony will be offering 500,000 public domain books that have been indexed by Google on its Sony Reader -- an e-book product that is the primary competitor for Amazon's Kindle, now in its second generation. However, the offering doesn't challenge the sexiest feature of the Kindle -- namely, its ability to download books, magazines and newspapers wirelessly. "Kindle is the device to beat right now," Peter Cohan of Peter Cohan & Associates told the E-Commerce Times.

Google is giving up on selling print ads for the ailing newspaper industry, ending a 2-year-old attempt to extend its dominance of Internet marketing into another medium. The retrenchment announced Tuesday is part of a cost-cutting campaign aimed at boosting Google's profits as the deepening recession eats away at Google's bread-and-butter business of selling ads on its own Web site and thousands of other Internet destinations. Emboldened by its online success, Google set out in November 2006 to help newspapers connect with the Web's growing audience.

A competitor of computing giant IBM has accused Big Blue of violating antitrust laws in the European Union. In a complaint to the European Commission, mainframe computer maker T3 Technologies has accused IBM of using its dominance of the mainframe market to shut out competitors. T3 claims that IBM keeps competitors from selling mainframes by tying the sale of its myriad operating systems to its mainframe products. T3 also claims that IBM has withheld patent licenses and other intellectual property, a move that has hurt competition.

Best Buy, the nation's largest consumer electronics chain, said Wednesday that it has named President and Chief Operating Officer Brian J. Dunn as its new chief executive effective June 24. Dunn, 48, will replace Chief Executive Brad H. Anderson, 59, who is retiring. The company said Dunn will also be named to its board of directors and stand for election at the 2010 meeting of shareholders. Dunn became the company's president three years ago. He began as a store associate in 1985, when Best Buy operated just a dozen stores, and has held several executive roles since.

Every marketing tactic gets more scrutiny when budgets face the severity of a struggling economy. Marketers are increasingly responding to the accountability found in digital marketing, placing their budget toward efforts that they can clearly measure against. Put SEO under this microscope, and it consistently delivers. But marketers need to insure they are getting the most out of search engine optimization, especially during a recession. Every search matters, and an "optimized" SEO effort can yield ever more value to an organization.

The expansion of open source into new markets is prompting consumers to notice alternatives to traditional computing habits. Personal computing power now puts so much opportunity into the hands of consumers that previously impossible activities are possible without exposure to proprietary software. Open source projects are finding their way into full-service business offerings at cost-saving levels for consumers and enterprise alike. Consumers can select from a growing inventory of software in a wide variety of genres

Last week Salesforce.com introduced its new support concept dubbed "The Service Cloud." I have to say it makes a lot of sense both as a product direction and as a business decision. The announcement is in line with many of the business initiatives that the company has made over the last decade in that it is a leapfrog event. The service and support niche is pretty well populated with traditional companies that deliver major league call centers as well as smaller companies that provide most call center functionality over the Web, and some that do both.

Chip giant Intel has slashed the price of some of its microprocessors in what company spokesperson George Alfs has called "a regularly scheduled price move." Among Intel's myriad chips, the Celeron 570 saw the steepest cut, going from $134 to $70, a 48 percent decrease. Other notable price cuts for Intel chips include the Xeon X3370, down 40 percent from $530 to $316; the Core 2 Quad Q9650, down 40 percent from $530 to $316; and the Celeron Mobile 585, down 35 percent from $107 to $70. Intel's stock was down 5.82 percent to $12.92 per share in late-day trading on Tuesday.

Music fans and record labels have long fought over the rights and wrongs of file-sharing, but now an island tax haven in the Irish Sea says it has come up with a way to keep the peace. The Isle of Man's e-business adviser Ron Berry said Tuesday that the self-governing territory between England and Ireland is considering charging a nominal monthly fee to legalize file-swapping for personal use. Although industry groups expressed skepticism, Berry said the plan was a way of replacing piracy with principle.

For anybody who is trying to spend a little less money, a visit to Freecycle may be just the ticket. The concept is a simple one: You sign up for a group based on your ZIP code. Then, if you have something, anything really, you don't want -- a desk, a flowerpot, a printer, even a used Halloween mask -- you post it to the board. The board then e-mails everyone in the group that your item is available. Then the e-mails from people who want the item start to pour in, usually within minutes.