vendors

Senate to debate whether online retailers must collect sales tax

The Senate could soon decide whether consumers will have to shell out taxes on more of their online purchases.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is scheduled to hold a hearing today to examine the current policy that exempts many online retailers from collecting sales tax. The present ruling is based on a 1992 Supreme Court decision, which found that businesses without a physical presence in a state are not required to collect state sales tax.

But up for debate this afternoon is the Marketplace Fairness Act (PDF), which would reverse the Supreme Court decision. Senators … Read more

Defcon vending room showcases tech of all ages

LAS VEGAS -- While ninjas inhaled much of the available oxygen in the vendors room, with its truck-based Ninja Tel mobile network, other vendors offered a more esoteric menu of hackables at Defcon this year.

Vendors at the hackers conference came in all sizes. Some signed up hackers to donate their skills to impoverished communities. Others appealed to sartorially minded hackers, with unofficial Defcon 20 T-shirts and other wearables.

In this gallery, CNET showcases three vendors who were offering something interesting or unexpected: Hak5's Darren Kitchen and his penetration-testing tools; Meco proprietor Ira Moser and his collection of antiquated … Read more

Still plenty to see at Macworld 2012

SAN FRANCISCO--The Macworld expo isn't what it once was, but you wouldn't know it from the excitement of both vendors and Mac faithful attending this year's show.

The show started today at Moscone Center West here, and though Macworld no longer attracts the big crowds and big-name vendors it once did, I saw plenty of enthusiastic vendors and showgoers checking out the latest wares for Mac and other Apple products.… Read more

Android Atlas Weekly 32: The Android phone of the future and a blast from the past (podcast)

We take a look at a pie-in-the-sky concept for the Android phone of the future, the old school T-Mobile Sidekick may return as an Android handset, and a YouTube series shows how an Android phone could save your job if you find yourself trapped under a vending machine for a month. All of that and more on this week's edition of Android Atlas Weekly.

Google Names Co-Founder Page New CEO http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-20/google-profit-tops-estimates-on-ad-demand-page-is-named-ceo.html… Read more

LinkedIn chooses ChoiceVendor for acquisition

LinkedIn said today that it has acquired ChoiceVendor, a company that rates and reviews business-to-business service providers.

With the deal, LinkedIn will have B2B reviews for more than 70 categories in the United States. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

ChoiceVendor is run by CEO Yan-David Erlich and Vice President of Engineering Rama Ranganath. Erlich has been at Battery Ventures, Google, and Microsoft. Ranganath worked on Google's AdSense team.

This story, "LinkedIn buys ChoiceVendor, eyes B2B reviews," was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Car care keeper

Like many teenagers, when we first started driving we got a lecture from our father about the importance of vehicle maintenance. We figured that we ought to listen to a guy who's kept most of his vehicles well past the 200,000-mile mark. But it's not always easy to keep up with vehicle maintenance, especially in households with multiple vehicles and drivers. Fortunately for collectors, gearheads, and families with teenagers, there's Vehicle Manager 2010, a simple way to track vehicle and fuel use, maintenance and repairs, automotive expenses, and more.

Vehicle Manager Fleet has a well-designed, intuitive … Read more

Intuitive vehicle database

The average car owner often has trouble keeping up with basic maintenance, so it goes without saying that managing an entire fleet of vehicles is no easy task. Vehicle Manager Fleet Network Edition is a simple way to track vehicle and fuel use, maintenance and repairs, expenses, and more. Best of all, this version of the program makes it easy to set up a network so that the same database can be shared between multiple computers.

Vehicle Manager Fleet has a well-designed, intuitive interface, with large graphic buttons that represent its main features. We found it quite easy to add … Read more

Software industry's false choice for governments

At Microsoft's Public Sector CIO Summit this week, Microsoft is promising governments "choice," a theme normally reserved for the freedom-loving open-source set.

But Microsoft's "choice" campaign is all about giving governments the option to step into the Google-blessed cloud realm without leaving the comfort of their Windows/Office/etc. environments. For some, and perhaps many, this may be just the sort of safe choice they're seeking.

It's not as if the Google alternative is ipso facto better.

After all, while Google and other cloud application providers talk about unshackling governments and enterprises … Read more

IT players in motion

One of the most amazing things about the IT industry over the past two years is how aggressively the vendors have expanded their spheres of operations. Everyone's in motion as the industry rapidly consolidates. Who aims to sell what, to whom, is in enormous flux. Traditional boundaries on what companies will or won't do have gone completely by the wayside.

For example, Cisco doesn't just sell networking; it also sells servers and collaboration tools. Oracle will be a server and storage company, in addition to applications and middleware. EMC has been transforming into a management and security … Read more

2010 will be a wild ride for IT

This year is going to be amazingly full of change in IT. "Ennnh, IT sees a lot of change every year," you say? Yes, fine and true. But not like this one. Not at this magnitude. Consider:

Virtualization is being taken up at such a pace that it's hard to find a metaphor to describe it. "Exploding" has a pieces-coming-apart-at-high-speed vibe, when in fact virtualization's pieces are all coming together. "Imploding" doesn't work either. We've had maybe five years of fast growth, but now it's mainstream and ready for … Read more