Some companies are taking the next step with social-networking sites. These retailers are selling direct to consumers.

Large retailers have taken advantage of their social media presence in the past with special promotions. Hallmark ran a special twist on the Mother's Day card as a tribute to Moms on Facebook with the Hallmark Mother's page. Since April 19, over 1000 users have sent tributes to their moms, with Hallmark Facebook fans now totaling over 68,000. This is up from just 250 fans last November!

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There are a number of unsavory ways in which criminals can conduct attacks against you and your colleagues. Do not let yourself or your users become victims of an attack.

One mechanism is malware embedded within websites that can penetrate your antivirus software defenses to steal sensitive personal information. It used to be the case that having a strong anti-virus package would do the trick. However, these days, this malware software can all too often pass these defenses undetected.

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Microsoft filed a lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Western Washington against Salesforce.com for patent infringement. The complaint alleges Salesforce.com violated the nine patents including:

• 7,251,653: Method and system for mapping between logical data and physical data
  
• 5,742,768: System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu
  
• 5,644,737: Method and system for stacking toolbars in a computer display
  
• 6,263,352: Automated web site creation using template driven generation of active server page applications
  
• 6,542,164: Timing and velocity control for displaying graphical information
  
• 5,845,077: Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer
  
• 5,941,947: System and method for controlling access to data entities in a computer network

So be careful how you conduct data mapping and design software or you too could be in for a surprise!

Both companies are investing heavily in building competing platforms for cloud computing — Force.com from Salesforce.com and Microsoft's Azure.

Business spending on software services is up as companies realize the economy enters a "second phase of recovery". This is according to John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems Inc. The Commerce Department claims that the business spending on equipment and software rose at a 13.3% annual rate in the fourth quarter, the fastest growth since early 2006.

Cisco's third quarter earnings represented a return to balance across the board by geography and customer segments. Cisco has a track record of emerging from recessions and continuing to grow. We should all follow suit!

We held our first webinar for a major customer yesterday. This webinar was designed for sales representatives around the country to understand best practices in the use of the Customer Portal we built. I wanted to share some of the highlights and lessons that we learned in putting together this webinar. This was the first time we've done a webinar — we have done many one-on-one web demos with conference calls to clients, however this was the first time we ventured into the realm of webinars. More...