Articles by Mike Pearson

Adobe's planned acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture took nearly everyone off guard when it was announced Tuesday. Now that the idea has had a chance to sink in, though, it seems to be growing in popularity "I think it really does make sense," Steve Ashley, an analyst for investment research firm R.W. Baird, told the E-Commerce Times....

It's not perfect, and it won't solve the advertising crisis in traditional publishing, but Google's Fast Flip news-viewing product may represent a small step toward helping pen-and-paper publishers make a profitable leap to the digital age Google rolled out Fast Flip on Monday as an experimental Labs product. It allows users to slide through tiled ...

The parent company of T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless company, is considering a bid for Sprint Nextel, the carrier just north of it on the size chart, according to a British newspaper.Citing anonymous sources, The Sunday Telegraph reported Sunday that Deutsche Telekom could make the offer within the next few weeks T-Mobile USA referred ...

September is shaping up to be a crucial time for the future of Google's much-vaunted digital library The month has already seen a flood of briefs on a proposed settlement in the lawsuit filed by authors and publishers over Google's effort to digitize the world's books. Next week, the U.S. Justice Department is expected to weigh in on whether it thi...

Gmail's 100-minute outage Tuesday was the result of a cascading series of router failures caused by a combination of hardware maintenance and traffic policies, Google said The failure of the third-most popular Web mail service left users around the world who access the system online instead of through an email client unable to send or receive new m...

Wal-Mart has changed its logo. It's sprucing up many of its stores with new looks. Now, the world's largest retailer is expanding its online sales channel, adding a trio of carefully selected third-party vendors to its Web site in a bid to increase sales WalMart Marketplace debuted Monday, offering 1 million products from three partners:CSN Stores,...

An Alaska technology company hopes to hit the market with the world's first laptop boasting two identical 15.4-inch displays by the end of this year At nearly 12-pounds and equipped with two 15.4-inch screens and a full-sized keyboard, gScreen's planned US$3,000 Spacebook series definitely doesn't track the "smaller is better" ethos prevailing in t...

Google has pushed an update to its Maps application adding traffic data on surface streets The data will be drawn from GPS-enabled cellphones that are actively running the mobile version of Google's map app, the company said in a blog posting Tuesday....

The gaming console rumor factory is grinding away again, pushing out shiny new reports of Microsoft's alleged plan to cut the price of its Xbox 360 gaming system by up to US$100 in the U.S The rumors are based on an image posted by gadget blog Engadget purported to be of an advance Target ad sheet with a price of $299.99 for the 120-gigabyte Xbox 3...

Nokia announced Monday it will return to the PC market, an arena it abandoned in 1991 to focus on the growing mobile phone field ...

It wasn't all that long ago that the talk about cellphones and driving was all talk. That is, consumers, driving-safety advocates, and lawmakers debated whether using a hands-free device was enough to make talking on a cellphone safe, or whether talking on the newly ubiquitous devices while behind the wheel should be banned outright However, the st...

Facebook is trying out a new look in its high-growth markets outside the United States. The version features a stripped-down interface designed to open quickly and be simpler to use, according to the company Word of the project leaked Tuesday when some users received invitations to help test "Facebook Lite," but were unable to access the lite.faceb...

In a continuing bid to make itself ever more relevant to advertisers and open its doors to the broader Internet, Facebook has acquired social media aggregatorFriendFeed Terms were not disclosed, but The Wall Street Journal -- citing anonymous sources -- valued the deal at US$50 million in cash and stock....

If Toshiba's announcement 18 months ago that it was dropping the HD-DVD format was the anticlimatic thud that ended the DVD format wars, Tuesday's announcement by the Japanese technology company that it would join the Blu-ray Disc Association was little more than a dull echo However, it did settle one important question for some technology revoluti...

eBay and General Motors announced Monday that 225 of the carmaker's California dealers would begin selling new cars through the e-commerce powerhouse in what appears to be a limited promotion that could nevertheless presage a more permanent, national approach to selling cars online Sales will begin Tuesday and go through Sept. 8, the companies said...

The U.S. Marine Corps has banned service members from using military computers to access social networking sites, and the Department of Defense is reviewing the services to see if they pose too great a security threat to allow Such sites are popular with young service members who want to keep in touch with friends and family at home, but the Marine...

One of the nation's most venerable electronics retailers wants to update its image by calling itself "The Shack" in an upcoming branding campaign, announced Monday "We have tremendous equity in consumers' minds around cables, parts and batteries, but it's critically important that we help them to understand the role that we play in keeping people c...

The numbers in two recent copyright infringement lawsuits involving downloaded music are enough to get tongues wagging. Is a song really worth US$22,500? Or even $80,000? Juries in Massachusetts and Minnesota, respectively, ordered those awards to the recording industry this year in cases involving defendants alleged to have illegally downloaded mu...

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have laid the groundwork for an unprecedented simulation of a large-scale botnet after booting up 1 million Linux kernels as virtual machines ...

In what may be a first-of-kind study, researchers at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute have concluded text messaging is just about the most deadly thing you can do behind the wheel of a car However, talking on a cellphone isn't that big a deal, the research suggests....