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Speech recognition software developer Nuance Communications Inc. has made an offer, valued around $20 million, to buy mobile software maker Zi Corp.

On Wednesday, Verizon Wireless and Samsung Telecommunications America brought the Samsung Omnia to market for the holiday shopping season. The newest Samsung device offers a touchscreen, a customizable user interface, and Windows Mobile 6.1 capabilities.

"The Omnia is an interesting device that further demonstrates the tremendous set of choices for consumers looking for high-end or high-feature phones for the holiday season," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy for Jupitermedia. "It also demonstrates the diversity of the Windows Mobile device ecosystem."

An All-In-One Smartphone

Verizon is billing the Omnia as an all-in-one smartphone with state-of-the-art features, including Samsung's TouchWiz user interface. TouchWiz offers widgets that let users customize and personalize the way they use the phone by using icons to offer one-touch access to customers' favorite and most commonly used applications and features.

The Omnia also has a full on-screen QWERTY keyboard for text messaging, mobile IM, and e-mail messages. The haptic feedback on the touchscreen provides subtle vibrations to confirm selections. And an optical mouse provides easy navigation with finger swipes. It supports the Opera 9.5 Mobile browser.

A true multimedia phone, the Omnia has a 5.0-megapixel camera with digital zoom and power LED flash, a camcorder, stereo Bluetooth wireless, and Wi-Fi. An FM radio is built into the device.

While the BlackBerry Storm, the T-Mobile G1 Android-based phone, and Apple's iPhone 3G may be the ultimate winners this holiday shopping season, analysts said there is room for Windows Mobile-based devices like the Omnia.

Differentiated Windows

With Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, Omnia users can tap into Microsoft Outlook Mobile to stay connected to e-mail, schedules and contacts that can be synchronized over the air. Office Mobile enhances productivity with the ability to manage Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the smartphone.

Windows Mobile 6.1 also enables access to Verizon's VZAppZone, where consumers can download games,...

Hey everyone, we wanted to provide an update on the new Peripherals we are launching this holiday.

Intel joined Taiwanese mobile phone service provider Chunghwa Telecom to launch Giga-byte Technology's M528 mobile Internet device on Monday in Taipei.

Internet criminals have been getting more "professional" for years, trying to run their businesses like Big Business to get better and more profitable at selling stolen data online. Now the bad guys of the cyber-underworld are exhibiting other unexpected traits: remarkable patience and restraint in stalking their victims.

A new report by antivirus software vendor Symantec Corp. details a startling trend that highlights the inventive ways criminals are figuring out ways to make money online.

Hackers are sometimes breaking into online businesses and not stealing anything. Gone are the bull-in-the-China-shop days of plundering everything in sight once they've found a sliver of a security hole.

Instead of swiping all the customer data they can get their hands on, a small subset of hackers have concerned themselves with stealing only a very specific thing from the vendors they breach -- they want access to the compromised companies' payment-processing systems, and nothing else, according to the "Symantec Report on the Underground Economy," slated for release Monday.

Those systems allow the bad guys to check whether credit card numbers being hawked on underground chat rooms are valid, the same way the store verifies whether to accept a card payment or not.

It's a service the crooks sell to other fraudsters who don't trust that the stolen card numbers they're buying from someone else will actually work, and it's good business.

The bad guys hardly touch anything. The customer data for that store's clientele remains intact. They don't install malicious software that turns the compromised machines into spam-spewing robots.

Think of it like taking a used car to a mechanic for an inspection before buying. Only in this case the mechanic's a squatter who's holed up illegally in some other guy's shop and using his tools when no one's around at night. And he cleans up spotlessly once he's done.

"They treat...

In his quest for a bigger share of the highly competitive computer-security market, Eugene Kaspersky treks to 20 to 30 countries a year, promoting the company bearing his name and warning the world about cybercrime.

Cybercrime "is everywhere, and the crooks are getting more organized," says Kaspersky, co-founder and CEO of Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab. "It isn't just in Russia."

The 11-year-old computer-security company, which made its name in its native Russia and Germany, is now setting its sights on the U.S. and elsewhere after establishing a beachhead of retailers in North America the past few years.

