Stories by Heather Havenstein

IBM tools aim to extend SOA quality management

IBM Tuesday announced two new Rational development tools and an upgraded Tivoli application management offering, which the company says will let users expand the quality of services in a service-oriented architecture.

Tool will let Second Life residents rate one another

RatePoint on Monday plans to introduce a service that will allow residents of the Second Life online society to rate one another. The ratings promise to help them make better decisions about choosing who to socialize or do business with in the virtual world, the vendor said.

Customers, analysts question Oracle's Hyperion buy

An Oracle purchase of business intelligence vendor Hyperion Solutions will likely benefit Oracle, but Hyperion users could find cutbacks in product upgrades and less negotiating leverage, users and analysts said. Oracle Thursday agreed to buy the maker of business intelligence tools for US$3.3 billion.

Stock selloff hits online brokerages

Tuesday's stock selloff took a toll on some of the online brokerages in the U.S., with many slowing to a crawl or presenting investors with error messages when they tried to make trades.

MySpace for grown-ups

Portland Trailblazers fans are using a new social networking Web site set up last week by the team to join together and lobby the National Basketball Association to add Trailblazers power forward Zach Randolph to the lineup for Sunday's NBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas.

3GSM - Microsoft launches 'mashup' contest for developers

Microsoft and British Telecommunications Monday launched a competition to encourage developers to create "network mashups" that merge telecommunications features like voice and text messaging with Web 2.0 applications like mapping and search. A "mashup" application or web site combines content from multiple sources.

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