Archive

In a move that could signal Google's designs on entire new areas of the Web industry, Google has taken a stake in a startup seeking to integrate broadband communications into existing electrical power lines. Google joined Wall Street banking house Goldman Sachs & Co. and media giant Hearst in pr...

An aggressive investment advisor or stockbroker might not agree with this article. You see, it takes a rather simplistic but safe approach to investing. What I am advocating is mutual funds -- not just any mutual funds, but mutual funds that have produced a steady stream of income and have consisten...

One of the long-feared results of Internet security problems -- its potential effect on consumer behavior and eventually, spending -- might be starting to materialize, according to a new report. The Pew Internet & American Life project says that a survey that it conducted found that 91 percent o...

In a move that could dramatically accelerate the adoption of streaming movies online, Intel has said it would invest in a new company established by actor Morgan Freeman that seeks to make first-run films available for downloads even before they reach stores on DVD. Intel made an unspecified investm...

It's one of the most popular uses of the Internet and something users do every day: They drop digital photos into e-mail and send them to friends and family. Such photos are often bandwidth hogs, a problem that Yahoo is attempting to address with its Photo Mail feature. The service uses the Yahoo Ma...

Though more consumers are testing out digital downloads, portable MP3 players and streaming music from satellite and Web sources, many more still rely on tried-and-true technologies such as portable CD players and traditional FM radio for their music, according to a new report. The study from Framin...

Today, for the first time, China has 100 million people on the Internet, 30 percent of whom are on broadband. Within a few years, a billion people in Asia will be playing with e-commerce. All that power and all that technology replicating at a phenomenal rate will create global shockwaves both in tr...

Escalating a long-running battle over current and future wireless technology, Broadcom has filed suit against cell phone technology rival Qualcomm, saying that company engaged in anti-competitive behavior in order to help its mobile voice and data standard gain traction. Broadcom said in the federal...

At first glance, the proposal to create a new cyberspace red light district with the .xxx domain seems a clear win for legitimate businesses. The domain, which has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, could essentially segregate adult-content and pornography, mov...

Recently, while replying to e-mails from readers of my book, The Design of Sites, I came across a comment from a designer who claimed that my recommendation to use pop-ups was hopelessly out of date. Did this reader not understand me, my recommendation -- to use pop-ups primarily in situations when ...

Continuing its practice of settling lawsuits in order to focus on the competitive threats it faces, Microsoft has agreed to pay IBM US$775 million to settle a long-simmering antitrust lawsuit. The action was a private suit that was brought in conjunction with the government action that resulted in a...

Reversing a course that had it on track to cede control of the Internet's main pipelines, the U.S. government now says it will not cede oversight of the computers that control most Web traffic. The U.S. had been weighing whether to turn over control of the 13 so-called "root" servers, the source whe...

Pop-up advertising on the Web might be annoying, but not as annoying as what would happen if trademark law were used to squash them, according to a federal appellate court in New York. The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals this week upended a decision by a lower court that used trademark law to bloc...

Hard on the heels of a partial victory for music and movie studios before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has continued to pressure consumers who it says illegally swap music, filing a new batch of more than 700 copyright infringement la...

Hoping to lay claim to search dominance in a fast-growing area, Blinkx has launched a tool that will search personal-radio-style podcasts and video blogs for certain content. Blinkx said its upgrades make podcasts and video blogs "fully searchable for the first time," and let users search thousands ...