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Businesses depend on their customers, and it would make sense that good customer service would translate into loyalty and sales, but high-tech vendors don't seem to have gotten the message. The average customer experience rating for tech vendors fell from 58 percent to 52 percent since last year, in...

It's mid-April, and spring is in the air -- that time of year when a young man's or young lady's thoughts turn to money. Conveniently for us all, the Web browser is a fine place to organize finances, whether you want to get the process over with as fast as possible, or enjoy it in king-is-in-the-cou...

The ETA has announced the formation of the Mobile Payments Committee, a task force that includes representatives from the four main U.S. carriers -- Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile -- as well as Google, Isis, PayPal, Verifone and Intuit. The purpose of the committee is to develop a cohesive b...

Many customers of Intuit's QuickBooks Online are reporting problems with accessing the service for reasons that remain unclear. "I had a problem when I was uploading data from the desktop to QuickBooks Online," Claudia Bolding, owner of accounting software and bookkeeping services company Detailed O...

Managing personal finances once involved lots of paper. Then computer programs came along that helped simplify the process. Now a multitude of mobile apps are available to help people attend to money matters on the go. "It's very convenient to have it in your pocket on your phone," said Garth Scrivn...

In my previous commentary in this space, I suggested that the evolution of the channel in the cloud is entering a new stage in its development. Last month's Dreamforce conference, hosted by Salesforce.com, served as a showcase for a series of new channel initiatives which clearly indicate the growin...

Admit it: You never think about data storage any more. We used to, quite a bit. Long before the storage glut that exists today, there was already too much of it, and it was hard to find places to store it. When we built software, it was with an eye toward maximizing our limited storage capacities...

Salesforce.com is on a buying binge as it attempts to build on its extraordinary sales momentum and broaden its market penetration within existing customer organizations and among new organizations. Since the end of last year, Salesforce.com has acquired five companies starting with Heroku and Etact...

Zuora and Salesforce.com have announced a new offering that highlights the strengths of each company and delivers new functionality to the telecommunications industry. Zuora for the Communications Industry is a solution based on the Force.com platform that handles billing, payments and customer car...

Hundreds of thousands of Gmail users woke up Monday to find their emails had vanished and they had lost their contacts. Initial estimates put the number of people affected at between 150,000 and 500,000. Google's support forums are inundated with messages from angry users. The Internet giant indicat...

Six major high-tech firms have agreed to toss out the no-solicitation agreements they had reached concerning competitors' employees. The secret anti-trolling agreements came to a voluntary end on Friday as the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit and ...

Nokia on Friday announced that it will purchase San Francisco-based mobile analytics firm Motally. The Finnish mobile phone giant did not disclose what it's paying for Motally, but it said the transaction is scheduled to close in the third quarter. The purchase is aimed at helping Nokia, which is lo...

Microsoft on Monday announced the release of the Windows Phone Developer Tools beta; this was followed on Tuesday with the announcement of WinPho7 integration with the Windows Live and Zune services. The moves come as Microsoft works to consolidate its mobile efforts around the Windows Phone 7 platf...

Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, offers remote connectivity tools to the small and medium-sized business market. These include GoToMyPC, which offers remote access; GoToMeeting, an online collaboration tool; GoToTraining, an online training package; and GoToWebinar. Most recently, Citrix...

Citrix Online, a division of Citrix Systems, offers remote connectivity tools to the small and medium-sized business market. These include GoToMyPC, which offers remote access; GoToMeeting, an online collaboration tool; GoToTraining, an online training package; and GoToWebinar. Most recently, Citrix...