NetScout Systems plans to buy Psytechnics, a small developer of service management software for unified communications, for an undisclosed sum.

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Only about a third of more than 1,000 respondents to a Network World online survey believe it’s always wrong to use company equipment to host private video game sessions for groups of players.

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Ousted from his position as chief executive more than two years ago, Twitter creator and co-founder Jack Dorsey on Monday announced his full-time return to the company, where he apparently will lead product development.

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The McAfee.com website is full of security mistakes that could lead to cross-site scripting and other attacks, researchers said in a post on the Full Disclosure site on Monday. The holes with the site were found by the YGN Ethical Hacker Group, and reported to McAfee on Feb. 10, YGN says, before they were publicly disclosed to the security/hacking mailing list.

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Wall Street’s initial reaction to eBay’s announced acquisition of ecommerce services player GSI Commerce (NASDAQ: GSIC) for $2.4 billion could be summed up in two words: eBay overpaid.

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Oracle customers this week expressed concern about the effort and cost of upgrading IT infrastructures after the software maker said it would stop development for Intel’s Itanium chip architecture.

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EBay has agreed to acquire for about US$2.4 billion GSI Commerce, whose suite of e-commerce and digital marketing tools and services are expected to boost eBay’s online marketplace and PayPal e-payment businesses.

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The game of musical chairs continues at Twitter, where co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams will step down as product development leader, a role that will be taken over by Jack Dorsey, another co-founder who had distanced himself from the company’s daily operations.

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Although Apple today announced that its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will begin June 6, analysts are starting to question whether the company will introduce its next iPhone at the event.

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Google, you were so owned.
Speaking at a tech panel in Silicon Valley last Friday, Yahoo senior director of corporate development Steven Mitzenmacher promised an aggressive acquisition strategy in 2011 following the relatively quiet past three years.

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Oracle may reap a tidy profit from reselling the about-to-expire Sun.com domain name

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AT&T plans to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $39 billion, the companies announced Sunday.

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Once Firefox 4 is out the door next week, Mozilla will likely shift to a faster development cycle for its browser, one that resembles the way Google rolls out a constant line of updates for Chrome.

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Samsung SDI has agreed to plead guilty and pay a US$32 million fine for its involvement in a price-fixing controversy related to color tubes used in computer monitors, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday.

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The rising popularity of custom malware and the inability of anti-virus software to keep pace poses potent challenges for enterprises trying to keep their systems secure.

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The devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11 took a tragic toll on human life but also rocked markets this week, sending shares of businesses, including technology vendors, on a rollercoaster ride.

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Criminals in the US have come up with a new way to steal money from cashpoint machines (ATMs) by gluing down keys in a way that stops customers completing a transaction.

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The adult entertainment industry now has a home on the Internet: It’s called .xxx.

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A judge in Delaware on Thursday ordered the unsealing of a letter containing allegations of sexual harassment by former Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd, which ultimately led to his departure from the company.

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In 2010 not “very smart” feature phones – handsets that are dumber than smartphones – comprised over 75 percent of the mobile market.

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Cisco Systems acted to make its Umi home videoconferencing platform more affordable on Monday, slashing the service cost to US$99 per year and announcing a $399 product for slower Internet connections as well as free Mac and PC clients.

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Lenovo on Tuesday announced the ThinkPad X220 laptop, which is one of the early ultraportable laptops running on new processors based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge microarchitecture.

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A New York manufacturer is suing ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendor Infor following a dispute over whether it should have to pay nearly $150,000 in additional license fees.

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As enterprises approach a high level of maturity in their IT governance, risk and compliance (GRC) programs, they face a conundrum: How can they effectively implement and manage policies and their supporting controls to maintain a strong risk posture? To add to the difficulty, the environments they manage are often widely distributed and subject to multiple regulatory requirements and internal audit requirements, and must adapt to changing business needs. GRC tools are designed to help.

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How long does the average CIO stay on the job? Not very long. According to a Gartner Inc. survey of 1,527 CIOs, their average tenure in 2009 was four years and four months, a figure that has changed relatively little over the past several years, according to Mark McDonald, group vice president of Gartner Executive Programs. “It’s been between four years and three months and four years and nine months,” he says.

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YouTube has acquired web video production startup Next New Networks to help contributors to YouTube make successful videos.

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Remember the good ol’ days after the iPad’s release, when users could sign up for an unlimited 3G data plan at $30 per month with no contract? Well, if you’ve been clutching tight to your unlimited plan ever since AT&T switched to its tiered model, then you’re in luck: AT&T has confirmed that, when the iPad 2 arrives on Friday, the good times can keep on rollin’.

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DO agree on an IT-GRC implementation strategy. Moving disjointed, manual processes into an automated, centralized tool is an enormous undertaking. While a giant boa constrictor can unhinge its jaw and swallow a large mammal whole, that strategy is not advisable for your enterprise.

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When people moved from paper to digital files on a computer, it didn’t take long to realize that you can get just as burdened by digital stuff as by hard copies. Before long, companies sprang up to sell utility programs to help you find and organize the stuff on your computer. We’re going through a similar cycle right now, with many of us moving our digital assets to servers in the cloud, and finding that managing stuff scattered across a myriad of sites belonging to a myriad of companies can be terribly frustrating.

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Most analysts break the market down into two broad categories: IT GRC and Enterprise GRC (eGRC). The vendors generally don’t make it any easier for potential enterprise customers, as the IT GRC players often claim they do eGRC, and all the eGRC vendors saying they encompass IT as well.

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After hearing so much about RIM’s PlayBook it was good to get the opportunity to take this one for a spin, and while I certainly see what the fuss is about the device still faces hurdles ahead.

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The Mac App Store is the biggest thing to happen to Mac software distribution since the Internet itself—some might say that the store is even bigger. Many users haven’t bothered with boxes and CDs of software for some time, instead juggling combinations of ZIP files, Mac disc images (DMGs), drag-and-drop operations, and installation wizards.

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The U.S. Department of Commerce launches an office focused on trusted ID technology.

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Oracle and a subsidiary are facing facing a IP theft lawsuit that appears quite similar to Oracle’s successful lawsuit against SAP.

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Security researchers have shown that carefully crafted text messages sent to cell phones via short message service (SMS) can cause them to shutdown without the knowledge of the owner. Popular models by Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola and Samsung Ericsson are said to be affected by what the researchers call ‘SMS-o-Death’.

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Verizon Wireless will expand its LTE network to more than 175 cities by the end of this year, the company revealed at the International Consumer Electronics Show that has also seen aggressive network plans by AT&T and T-Mobile USA.

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For the first time outside of a major auto show, Ford has introduced a new car, the Focus Electric.

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Despite Linux’s growing popularity, trade shows like CES tend to be dominated by Microsoft and other vendors of closed-source products.

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Despite ongoing worries about the strength of the U.S. recovery, sovereign debt in Europe and inflation in various parts of the world, global IT spending is due to increase this year, according to Forrester Research and Gartner.

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Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip and LCD panel maker, said its sales will likely reach a new all-time high in the fourth quarter, but its operating profit will fall substantially compared to the third quarter.

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