Facing lower demand and a struggling economic recovery, the recent quarter was far from stellar for Juniper Networks, according to news reports. The company reported profits for the fourth quarter of $96.2 million compared to $190.2 million during the same quarter during the prior year, according to news reports.

In addition, the company’s revenue was $1.12 billion, which was also lower than the prior year’s quarter – $1.19 billion, according to MarketWatch. Analysts were predicting revenue of $1.13 billion, MarketWatch adds, citing data from FactSet Research.

Amazon is contemplating a move towards recasting its online video service, now a feature of Amazon Prime, as a stand-alone, subscription-based service that would compete more directly with Netflix.

Netflix, for its part, seems to think that is probable. Most observers would tend to agree that, ultimately, Netflix is likely to face more direct competition from the likes of Hulu and Amazon, at least in part, in Amazon’s case, because the business logic behind products such as the Kindle Fire is to create a massive consumer base that is predisposed to purchasing more content that Amazon sells.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news over the past couple of months, then you’ve no doubt heard of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, which was introduced in the House of Representatives on October 26, 2011. SOPA called for a crackdown on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content.

SOPA, which was recently killed by sponsor and House Representative Lamar Smith, would have represented a fundamental change in the way the Internet works today and would have undermined all Software as a Service (SaaS)/cloud companies. If the bill had passed, it could have been a sign that additional countries could follow suit with their own legislation which would inevitably hurt businesses operating internationally and their ability to provide services in other countries.

This morning, Sansay has announced proven interoperability between its VSXi session border controller and BroadSoft’s BroadWorks platform extending its reach into a new potential customer pool of more than 400 operators.

At the same time, it now offers BroadSoft operators an alternative to AcmePacket.

“The industry will benefit from the added choice and we’re excited about being able to help some of these Broadsoft operators with their growth plans,” says Dave Walters, VP of marketing at Sansay.

Joomla has long been one of the most trusted MySQL providers around and the company is now looking to grow outside its own self imposed borders. Joomla has just released the 2.5 version of its content management service (CMS) that is aimed at allowing the company increase its profile both in the business and enterprise communities. This particular version of Joomla will allow the company to offer multi-database support for the Microsoft SQL Server right at launch, and it will be offering support for Oracle in the very near future.

Joomla 2.5 will also have features such as a natural language search engine and automatic delivery and notification of updates as well as new extensions. A member of Joomla’s Production Leadership Team, Andrea Tarr noted that the addition of a new database to the framework of the PHP extraction layer will allow better scalability. This is quite the jump from when Joomla was only supporting MySQL and could mean big time growth for the project in the months and years to come.

The most recent earnings reports from Verizon and KPN indicate where growth and weakness exist in the global telecom industry. To the extent there is strength, it is in the mobile services space, though signs of trouble are growing for some service providers. Fixed line services are flat at best.

Verizon earnings and revenue growth during the fourth quarter of 2011 were strong. Verizon had revenue of $28.4 billion, an increase of 7.7 percent from the same quarter of 2010.

After adjustments for a strike, a huge snowstorm, a pension charge and higher costs for Apple iPhone subsidies, Verizon earned 52 cents a share, just below analyst forecasts of 53 cents, so share prices dipped after the earnings were released.

The new CEO of Research In Motion says the company’s management shake-up will not lead to a seismic change – a statement that has some analysts concerned for RIM’s future.

Thorsten Heins, who just was promoted to the top spot, said on Monday during a conference call that the company will not be broken up into smaller units and basically expressed confidence in its current strategy, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The company, which makes the once-thriving BlackBerry, has been struggling to compete in the competitive and fast-changing sector. RIM has been losing out to smartphone rivals such as Apple and Samsung, according to TechZone360.

Research in Motion has made a change at the top, removing its co-CEOs and putting in Thorsten Heins as CEO. RIM’s problem was largely one of demand generation and perception that the company was out of date with the times in a market that is driven by companies who create the image of being cutting edge. It is a market shifting from a focus on hardware as the major differentiator to one focused on what applications the devices run and what content they can access. The good news is that few companies currently selling into this market have hardware vendors are expert in either area; the bad news is that Google is an expert and Apple is gaining expertise at a massive rate, and one stands behind a Microsoft-like vendor ecosystem and the other was the most powerful tech company last decade.

This has been a rough news day for Apple and Google – it started with information regarding a class-action lawsuit pertaining to handshake no-poaching agreements and from there we have news of just how onerous the iBooks 2 policies are for new authors. Now it’s back to Google where the company seems to be “tying” a term used to describe a company with a dominant position in one space used to force users to purchase a product or service they do not want.

It turns out the search engine leader – many would call a monopoly- is forcing account users to join Google+. MSNBC details a work-around but who knows if it will last. Perhaps it is there to prevent the DoJ from expanding its antitrust probe?

Virtualization, cloud computing, and wireless technology are fundamentally changing enterprise computing, providing revolutionary gains in productivity and cost savings. Powerful enterprise applications can now be delivered to almost any device, anywhere, at any time and take advantage of tremendous computing power available in consumer devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Regardless of whether these devices are issued corporately or personally owned, almost every IT department is experiencing the effects of unprecedented smart device adoption in their enterprise.

