Security-software maker Symantec Corp.’s quarterly profit rose 19 percent as higher margins and strong sales of its Norton computer-security tools to consumers stemmed revenue declines in its corporate business.
Although the company said it is seeing continuing caution among corporate buyers, it has stemmed some of the sharp declines it reported in the previous quarter.
A recent shift in merchandising strategy by the world’s largest retailer spells more trouble for DVD sales and the entertainment industry that depends on them for profits.
As part of a larger effort to clean up its aisles and appeal to higher-end shoppers, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is doing away with display cases to promote the latest hot movie titles.
The Web can be a mean-spirited place. But when it comes to online reviews, the Internet is a village where the books are strong, YouTube clips are good-looking and the dog food is above average.
One of the Web’s little secrets is that when consumers write online reviews, they tend to leave positive ratings: The average grade for things online is about 4.3 stars out of five.
Consumers are helping pull the technology sector out of one of its worst-ever slumps, and optimism is building that businesses may also start switching on their spending soon.
That upbeat picture emerged as some bellwether technology suppliers issued numbers that were stronger than Wall Street expected, though still reflecting the recession’s harsh effects.
Freaking out about the easier opt-outs proposed by some online-privacy advocates? Maybe you don’t have so much to worry about.
TiVo this morning announced a multi-part deal with Best Buy that includes the development of a special version of the TiVo player that would include specialized content–oh, okay, advertising–from the electronics retailer.
The U.S. Supreme Court today cleared the way for Cablevision to offer a network DVR service, allowing consumers to record copies of television programming “in the cloud,” rather than on set-top boxes. Without comment, the court refused to review a Court of Appeals ruling that rejected claims by film studios and television networks that the network DVR approach would infringe copyrights.
RealNetworks is upping the ante in litigation seeking to prevent it from distributing DVD-copying software.
Consumers still aren’t buying gadgets.
The latest Commerce Department retail sales data, which showed a disappointing 0.4 percent fall overall in April from March, includes a 2.8 percent drop in sales at electronics and appliance stores, which is worse than any other individual category.
Prepaid wireless carriers have gotten a lot of attention in recent months because of the ailing economy, which has helped them as consumers seek out cheaper cellphone plans.
There are some novel techie elements to Intel’s new “Sponsors of Tomorrow” ad campaign, which the Journal covered in an article Tuesday.
Greystripe, an ad network for mobile applications and games, has a new report showing how consumers are using free iPhone applications.
Apple’s iTunes makes saving music from CDs onto one’s personal computer a simple process, but doing the same with a DVD is much more complicated endeavor. Most DVDs are encoded with digital rights management technology to prevent copying.
Basketball fans, beware.
Hackers are taking advantage of bracket-related Web surfing and initiating some madness of their own, with tactics as sneaky as spreading malicious software through March Madness blog posts.
Online security company Websense discovered two March Madness-related malware scams earlier this week, one in the form of URLs posted in blog comments that took users to a phony antivirus scanning site, and another as a search-engine-optimization scam that infected basketball-related terms and pushed them to the top in Google.
During a long career as a television and technology executive, Mitch Berman has tried to sell several different iterations of TV, often in their formative stages. Now, Berman is onto the next new thing, delivering TV through the Internet.
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