TOP STORIES
Sun comes around on channelling middlemen
Stephen Ellis FOR two decades, many of the most fiercely contested battles between major IT vendors have been over differing strategies for selling to (and supporting) customers.
Big picture takes iPhone beyond web
Stephen Ellis YES, this is yet another media item about the iPhone, but rather than hyping (or slamming) the device itself, excoriating Apple and/or its telecoms partners over pricing and launch glitches, or capturing user reaction, it's about the iPhone as part of a bigger picture.
Walled gardens not about to take over net
Stephen Ellis THE internet may be slowly choking books, newspapers and perhaps even some traditional concepts of what reading involves, as many argue, but a surprisingly large number of its ideas, memes and controversies still begin their lives as ink on dead trees.
Yahoo no easy meal for Microsoft
Stephen Ellis AS rumours swirl around the tech world of Yahoo and Microsoft taking yet another tilt at a merger, alliance or other arrangement to compete with Google for online advertising, it's hard not to wonder whether Steve Ballmer and his team are pursuing the wrong partner in the wrong market.
Big money chasing social network sites may be in for small returns
Stephen Ellis IS the social networking boom of the past three years falling apart before the real fun has even begun? It's early days, but there have been several hints that the internet's next big thing may not be turning out to be as big as its backers hoped.
Enterprise technology progress snags
Stephen Ellis THE rapid changes unfolding across consumer technology markets - in digital media, mobile devices, Web 2.0 and the rest - are highly visible (and heavily hyped), but it's not so easy to gauge the similar transformation under way in enterprise IT.
HP recovery a victory for Hurd ... and Fiorina
Stephen Ellis HEWLETT-PACKARD'S strong financial results last week were fresh evidence that the IT industry is not, so far, feeling much pain from the US downturn, and an emphatic reminder of the dramatic turnaround chief executive Mark Hurd has achieved at the California firm.
Yahoo, Microsoft to resume merger talk
Stephen Ellis NEVER say never must be about the most frequently used cliche in the mergers and acquisitions game, and for good reason.
Games point to software's future
Stephen Ellis AS information technology vendors and users ponder the future of software, wondering when and how today's shrinkwrapped products will morph into web-delivered services, they should keep an eye on the games industry.
Time Machines standard for backup
ANYONE who has upgraded to Apple's new version of OSX, Leopard, knows that one of its more obvious features is an invisible, automatic, built-in backup.
US mobile industry in turmoil
THE demise of the $US95 billion ($108 billion) US mobile phone industry as we know it is not quite imminent, but if the events of the past week are taken at face value, it seems a lot closer today than it was last Tuesday.
Rudd must avoid US broadband idea
AS the new Labor Government considers how to deliver on its promise of improving Australia's broadband infrastructure, one market it should avoid borrowing ideas from is the US.