These changes demand that IT organizations think strategically about their Wi-Fi™ infrastructures, so that they can maximize the benefits of mobility and virtualization while helping ensure the flexibility needed to accommodate rapid growth and changing user needs. Integrating this new world of mobile, virtual computing begins with selecting the right wireless access infrastructure that can:

I finally realized what has been missing from my life these past 25 years, why everything has seemed to be absent of something, every glass half-full. It’s because there was no social networking platform for rap fans involving virtual mansions belonging to Snoop Dogg.

But now, thanks to Smeet, this giant hole in my life has been filled. Snoop Dogg and Smeet combined forces to create a virtual hip hop world replete with a 3D mansion where fans can discuss music, view his live shows, interact with each other about rap-related news items, and hopefully, one day, virtually walk two women down a red carpet with studded leashes around their necks.

Though it might seem a crazy question, one has to ask whether Google's 1-Gbps network is going to get a significant number of customers. Much could depend on whether Google is willing to lose money, and Google executives say that will not be the case; Google fully intends to run the network as a money-making venture, not a money-losing demonstration project.

In most discussions of broadband deployment, it is assumed that supply is the key issue. People want much-faster broadband, and, it is presumed, are willing to pay for it. But that doesn’t seem to be true in practice.

All kinds of rumors have been hitting the Internet regarding the release of Apple's iPad 3, up to and including the release of two different iPads this year. Now, Apple seems to be considering the idea of putting other social networks into iOS 5 besides Twitter.

Over the weekend, iMore -- a blog about iOS news -- found that iPad 3's prototype contains hints that Facebook will be integrated in iOS 5.1 beta 3. Besides references to the major social networking site, other codenames exist like J1AP and J2AP. It seems that the J1 and J2 references hint at two different versions of the iPad 3.

Cloud computing, which used to be found far and few between, seems to be literally everywhere, and that was most evident at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (a.k.a. Cloud Electronics Show) in Las Vegas last week.

More retailers are using cloud to transform their one-off consumer offerings into long-term relationships; the number of cloud-related announcements at CES last week is a showing of what is to come for so-called retail cloud in 2012.

The Federal Communications Commission doesn’t want to lose its authority to give out spectrum for broadcast television – in an effort some say is an attack on Verizon and AT&T.

With some proposals now before Congress, the FCC appears to be resisting any efforts to give the commission “direction or to establish any checks and balances on the FCC in authorizing incentive auctions of prime TV broadcast spectrum,” according to a recent analysis from Forbes.

Scott Cleland, president of Precursor LLC, wrote in Forbes that, “an unelected FCC … is trying to tell Congress to abandon its Constitutional role and delegate unbounded revenue-raising authority to the FCC.”

IBM on Monday teased the upcoming beta version of its IBM Connections software, an enterprise-focused social networking platform loaded with more sophisticated analytics, real-time data monitoring and a host of new collaboration add-ons.

The goal of IBM Connections isn't to deliver Facebook to the corporate world, but rather to bring all business-critical applications and data under one roof and provide outlets for real-time collaboration. The software suite brings together email, wikis, blogs, calendars, activity streams and puts them alongside otherwise disparate products like predictive analytics tools and various third-party solutions.

Employees can then react to the data created by these tools in real-time through social networking, file sharing, instant messaging and online video meetings.

In case you haven't heard, several websites will be going down as an act of protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act on Jan. 18, for a 24-hour period.

A sigh of relief has spread through the Internet, however, as Twitter, a major microblogging social network, announced that it will not go black on Wednesday as part of a protest against SOPA and PIPA, two pieces of legislation which might hinder innovation and small startups on the Internet as a price to protecting US citizens against piracy.

With the rise of tablets, sales of desktop and notebook PCs have been declining. And software giant Microsoft Corp. is obviously feeling the heat of falling sales. As the company tackles slow PC sales, which is impacting the Windows business, it is also struggling to make a dent into the faster-growing mobile phone and tablet markets.

According to Reuters, the value of Microsoft shares are not expected to change much on Thursday when the software giant presents its financial results.

Lenovo, a company few had even heard of a few years ago, broke out at CES. They made it in as Best of Show Finalist; Best of CES best Ultrabook and Desktop; Popular Science best of CES; Popular Mechanics Editor’s Choice; LAPTOP best of CES; LAPTOP reader’s Choice; Tom’s Guide Best of CES; Videomaker Best Computer; GottaBeMobile Best of show, Notebooks.com Best of CES; Stuff Hot Stuff Award; Last Gadget Standing Finalist; ComputerActive Best of CES; and got two CES Innovation Wards for design and engineering. Most of these awards were for one product that appears to have hit a chord, the IdeaPad Yoga.

As a result, this product may be the face of what it to come. What the Yoga did is provide a simple solution to a complex problem – in a notebook/tablet hybrid, what do you do with the keyboard when the device is in tablet mode? Let’s explore that.

Was this a mere coincidence, or just well-timed? That is an interesting question.

On January 12th, CNBC ran (what it labeled as a “premiere” showing) of the 2008 documentary, “Bill Gates: How a Geek Changed the World.” OK, so it is a bit dated, missing out on how Microsoft is now losing the browser wars and missed the whole SEARCH thing, for instance. However, for techie history buffs, it was a quite comprehensive review of most things Gates.

This included a narration of his journey/back story from young man to a business leader, who but for his charitable donations would be the world’s wealthiest person. It also included interviews with Gates, friends and family, Microsoft colleagues and a sprinkling of competitors.