Articles by Sidney Hill

YouTube's daily tally of roughly two billion downloads proves that viewing video is among the most popular activities among Internet users. Now Adobe, creator of the ubiquitous Flash Player, has introduced several solutions that could make video standard fare on corporate networks as well These new tools are embedded in Flash Media Server 4, the la...

Microsoft has released the code for its latest mobile operating system to manufacturers. That means U.S. consumers should be able to purchase smartphones running Windows Phone 7 during the upcoming holiday shopping season, while European consumers could have those new devices in their hands as early as next month. The question now is how many cons...

Google continued its shopping spree through the social networking marketplace on Monday, agreeing to purchase SocialDeck, a 2-year-old company that develops games for mobile devices This marks Google's third purchase of a social networking company during the month of August. These purchases have fueled widespread speculation that Google ultimately ...

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) -- enacted in the waning days of the 20th century -- contains provisions designed to make it evolve over time. The idea was that as technology fostered new ways of creating and distributing copyrighted material such as music, movies and software programs, the law could continue striking the proper balance between the consumer's right to access that material and the producer's right to profit from it...

Amazon says the latest version of its Kindle e-reader -- which began shipping to customers on Tuesday -- is outselling all of its predecessors. The company also says the Kindle has been the hottest-selling item on the Amazon site for the past two years It's difficult to put those statements into any meaningful context, however, since Amazon has nev...

Foursquare began nudging social networks out of the virtual world and into the real one when it launched its "location-awareness" service roughly a year ago. On Wednesday, Facebook pushed real-world social networking smack into the mainstream by unveiling a location awareness service of its own The new service, called "Facebook Places," allows Face...

The US$1.15 billion that Dell has pledged to spend for data storage vendor 3Par could turn out to be a wise investment if Dell is able to use 3Par's assets -- its product line and its sales and support staff -- to carve out a position at the high end of the storage market Dell announced its intent to purchase 3Par on Monday. "This definitely seems ...

Social gaming is now serious business, and Google appears determined to become a major player in this space On Wednesday, reports surfaced that Google was prepared to pay anywhere from US$182 million to $282 million to purchase Slide, developer of games such as "SuperPoke" and "Top Fish" that users can play on Facebook and other social networking s...

The pressure on major Web site operators and online advertisers to do a better job of protecting consumers' privacy continues to mount. On Tuesday, Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., said he plans to introduce legislation that would "give people more control over how their personal information is collected and distributed online." Kerry's announcement co...

YouTube's decision to make its mobile Web site compatible with HTML5 may one day be viewed as a turning point in what is shaping up as an epic battle for control of the mobile device landscape In unveiling the new site on Wednesday, YouTube said its goal is to give mobile device users the same video viewing experience they get on desktop computers....

Amazon.com plans to acquire online retailer Woot.com, pioneer of the "flash sale" concept. No financial terms were officially disclosed when the deal was announced on Wednesday, though the blog TechCrunch reported that the sale was made for around US$110 million in cash. Woot will operate as an independent subsidiary of Amazon once the deal closes...

Hulu, the TV-network-owned site for watching television programs over the Internet, has announced a new paid subscription service that promises to give users greater freedom to watch their favorite shows online Hulu introduced the new service, called "Hulu Plus," Tuesday in a blog post authored by Jason Kilar, the service's CEO. "Starting today, we...

A set of PowerPoint slides that appear to contain details about the next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system surfaced Monday The slides indicate that Microsoft plans to tackle the long-running problem of Windows' slow start-up time, in addition to placing cutting-edge technology such as facial recognition in the new operating system....

A judge has ruled in YouTube's favor regarding the video-sharing site's three-year battle with Viacom over alleged copyright infringement On Wednesday, the U.S. District Court in New York ruled that YouTube had complied with the take-down provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in its handling of Viacom content and thus was not gu...

As social networks strive to become mainstream, profitable businesses, they are bound to experience some growing pains. For Facebook, figuring out how to turn all the information its 400-million plus members are posting on the site into a steady revenue stream -- without drawing complaints about violating those members' privacy -- is proving to be a major pain...

What's the path to profit in the digital age? Publishing companies, particularly those in the newspaper and magazine business, have been wrestling with that question for at least the past decade Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the media conglomerate News Corp., thinks getting readers to pay for online content is at least a partial answer -- and on Mond...

There has been a lot of activity related to the issue of Net neutrality in recent weeks, but none of it seems to be leading to a resolution of the central question of who -- if anybody -- ultimately will regulate broadband Internet service providers The latest developments in this ongoing saga occurred Wednesday, when Federal Communications Chairma...

It's no secret that the smartphone is fast becoming the hottest product in the mobile device market. What hasn't been so obvious is exactly what people are doing with their smartphones A Nielsen survey seeking answers to that question has produced what might be surprising results. For instance, the survey revealed that social networking -- and spec...

With more than 60 million users, Twitter clearly is a successful social media platform. However, the question of whether it also can be a successful business has yet to be answered On Monday, Twitter proved that it's serious about making an effort to become a profitable enterprise when it banned third parties from using the Twitter application prog...

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have made the world smaller, allowing people located on different continents to connect and communicate as if they were next-door neighbors. At times, however, the conversations taking place on these new technology platforms can offend some of their users' old-world sensibilities, creating consequences that not even the visionaries who created these sites ever imagined...