SMB

A rising tide of interest has sparked a series of competitive moves among the widening array of software and technology providers vying for a share of the rapidly expanding IoT market. The enormous promise has driven a growing number of large and small players to rebrand and reposition their product...

Google on Wednesday announced that it has begun factoring websites' use of HTTPS into its search rankings, resulting in more favorable results for those that use the security-minded protocol. "Over the past few months we've been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted c...

Google on Wednesday unveiled a handful of new features for Google Apps for Business designed to attract more enterprise customers. Google Hangouts, its video chat service, will be further integrated into Google's enterprise suite, entitling Google Apps for Business customers to the same level of sup...

Path has hived off its mobile-only messaging service as a standalone app named "Talk," it said Friday. It also ended limits on the number of friends users can communicate with, and announced its purchase of place messaging pioneer TalkTo as it sets itself for growth. The Talk app has a new feature, ...

Small businesses have been an elusive market for sellers of online advertising. That's because the value proposition of those ads is a tough sell. Facebook hopes to reduce some of the resistance in the small business community to advertising online with a series of summer boot camps, dubbed "Faceboo...

U.S. government agencies are moving briskly into the mobile era, spurred by the fast pace of technological change. The scope of the federal mobile market is broad-based, and to some degree depends upon what is meant by such terms as "wireless," "mobility" and "digital." The parameters of that market...

Google is moving into a new market with the launch of its teleconferencing system, Chromebox for Business. The system uses the Chrome operating system and is built on Chrome's core tenets of simplicity, speed and security. It marries Google+ Hangouts and Google Apps to allow meeting participants to ...

By now, if you're an IT professional and you're in an organization that has PCI-DSS in your scope -- that is, you store, process or transmit credit card data -- you probably already know that an update to the standard, Version 3.0, was released late last year. With this update come a few changes to ...

Microsoft and GoDaddy on Tuesday announced they were partnering to market Microsoft's Office 365 to GoDaddy's 12 million small business users. GoDaddy's small business users can attach Office 365 to a domain name and get access to cloud storage and Microsoft's productivity suite. 24/7 live customer ...

Kickstarter on Wednesday released a breakdown of its successful 2013. Three million backers pledged $480 million to help finance 19,911 projects. The company saw plenty of repeat backers: 807,733 people pledged to more than one project; 81,090 backed more than 10; and 975 people donated to more than...

Mentioning virtualization technology to typical computer users in a work environment will get you a puzzled look. Despite the apparent obscurity of this IT trend, virtualization is making an increasingly large impact on small to medium-sized businesses. Some type of virtualization was reported in pl...

PayPal on Tuesday announced Payment Code, a new tool that allows customers to pay for in-store purchases by simply presenting a QR code or four-digit number at the cash register. Similar in some ways to PayPal Beacon, which the company rolled out last month, Payment Code is intended both to simplify...

Last week, I met with Aio Wireless, a subsidiary of AT&T. As an industry analyst for almost 30 years, I have met with my share of companies -- new and old, growing and struggling. They all want to put on a good front so I'll say nice things about them. Each has its own special set of opportuniti...

Any time the U.S. government signals it is embarking on a program to invest tens of billions of dollars, potential vendors take notice -- especially during a time of spending restraint. The federal government, through the General Services Administration, has launched a new program for the procuremen...

GlassUp is seeking to raise $150,000 on Indiegogo to fund production of its eponymous product. The GlassUp glasses will serve mainly as a display and will connect to mobile devices through Bluetooth. Models equipped with a camera or a prescription glasses option, or both, are also being planned. Gla...