Stories about: Berlin Wall

Is R&D in the US losing focus, or just shifting focus?

If there's one thing the digital revolution has taught us, it's that we shouldn't get too attached to anything. Technology has a way of seizing long-held ideas and entrenched industries and turning them upside-down.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, as the old proverb goes, but who can be flattered by imitation that may violate one's intellectual property?

Many of us thought that the great chasm that divided us into free and not free ceased to be a model of the world orderabout the time that the Berlin Wall fell. Politically, that's true, but a similar chasm is developing today in the worlds of business and IT. In fact, any IT professional who is not thinking in terms of free vs. not free is behind the times. You need to polish your strategy lens and recalibrate your business model. You need to get busy giving stuff away and getting it for free.

Much has been written and said about the latest book from the Pulitzer Prize-winner and New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman.

After 17 years in the distribution game, desktop scanning and imaging distributors Performance Sales is set to be placed in the hands of administrators early next week.

FreeIM, a national group of America Online Inc. competitors that includes Microsoft Corp., iCast and Tribal Voice, Tuesday challenged AOL's testimony about its instant messaging service at the July 27 hearing on the proposed merger of AOL and Time Warner Inc.

You think instant messaging is popular now? Just wait: The technology may appear in everything from cell phones and word processors to washing machines.

Most European entrepreneurs follow a well-beaten path in the United States. They take their ideas to Silicon Valley, gather a team of engineers and MBAs, and set up shop amid the faceless maze of office parks. They play it safe.