Google has rolled out a limited test of a new banner ad for Southwest Airlines that will display atop the results page for queries about that company, contradicting a long-standing pledge to never run such advertising.

Oracle is rolling out a series of new features for its Eloqua marketing automation suite, hoping to get a leg up on rivals such as Salesforce.com and IBM in the red-hot software segment.

Oracle is hoping to differentiate its CRM (customer relationship management) software from the competition with the acquisition of BigMachines, whose cloud-based system helps salespeople quickly put together and price complex orders.

Domino's Pizza has announced that it is using Splunk Enterprise to help boost its online and mobile sales business, through the analysis of operational and sales data.

Hewlett-Packard has assembled a number of its data-mining software programs into a service, called the HP Digital Marketing Hub, that can synthesize multiple sources of marketing data to help organizations better identify potential customers.

Recent changes to Google's search algorithm, its keyword planner tool and the availability of search query data may have you rethinking your SEO and online marketing strategies, but experts say it's best not to overthink things.

Microsoft has enhanced its Yammer enterprise social networking suite's mobile applications, email integration and document collaboration.

NewsGator wants its Social Sites add-on for SharePoint to handle companies' innovation cycles with a beefed-up set of capabilities for brainstorming, idea evaluation, concept development and execution.

IBM and four universities are planning a research project into cognitive computing, which seeks to build computers that operate in a manner closer to the human mind.

Agribusiness giant Monsanto is paying US$930 million to acquire the Climate Corporation, maker of a software platform that crunches weather-related data in order to help farmers more effectively grow crops.

Splunk continues to enhance its flagship machine data search engine so it can be used by business analysts and managers, in addition to its typical audience of system and network administrators.

Gartner said its survey of 720 companies asked about their plans to invest in Big Data gathering and analysis show that almost two-thirds are funding projects or plan to this year, with media/communications and banking firms leading the way.

Oracle is doubling down on "big data" with a number of new products and enhancements to existing ones, in hopes that customers looking to analyze massive amounts of information for business insights will in turn invest further in Oracle.

Faced with the challenge of converting subscribers to a new platform while implementing a price increase, Equipment Data Associates turned to Scout Analytics to provide the data analytics it needed to better understand and serve its customers.

Like the groundhog waking from hibernation to predict the coming of spring, another notoriously shy mammal recently made its own rare public appearance.

A bright orange line emerges from the horizon at the left side of the screen. Getting brighter, it arcs upward--and then suddenly turns ashen gray before falling back to the horizon. More lines follow the first. Thousands upon thousands of lines. The visual is at once beautiful and daunting.

The companies behind Internet.org, the organization formed by Facebook, Qualcomm and several others to bring the Internet to areas that still don't have it, released a document (PDF) yesterday detailing some of their plans for the initiative. One section stands out in particular, if only for its title – Facebook for Every Phone.

Apple's iBeacons system will enable purchases, contextual marketing, automated check-ins and much more. And it's closer than you think.

Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University say plowing through millions of tweets to gauge fan sentiment probably isn't going to help you make a mint betting on NFL games, though doing this themselves has given them newfound respect for sports bookies.

In a new push to compete with Twitter and its lock on immediacy, Facebook took the wraps off two new APIs that enable news organizations to tap into user comments and display them online or on TV in real time.

SAP is expanding its arsenal of data-analysis software with the acquisition of predictive analytics vendor KXEN, announced Tuesday.