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Sony's had a huge Friday. It's made a smart move by growing out of DRM in its music division (at least a little, at least reportedly), and it's scored a decent victory on the Blu-ray side in getting Warner Bros. to commit to its hi-definition DVD format All on the Friday before CES. Nicely done....

Shares of leading chipmaker Intel lost more than 7 percent in middaytrading Friday after the company's stock was downgraded for a second time in a week JP Morgan analyst Christopher Danely downgraded the company on Friday, citing rising inventory levels at personal computer makers and a likely slowdown in corporate spending heading into the new yea...

2006 was the last year e-commerce vendors introduced new functionality to their Web sites that were visible to consumers, such as better search features and click-once-to-buy shopping carts Coincidentally or not, it was also the last time aggregate customer satisfaction with online retailers registered 75 on a 100-point scale in the annual Holiday ...

Meraki, a wireless mesh network startup with dreams of bringing Internet access to developing countries, announced Friday that it will expand its "Free the Net" program, currently available in a few San Francisco neighborhoods, to cover the entire city and create a free municipal WiFi network The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also announced t...

Intel has reportedly pulled out of its position on the board of directors for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project due to disagreements over philosophical issues OLPC is a nonprofit educational organization working to put low-cost laptops into the hands of children in economically-challenged countries around the world....

A Michigan grand jury has indicted the man widely know as the "Spam King" and 10 others in connection with an alleged stock fraud scheme that used bulk e-mails to pump up the prices of stocks The biggest name among those indicted is that of 52-year-old Alan Ralsky, who earned the nickname of "Spam King" by being considered one of the world's most p...

Microsoft has found itself between a rock and a hard place with its latest Microsoft Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3). The Redmond, Wash., software giant released SP3 in September, and in doing so blocked the ability of MS Office 2003 users to easily access older, less secure file formats ...

Of the Web's many attractions, the potential to tap into a global marketplace, has perhaps been first and foremost for businesses. If you are a manufacturer, distributor or merchant, designing and launching a Web site is but one piece of putting together and solving the e-commerce puzzle, however. Before you start taking orders, you'd best be sure that you can deliver -- literally...

Was it the "Year of the Frustrated Customer?" Here are a few highlights: Airline passenger complaints to the U.S. Department of Transportation were up 70 percent, as last summer saw the worst delays in 13 years of record-keeping; Verizon was ordered to pay $1 million to customers the company terminated for "excessive use" on a plan that was advertised as "unlimited"; and the state of Minnesota is body slamming Sprint with a lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of its residents who claimed the carrier extended its contracts without their informed consent...

OpenLogic, a provider of open source packages, has begun the task of quantifying the extent of open source code used on enterprise computers. The company will roll out its global Open Source Census in several phases over the next six months In early December, OpenLogic announced the first phase with the release of OSS Discovery under an open source...

Change may no longer be the only constant; danger is proving omnipresent and therefore a constant variable in enterprise IT planning "In today's world where a shooter can walk in the front door of a church and open fire, there is really no place that is safe," Henry Dewing, analyst at Forrester Research told TechNewsWorld. "Companies must take step...

At least two studies have shown that cell phone use while driving quadruples the risk of an accident Now, a new study reveals the negative impact cell phones have on traffic -- even when no accident occurs....

Media chain Landmark Communications announced Thursday that it is investigating the possible sale of its businesses, including the Weather Channel and Weather.com Landmark has retained investment banks J.P. Morgan and Lehman Brothers to assist in exploring strategic alternatives, the company said. Potential suitors for the Weather Channel and Weath...

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has created what it calls an "industry milestone:" a 2.5-inch computer hard drive capable of storing a whopping 500 GB of data It also has struck a deal with computer vendor Asus, which will sell a notebook PC equipped with two of the drives....

Overstock.com cofounder Jason Lindsey has resigned from the company's board and has given up his titles of president and chief operating officer, an unexpected move likely to raise questions about the company's holiday season performance Lindsey, who founded Overstock with CEO Patrick Byrne, stepped down effective the end of 2007; however, he will ...

Some recent Iona Technologies announcements point up the growing practice of multiple ESBs within enterprises, often associated in a federated manner, and sometimes using ESBs tasked with specific types of integration duties Iona is taking a "hybrid" approach to ESB offerings, with a coordinated open source and commercial strategy. [Disclosure: Ion...

Movie rental giant Netflix will partner with LG Electronics to offer set-top boxes that will enable consumers to stream movies from the Internet to their network-enabled TV sets The service will eliminate the need to use a personal computer to download films -- a service Netflix currently offers on a limited basis -- and enable high-definition vers...

Lenovo, maker of ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkCentre desktops for businesses, on Thursday announced its first globally available line of notebook PCs aimed at consumers, the IdeaPad Y510, Y710 and U110 "Given that the consumer market represents over 40 percent of the opportunity worldwide, this is obviously a very big opportunity for Lenovo to conti...

While brick-and-mortar retailers assess the damage from what could be the worst holiday shopping season since 2002, online retailers are celebrating a banner year. For the 2007 holiday season, online shopping reached nearly US$28 billion, according to a report released by comScore. That represents a 19 percent gain for e-tailers during the 57 days the study regards as the holiday season -- Nov. 1 through Dec. 27 -- over a similar time period in 2006...

As the holiday shopping season wraps up, what better time to take a look back at what has changed in retailing this year as we set priorities for 2008. The most important development in retail in 2007 was the shift in consumers' attitudes about online shopping We learned during the past year that online shoppers have become increasingly sophistica...