In August, his Kaspersky Lab introduced a slew of consumer products in North America, based on its well-regarded security software. It followed that up with an advertising blitz online and in print in the U.S. this fall as it takes on industry giants Symantec and McAfee. The up-and-coming computer-security company is slowly gaining share -- based on market and unit sales in the U.S. and worldwide.

Kaspersky is the only major vendor to improve retail sales of antivirus and computer-security suite software in the U.S. this year. Its sales soared 137%, to $15.5 million, through August, according to The NPD Group.

The company has succeeded in large part because in 2004 it was the first to identify a major shift by hackers to cybercrime, security experts say, and it tapped into a growing audience of consumers who were willing to pay extra for a security-software program to protect their PCs.

When Kaspersky made its pitch to retailers in the spring of 2006, many were skeptical about "another Internet security product on their shelves," says Steve Orenberg, president of Kaspersky Lab. "But Eugene said two things: The threat was changing, and the sophistication of the technology was changing."

In 2006, 200 retail stores in the U.S. and Canada carried Kaspersky products. Today,...

The risk of data theft has never been greater. Businesses, organizations and government agencies (as well as their employees) have access to huge quantities of information -- some of which is not for public consumption. Making matters more complicated for risk managers involved in safeguarding data is that improvements in bandwidth, hard drive size and wireless capabilities have permitted firms to transact business with amazing mobility. With this mobility, however, comes added risk. The volume and speed with which data can be hacked is dizzying. As such, risk managers will increasingly be called upon to ensure that these risks are addressed and minimized as best as possible.

Protecting computer data with both existing and new stand-alone insurance products is no mean feat. The insurance market for such coverage is in a continuous state of flux, and very few of the product offerings can be characterized as "customer-friendly." Purchasing coverage for catastrophic loss events at affordable premiums remains challenging.

One major pitfall of policies that are supposed to cover data involves clauses that purport to condition coverage on the absence of "errors" or "omissions" in the data security measures employed by the policyholder. Such insurance policy clauses can be exploited and disputed by insurance companies seeking to evade their coverage obligations by arguing that the policyholder was somehow derelict in safeguarding computer data from hackers, among others. Furthermore, some policies may attempt to limit insurance coverage in situations where the data breach occurs when a computer is not actively connected to a network. This can leave a serious gap in coverage. Accordingly, policyholders should work with their brokers to pick insurance policy forms that are devoid of as many coverage exclusions as possible. Not all insurance policies are created equal.

Risk managers should be working in tandem with their IT departments and in-house attorneys...

Hewlett-Packard Co. edged past Wall Street's forecast for the latest quarter, showing some resilience in troubled times, as strong laptop sales helped offset falling printer orders and weakness in some server lines.

HP's CEO Mark Hurd, who has won over Wall Street by aggressively slashing HP's expenses, said the economy is getting "tougher and less predictable." He vowed that HP would emerge stronger because of the company's extensive and ongoing cost-cutting moves.

Profit slipped 2 percent, while revenue grew 19 percent, helped by a huge acquisition.

Electronic Data Systems Corp., which HP bought for $13.9 billion to challenge IBM Corp. for more technology-services contracts, added $3.9 billion in revenue.

Severe cost-cutting will help HP meet its financial targets as it digests that deal. HP is cutting 24,600 jobs, nearly 8 percent of its 320,000-employee work force, in a major restructuring designed to save more than $1 billion a year.

HP, which gets more than two-thirds of its sales from outside the United States, managed to stack up some big gains in the latest quarter despite the economic downturn.

The company sold $6.3 billion worth of laptops in the three months ended Oct. 31, a 21 percent increase from a year ago, at a time when customers are scaling back spending and suppliers are struggling. Intel Corp., the world's biggest maker of microprocessors, recently slashed $1 billion from its guidance for the October-December quarter because of falling demand for its chips.

HP did see significant weakness in other key areas, however. Revenue in two server categories declined and printer sales were off. Ink sales, a big reason the printer division contributes half of HP's entire operating profit, were a bright spot. Supplies revenue, including ink, rose 9 percent.

Hurd continues to wring more profit out of the business, in part, because of his focus on reducing expenses.

When the latest...

EF Johnson Technologies, a provider of secure communications, announced that several of its broadband products were issued new FIPS 140-2 encryption validation and certifications from the National Institute of ...