Eric Nee

A new year has begun, and some folks in the technology business are getting ready to party like it’s 1999. And why not? After suffering through a prolonged—and for the IT industry a particularly brutal—recession, the U.S. economy seems to be roaring back. Productivity and gross domestic product grew 9.4 percent and 8.2 percent respectively […]

Need to find out which U.S. cities have the largest numbers of Korean-born residents for the launch of a new product? Google it. Want to locate someone you used to work with to offer her a job? Google her. Looking for the latest news about your lunch date’s employer? Google the company. It wasn’t that […]

As if cast in the image of its creator Linus Torvalds, Linux has become the fair-haired boy of the computer industry. Over the past dozen years, Linux has grown in popularity and matured in capability at a fast if not spectacular rate. Today it stands on the cusp of becoming one of just two contenders […]

I was having dinner with a couple of friends recently when one of them mentioned that a team of engineers from Intuit was going to visit his house and spend a couple of hours watching him use Quicken. Intuit has been doing this for years as part of its “follow me home” program. Instead of […]

My wife and I went shopping for a new car recently at a Toyota dealership in Palo Alto, Calif. A downcast man in his mid-fifties who had just been laid off from his IT job at a restaurant chain came out to wait on us. He was the kind of guy who clearly felt more […]

Every so often, industries undergo jarring upheavals as innovators forge breakthroughs in technology and new ways of doing business. Companies that once towered comfortably over their rivals are toppled, and new ones rise up to take their place. That’s exactly what’s happening in computers as Dell Computer continues to turn the hardware business inside out. […]

During the past two years, business has dramatically cut back on information technology spending, and next year is shaping up to be nearly as bad. Considering the dismal state of the economy and the exorbitant IT spending that immediately preceded the slump, that should come as no surprise. No one expects IT spending to go […]

It’s estimated that there are a mere 7,000 people in the U.S. who pay a monthly subscription to a public Wi-Fi network—and I am one of them. I guess that makes me an early adopter, having subscribed since May, when I began leasing an office in downtown Palo Alto, Calif. I picked that location because […]

It has never been easy for business software companies to break into the exclusive billion-dollar club—hitting $1 billion or more in annual revenues. Only 14 pure software companies (not including giants such as IBM that also sell hardware) have managed to reach the magic number. And it is getting tougher, not easier. Just two companies […]

The merger of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer has created more hubbub than any merger in the history of the IT industry. HP CEO Carly Fiorina and her cohorts crisscrossed the country exhorting shareholders to vote for the merger, while key shareholder Walter Hewlett followed behind, encouraging fellow shareholders to vote the deal down. The campaign […]