Cisco isn't content to just sell products for the deepest, darkest innards of the data center. It's also got its eye on consumer technology. It already has Linksys, which sells stuff like home network routers, and Scientific Atlanta, which does set-top boxes. Soon it will add Pure Digital Technologies, the company that makes the Web-friendly Flip Video camera. Cisco has agreed to pay $590 million for the relatively young company, and it's also shelling out $15 million in bonuses to make sure Pure Digital employees stay put.

TomTom has responded to Microsoft's allegations of patent infringement with a lawsuit of its own. Close to three weeks after Microsoft filed complaints against TomTom in the U.S. District Court in Seattle and with the International Trade Commission, TomTom has filed a countersuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Its complaint accuses Microsoft of the unlawful use of TomTom's vehicle navigation software in Microsoft's Streets and Trips product. TomTom is seeking unspecified damages and an injunction.

The Pre can't come out fast enough for struggling smartphone maker Palm. The company reported dismal financial results Friday for the third quarter of its 2009 fiscal year. Revenue fell to $90.6 million, down 71 percent from $312.1 million during the third quarter of 2008. Losses surged to $95 million, up 74 percent from $54.6 million in losses during the year-ago period. Palm sold 482,000 smartphones during the quarter, down 42 percent year-over-year, while smartphone revenue fell 72 percent to $77.5 million compared to the third quarter in 2008.

The economic wolf is at your door, but acid-spewing aliens are threatening you and your squad-mates on some desolate planet. Or it's the ninth frame and you are one strike down against an opponent whose bowling prowess is considerably better than President Obama's. So those worries about jobs and the banking industry will just have to wait, OK? The same need for escapism that packed movie theaters during the Depression of the 1930s appears to keeping the video game industry thriving as the recession of the late 2000s drags on.

The recession is causing a massive consumer shift in Japan: No longer do its famously finicky and brand-conscious consumers assume imported and no-name electronics are as cheap in quality as they are in price. As products from toasters to laptops carry increasingly similar components and special features -- and as consumers increasingly seek bargains -- price is becoming as important a distinction among electronics in Japan as it is in most countries.

Printer and copier maker Xerox on Friday cut its forecast for first-quarter profit nearly 80 percent on restructuring costs and a slowdown in technology spending. Xerox, which also sells printer ink, now expects earnings per share in a range of 3 cents to 5 cents, down from its earlier forecast of 16 cents to 20 cents. Analysts expect, on average, 18 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters. In premarket trading, shares fell 28 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $5.34. In the last 52 weeks, the stock has ranged from $4.12 to $16.

Blockbuster suffered a fourth-quarter loss of $360 million to conclude another difficult year, but the struggling video rental chain has lined up critical financing to buy it more time to adapt to ever-fiercer competition from the Internet and cable services. Despite the tentative agreements with JP Morgan Chase Bank and two other lenders, Blockbuster warned Thursday its auditor is likely to raise doubts about the Dallas-based company's ability to remain afloat.

Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson on Friday warned it expects to post a first-quarter pretax loss as it continues to be hurt by falling consumer demand amid the global financial crisis. In a brief statement, the Sony and LM Ericsson joint venture also said it is taking a hit from distributors and retailers reducing their inventories. It predicted a first-quarter loss of between $465 million to $533 million. Ericsson shares fell nearly 9 percent to $8.64 in Stockholm after the announcement.

Once upon a time, business was done smartly and logically. New initiatives were part of long-term plans and all new ideas had to pass muster. Then came a period where a whiff of a trend meant change for change's sake, which was followed by a period most notable for its greed-fest. Combined, these last two periods had little to do with passing muster and everything to do with cutting the cheese -- from bloat to stinky profits. Now, companies around the globe are desperately seeking the recipe for a sweet market pie hoping all the while that it doesn't prove to be a formula for mustard gas.

Data loss prevention has traditionally been considered an on-premise activity. Software as a Service, by definition, is not. However, DLP and SaaS represent major trends in email security with high visibility, and they are often driven by corporate initiatives and senior level decision makers. Similar to the discovery that peanut butter and chocolate go well together when accidentally mixed, when major trends occur in the same space at the same time, interesting new opportunities arise. We now see the emergence of a new market: DLP as a Service.

