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In a surprise move that could reshape the consumer electronics and movie rental industries, Blockbuster went public Monday with an offer to pay as much as $1.3 billion to acquire Circuit City. Blockbuster announced that it made the offer to Circuit City directly on Feb. 17 but went public with it be...

Microsoft has leapt into the brawl surrounding a recent proposal by the Federal Trade Commission to tighten restrictions on online advertising, responding with its own five-tiered plan for self-regulation. In December, the FTC released a set of proposed principles to "guide the development of self-r...

Phil Hester has exited the chief technology officer post at Advanced Micro Devices, according to reports, and he won't be replaced. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based manufacturer of computer processors, which reported more than $6 billion in revenue in 2007 and trails only Intel in that market, reportedly...

Spending your tax refund before it arrives? You might want to rethink that plan -- and not just because it's fiscally imprudent. There is a growing chance that this tax season you'll learn for the first time that you were the victim of identity theft at some point during the last year. A disturbing ...

One interpretation of the term "green computing" focuses on the machine's energy consumption. The less power a computer needs, the less harm to the environment it does -- and the less the owner has to spend on energy costs. Are those energy savings enough of a reason to make major enterprise buying ...

Lyris, best known for its e-mail advertising services, has launched a portal meant to give online marketers a place to foster community and learn from one another. Lyris plans to formally launch the LyrisHQ portal at the Ad:tech conference next week. The site is already live, offering content and in...

Navigation device maker TomTom reportedly hasn't offered any remedies to the European Commission's antitrust worries over its bid of more than $4 billion to take over the digital map firm Tele Atlas. The commission's deadline to rule on the deal is May 21. TomTom had until Thursday to present a solu...

MySpace on Thursday announced a new partnership with ShineReveille International under which original content developed for MySpaceTV will be distributed internationally. The information was revealed at the MIPTV conference in Cannes, France. Under the plan, online shows such as "Prom Queen," "Quart...

Military gear that could be used in terrorist operations is showing up on eBay and Craigslist, and some lawmakers are calling for action. In response to the House Subcommittee on Security and National Affairs' request to investigate online sales of sensitive military equipment, the Government Accoun...

Blockbuster is working on a new movie-streaming and/or downloading service, according to a news report. The reported device apparently would let its customers view movies from a television set-top box similar to the Apple TV or an Xbox 360, both of which can download rentable movies. Such a service ...

As the director of consulting services for a company that makes e-mail marketing software, it probably doesn't surprise you that I'm constantly asked questions about e-mail marketing best practices. One of the most common questions I've been asked is, "What's the best e-mail contact strategy?" No m...

Verizon has filed a lawsuit against Time Warner Cable, claiming that company's advertising gives a false impression about the telecom firm's new fiber optic-based TV service. Verizon filed the suit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In it, the company claims ...

Yahoo has launched a limited test of Google's AdSense search advertising service, a move that Microsoft immediately slammed as anticompetitive and one that came amid a flurry of new developments in the Microsoft-Yahoo saga. The test covers no more than 3 percent of the search queries generated from ...

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," said Sir Isaac Newton. While he made that observation centuries before the dot-com boom and bust, his words remain quite relevant today. After large corporation executives took advantage of their positions and wreaked financial havoc, the federal go...

Spurned in an earlier buyout attempt, data storage vendor EMC came back with a $213 million offer that Iomega accepted Tuesday. The all-cash deal -- a 20 percent increase over a March bid of $178 million -- opens the way for EMC to target small businesses and consumers. The buyout is for $3.85 per s...