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Customer testimonials play an odd role in many IT industry announcements. At first glance, they offer proof that technologies are actually being used successfully as advertised, lending credence to vendors' sometimes lofty go-to-market claims. Even the most enthusiastic clients tend to guarded, though, for fear that they may injure relationships with other vendors or negate whatever competitive advantages a new technology affords them.

"LG's Chrome filings signal obvious support for the Google OS, but it could also indicate growing interest by vendors in promoting Chromebooks as low-cost yet robust alternatives to both PCs and tablets," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "The crowded Chromebook playing field -- with offerings from Acer, Samsung, HP and others -- suggests that demand is growing."

It doesn't take a genius to perceive the difficulties mainline PC vendors have faced over the past three to four years. As user preferences have shifted toward ultramobile products such as smartphones and tablets, PC makers and core allies have suffered enough stumbles, false starts and pratfalls in their attempts to keep up to populate a Hangover movie.

"If the Snowden data is accurate, the NSA is trying to reverse-engineer a social network from the data side rather than the user side," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told TechNewsWorld. "That's the kind of thing companies like Facebook do on a day-to-day basi...

Lenovo's motives for creating the device are likely similar to those of Dell, "which launched its own Android-based tablets last week," suggested Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "That is, to deliver a device aimed at consumers who want a simple device that can tak...

"This is a security issue," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "Credit card fraud is so rampant right now. Basically what PayPal is doing is creating a second line of defense with retailers to make sure that the people using the credit cards are the people they say they are."

Silicon Valley loves an underdog. That's partly because such tales feed the industry's self-mythologizing and the IPO culture that attracts fresh money and new investors. To be honest, IT can boast more than its fair share of such successes: Hewlett and Packard, Jobs and Wozniak, and Page and Brin all helped make the industry what it is today and, in turn, inspired a Gold Rush mentality of remarkable durability...

Overall, Linux "tends to be more developer-driven, so it'll be interesting to see how Steam's strategy plays out," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT www.pund-it.com, told LinuxInsider "It does serve [Valve's] interest that [SteamOS] is a free and open source OS that...

"RealNetworks' new cloud service is a good example of a company aiming for a neglected or ignored niche -- in this case, creating a video service that isn't beholden to any single platform or device," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times "That ...

There is speculation that Box is positioning itself against Google Docs but "that notion seems built mostly on hyperbole," suggested Charles King, principal at Pund-IT "While Box has certainly done well for itself, its customers and resources represent a tiny comparative frac...

"Reducing Capex costs looks good on a company's balance sheet and leaves more cash on the books to deal with potential or unknown problems," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told TechNewsWorld "Additionally, customers typically have the right to adjust their subscr...

Technology has always enabled the "factorification" of processes and skills for both users and suppliers of IT. The success of early computing solutions rested in replacing hundreds and thousands of Bob Cratchett-like professionals with systems that required few, if any, sick days and no vacations. ...

Indeed, "overall, Beacon appears to address many of the issues and challenges that have held back digital wallet adoption," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times That said, however, "credit cards have succeeded for generations by taking complexi...

"The CuBox-i seems to be a bit more commercially oriented," noted Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "That is, it is meant to support a bunch of multimedia devices and support any Linux operating system including Android. It seems to be a little more of a conventional small-footprint computer."

Android's tie-in with KitKat is a marketing move that is "distinctly different and refreshing compared to the 'We'll spend whatever it takes to be innovative' or 'Honestly, this will change your effing life' exercises that are so common in high tech," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, remarked...

Still, "previous outages haven't seemed to slow the uptake of AWS, so perhaps Amazon's customers believe that the value they receive somehow balances out poor reliability and quality of service," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times The Blame ...

"Allotting only 30 days for selling an effort that relies deeply on enterprise support was a boneheaded mistake," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told the E-Commerce Times Canonical had offered 50 enterprise bundles for $80,000, each consisting of 115 Edge smartpho...

"What we are seeing here is a steady evolution of the personalization of mapping," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told TechNewsWorld Whereas MapQuest and many of the other early mapping companies "were simply taking what was on a physical map and putting it online...

No matter how important or well intentioned, technology industry press releases are seldom entirely free of hyperbole. So in parsing any announcement, it's good to keep an eye on 1) what is being done; 2) who is involved; and 3) how and why the world will be different if they succeed ...

The problem with Microsoft's YouTube app is "something of a moving target," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "It was first removed from the Play store for supporting features including video downloading that Google disapproved of "After a revised version that d...