Forrester Research Inc

Last year, Palm thought it had all the pieces for a turnaround in the market it pioneered: A new CEO known for making the iPod a household name, a sleek new smart phone called the Pre and fresh, intuitive operating software.

Instead, the company is in danger of going the way of its 1990s Palm Pilot, making it the latest innovator to learn that great technology and an accomplished leader don't guarantee success.

With the exploding popularity of smartphones, wireless laptops and, if Steve Jobs has his way, tablet computers, it's fast becoming a wireless world. But the breakneck growth of all things wireless is threatening to cause a traffic jam -- of the airwaves that deliver calls, Web searches and video to those data-hungry devices.

We are a company of communicators. We embraced social media years ago as a new way to communicate for ourselves and, also, for our clients to push their business forward in new ways.We have always had a socila media policy to help our staff use social media productively.

We are a company of communicators. We embraced social media years ago as a new way to communicate for ourselves and, also, for our clients to push their business forward in new ways.We have always had a socila media policy to help our staff use social media productively.

Late in January, just hours after SAP reported its fourth-consecutive quarterly drop in sales, executive board member Bill McDermott said that he'd heard the customers' complaints about price increases imposed during a recession and that the world's largest supplier of business software was responding. "I'm not deaf," McDermott said in an interview. He also pointed to signs of a stronger 2010: After two years of belt-tightening, customers were starting to buy software. "CEOs need to grow their businesses again," he said.

Barnes & Noble said Monday that its popular nook e-book reader is back in stock online and will be rolling out in the majority of the bookseller's U.S. stores this week. Customers also will be able to enjoy exclusive Valentine's Day-themed online content this month, the company said.

The nook differs in several ways from many of the e-readers announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, which suffer from either high prices or little access to consumer channels, said Forrester Research Vice President James McQuivey.

Increased access to high-speed Internet connections helps create jobs, though it doesn't always result in higher wages, according to a new research report from the Public Policy Institute of California.

In a new marker for outsourced IT services, Panasonic has announced it will adopt IBM's LotusLive suite of collaboration technologies. This is reportedly the largest cloud-computing arrangement ever, involving support for 100,000 Panasonic workers that will eventually expand to more than 300,000 users, including partners and suppliers.

CA said Monday it has acquired privately held Oblicore, which produces Service Level Management (SLM) software for more than 120 enterprises and service providers, including AT&T, ABN AMRO, British Telecom, Lufthansa and Siemens Medical Solutions. The financial terms were not disclosed.

CA Vice President Jay Fry said the acquisition combines a unique top-down approach to SLM and a strong metrics correlation engine with the CA portfolio of IT management products.

How to help prop up the ailing music industry? Tax Google, suggests a new report commissioned by the French government.

The report, handed to Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand on Wednesday, says Google, Yahoo! and other Internet portals should be slapped with a new tax on their online ad revenues in France to fund the development of legal outlets for buying books, movies and especially music on the Internet.

The proposal is the latest idea to emerge amid France's efforts to fight illegal file-sharing and impose order -- French-style -- on the free-for-all that is the Internet.