Sony will be offering 500,000 public domain books that have been indexed by Google on its Sony Reader -- an e-book product that is the primary competitor for Amazon's Kindle, now in its second generation. However, the offering doesn't challenge the sexiest feature of the Kindle -- namely, its ability to download books, magazines and newspapers wirelessly. "Kindle is the device to beat right now," Peter Cohan of Peter Cohan & Associates told the E-Commerce Times.

Networking giant Cisco Systems continues its aggressive push into the consumer sector with the acquisition of Flip Video camera maker Pure Digital Technologies for a whopping $590 million in stock. "The acquisition of Pure Digital is key to Cisco's strategy to expand our momentum in the media-enabled home and to capture the consumer market transition to visual networking," said Ned Hooper, senior vice president of Cisco's corporate development and consumer groups. In addition, Cisco will provide up to $15 million in retention-based equity incentives for continuing employees.

Check out the user comments on any mobile phone-related blog or Web site these days; you'll find both success stories and horror stories from those who say they've busted their iPhones out of AT&T network prison. The Apple phone works on this different network, doesn't on that different network, works fine on overseas 3G networks, keeps dropping calls on its original AT&T network -- a complaint heard in Austin, Texas, during last weekend's South by Southwest Interactive conference.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is still signaling an interest in a deal to buy part of Yahoo. Ballmer said at a technology and media summit Thursday in New York that a deal would help improve Microsoft's Web search business by expanding the base of users. More people using the search engine means more advertisers -- and, Ballmer says, a larger pool of advertisers will allow for more tailored ads next to search queries. Ballmer said he has had only one conversation with Carol Bartz since she became Yahoo's chief executive in January.

Taking a cue from Amazon.com, Sun Microsystems plans to launch its own "public cloud" service, which will let everyone from big-time corporations to dorm-room entrepreneurs run their businesses on Sun's computers without buying hardware of their own. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun planned to announce the offering Wednesday, in a move that reflects the growing interest in so-called "cloud computing," which is industry jargon for providing computing resources over the Internet.

With banks around the world foundering, the idea of moving your bank account to another planet might have some appeal. Interstellar banking isn't here yet, but at least you can pretend. The publisher of the online science-fiction game "Entropia Universe," set on the planet Calypso, received a banking license from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority last week and plans to open a real bank within a year, albeit one without physical, walk-in branches. Players of "Entropia" already exchange real money for a virtual currency that is used for their expenses on Calypso.

Oracle's sales force pulled off a big feat in the business software maker's latest quarter, sustaining a healthy clip of contract signings amid a dreary time for technology spending. The efforts helped push Oracle's sales and profit above Wall Street's forecasts. Oracle also surprised investors by declaring its first dividend, a rare sign of confidence that comes as other bellwethers are cutting or suspending their dividends to save money. Oracle's shares jumped $1.11, or 7 percent, to $16.94 in after-hours trading Wednesday after Oracle reported its results.

Successfully leveraging an organization's collective knowledge has been an aspirational goal for decades, but many companies have deemed the effort as a "mission impossible" after investing time and money into these projects. Companies have built out information strategies that leveraged sprawling data repositories and sophisticated business intelligence reporting tools; these systems published very precise data but they fell short in helping a distributed workforce apply knowledge to improve their business execution.

This week, the gaming industry saw a challenger in the portable gaming market grow more powerful, and its name is iPhone. The platform's upcoming 3.0 software, which Apple previewed, includes new ways for game makers to make money, which may attract even more developers with even more serious offerings. In other reaches of the gaming universe, it looks like there's more cost-cutting going on at THQ; Nintendo intends to charge UK vendors more for the Wii, and the economic downturn could lead to longer lifecycles for current-generation gaming consoles.

Computing giant IBM could be close to buying struggling server maker Sun Microsystems for US$7 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Though Sun is best known for making high-end servers, the crown jewel of the company's technology portfolio is its software, especially the widespread Internet programming language known as "Java." Sun designed the Solaris operating system that powers its servers and workstations. Solaris is an offshoot of Unix. In addition, Sun designed a free software suite of desktop applications known as "OpenOffice."