Articles by Mike Pearson

Google is trumpeting victory in a European court ruling over its practice of selling trademarks to competing firms for use in the search giant's paid results program. However, the EU court also set a new standard for national courts that could ultimately reshape how the company's US$23 billion advertising business operates The European Union Court ...

The newest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer will feature full hardware acceleration and a new Javascript engine that engages multiple processor cores for faster rendering, the company has announced. The new version aso reverses the software giant's reluctance to adapt to HTML 5 The company released a developer preview of Internet Explorer 9...

Facebook, thanks to its 400 million status-updating, link-sharing, asparagus-farming, party picture-posting denizens, has risen to the top of the Internet heap once again, surpassing -- at least according to one ranking -- search giant Google in total U.S. visitors for the third time this year Facebook accounted for 7.07 percent of all U.S. Interne...

Microsoft has thrown the doors open to developers interested in working on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series platform, announcing new developer tools and offering the deepest look yet at the Silverlight-based architecture during keynote sessions Monday at the MIX10 conference in Las Vegas The new tools include updates to Microsoft Visual Studio 2...

You've got apps for your phone. You'll soon have apps for your digital video recorder. Now, you can have apps for your Apps, as in Google Apps Google has launched its new Apps Marketplace for its Google Apps line of cloud-based productivity services. Initial participants include about 50 companies selling applications that hook into various Google ...

Google and Dish Network are testing a service that allows television users to search for television programming and Web content from set-top boxes, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday Google software installed in the boxes allows users to create a personalized programming lineup, according to the Journal article, which cites anonymous sources....

TiVo has unveiled a new DVR that expands on its delivery of Web content while refining its interface for the high-def era ...

A federal grand jury in New Jersey has indicted four owners and key employees of a California-based company that prosecutors said for years illegally cornered the market on the best concert and sporting event seats The 60-page indictment unsealed Monday accuses the men of directing an international conspiracy to defeat security schemes at Ticketmas...

Document-sharing site Scribd.com launched a new feature Wednesday allowing users to easily transfer many of the site's 10 million books, magazines, and documents to mobile devices, including Amazon's Kindle, the Nook e-reader, and the Apple iPhone It's part of the San Francisco-based tech company's effort to plant its hooks in the growing e-publish...

The Federal Trade Commission is getting proactive in trying to reduce the risk of data breaches due to peer-to-peer programs, notifying nearly 100 organizations of data breaches it traced back to file-sharing The FTC did not identify the organizations, but said they ranged in size from small businesses to publicly held corporations with tens of tho...

Credit card issuers must follow new rules of the road as of Monday, but consumers should not view the new protections as a cure-all for their frustrations with plastic Instead, they should be ever more vigilant as credit issuers roll out new card agreements. They could result in new financial pain if card users aren't careful.

Fresh off the introduction of its Nexus One smartphone, hailed by some tech analysts as the first real iPhone killer candidate, Google has debuted mockups of a possible tablet device running its yet-to-be released open source Chrome operating system ...

When stumbling around the Web in search of a new toaster or a great deal on a new pair of sneakers, it's not unusual for consumers to come across ominous policy dialogs warning of mismatched or expired SSL certificates. In fact, recent surveys have shown nearly 20 percent, or even more, of popular Web sites may have certificate problems that would lead to errors...

Microsoft technology used to program applications that can be accessed through a browser continued to be blocked for Firefox users Monday Mozilla had been blocking two Microsoft plug-ins after the discovery that Microsoft's .Net 3.5 SP1 install silently adds a plug-in to Firefox allowing the surreptitious launch of a malicious XAML browser applicat...

The Wi-Fi Alliance is preparing a new specification designed to allow devices from cellphones to printers to connect to each other reliably, securely and wirelessly WiFi-enabled devices can currently connect peer-to-peer in what's known as "ad hoc mode," but configuration issues and security concerns have limited the usefulness of the capability....

Part 1 of this series explored the potentially dangerous distraction that in-car GPS use may pose for drivers These days, it seems GPS units are everywhere -- built into cars, mounted on dashboards, strapped to bicycles and even loaded into the cellphones we carry in our pockets....

This is way out of the Dell dude's league Dell's newest addition to the Latitude line, the Z600, is designed as a sleek envy item for high-ranking corporate executives, entrepreneurs and other style leaders, and bears the stats to prove it, beginning with its US$1,999 starting price tag....

Looking through the news, it's not hard to find a story about someone driving into a river or onto railroad on the advice of an in-car navigation system Last year, a Seattle bus driver blamed his GPS unit after he collided with a bridge embankment, injuring several of his passengers, according to the Seattle Times. The Mirror newspaper in Great Bri...

Xerox said Monday that it will buy Affiliated Computer Services for US$6.4 billion in cash and stock Best known for its copying and printing business, Xerox said the move answers a growing need to better link document management to the processes that produce them -- including finance, human resources, transaction processing and customer support....

Dramatic, down-to-the-wire finishes aren't the sorts of things one generally associates with technology prizes. However, the team behind the US$1 million prize awarded by Netflix says that's exactly how that contest went down The team received the award Monday in a New York ceremony hosted by the online movie rental company, which called the contes...