corporate

An average of one water main breaks somewhere in the U.S. every two minutes, according to the latest U.S. Geological Survey.

It's no wonder then that 85 percent of American voters agreed the government should invest money to overhaul the nation's water infrastructure, according to a report released Wednesday by water systems manufacturer ITT Corporation.

Voters are also willing to pay for the upgrade.

When asked if they were willing to pay 11 percent more on their monthly water bill "to help ensure continued access to a reliable and consistent supply of clean water," … Read more

Two years ago, casino giant Harrah's Entertainment needed to cut costs. One of the first places managers looked was cell phones.

As the company evaluated its business, one of the quickest and least painful ways to reduce its yearly budget by more than $1 million a year was to change its cell phone policy. Specifically, the company started allowing its employees to use their own cell phones for work.

"We looked at the cell phone market penetration, which is close to 100 percent, and we realized that everyone already has their own cell phone," said Mark Cross, … Read more

In a bid to capture more corporate and government customers, Apple is seeking help from IT services provider Unisys.

In deal between the two companies, Unisys will offer maintenance and other services to businesses and government agencies that buy Apple devices, Gene Zapfel, a managing partner at Unisys, told Bloomberg. The contract was signed this month, Bloomberg reported yesterday, but so far no details have been revealed.

Though its focus has traditionally been on consumers, schools, and creative professionals, Apple has found itself pulled more into the enterprise arena, especially as employees are bringing their iPhones to work.

Apple Chief … Read more

Come 2012, confused camera customers might be able to point their browsers to a Web address that looks very different from what's available today: support.canon.

That's because the organization in charge of such names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is planning on a dramatic rewriting of the rules for Web addresses that could demote .com's importance.

Today there are just a few of what are called generic top-level domains--.com, .net, .org, .biz, and .edu, for example. But ICANN wants to open the door to, potentially, hundreds or thousands more of these GTLDs.

That's a big change, especially for those who have a brand to protect on the Internet and were taken by surprise by the virtual land grab that took place with .com addresses in the 1990s. Here's a look at what GTLDs mean now and in the future.

What is a generic top-level domain, and how do I get one? In an Internet address, the top-level domains is what comes after the last period in the main server address. There are two broad types: the generic top-level domains such as .com and country code top-level domains such as .jp for Japan or .de for Germany. With ICANN's expansion, though, the term "generic" is something of a misnomer: it could include not only something like .auto or .hotel, but also branded domains such as .ibm or .safeway. … Read more

Netflix was accused of trying to pump up the excitement around the launch of its new Web video service in Canada today.

During a scheduled press event in Toronto, members of Canada's media said they noticed that some of the responses from people in attendance sounded like "canned responses," according to the Web site of Canadian news service The Financial Post. Reporters began to grow suspicious.

They were right. Some of the people who attended the event were actors paid by Netflix, but according to Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey, the actors weren't paid to attend the … Read more

Silicon Valley corporations are known for touting their arrays of environmentally friendly internal initiatives, but eBay is taking it a step further by sponsoring a report that explains how its entire business model may promote sustainability and energy efficiency.

The report, which CEO John Donahoe will present Tuesday at a Washington, D.C., event, was conducted in partnership with a company called Cooler. The report found that "without the need for an actual store--or chains of them--the peer-to-peer retailer saves everything from the carbon cost of making bricks and other building materials to the ongoing costs of heating, lighting, … Read more

NEW YORK--You can never please everyone, especially on the Internet. But at #Promise (yes, with a built-in Twitter hash tag), a Thursday conference about Digital Age corporate responsibility held in conjunction with Internet Week New York, it was evident that consumers are starting to expect more when it comes to companies' attempts to "do good."

"Corporate communications, as such, no longer matter," the conference's keynote speaker, author and business theorist Douglas Rushkoff, said during his midday talk. "The only thing that actually matters is corporate activity...if it's doing something real, that will … Read more

An aggressive, meant-to-shock Facebook and YouTube campaign on behalf of Greenpeace has led food conglomerate Nestle to modify its policies regarding the use of palm oil.

Nestle announced early Monday that it has partnered with The Forest Trust, a nonprofit group that helps businesses develop practices to harvest forests sustainably. The partnership is designed to reduce the social and environmental impacts of Nestle's corporate supply chain by severing ties to companies that contribute to deforestation. The first issue addressed will be its use of palm oil--the harvesting of which has been connected to the loss of rainforests and the … Read more

Facebook on Wednesday announced that it will open an office in Seattle to build up a new team of engineers as the social network faces continued rapid growth. It'll be open sometime this summer, engineering manager Ari Steinberg wrote in a post on the Facebook blog; a Seattle jobs page on Facebook says that the office will be located downtown.

"As we grow to meet these challenges, we need to continue to attract the smartest, most talented technologists on the Internet," Steinberg's post read. "Seattle has a strong history of innovation and is home to … Read more