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For most newspapers, there's a clear line of demarcation between their print and Web operations. Although that line gets fuzzier and fuzzier every day, nowhere has it gotten fuzzier than at BostonNow BostonNow, a free newspaper handed out around Boston to some 85,000 commuters five days a week, publishes blog items beside its news stories as well a...

The lawsuit IBM filed against Amazon for multiple patent violations has ended amicably, with Amazon agreeing to pay undisclosed license fees The legal battle over the disputed technologies began with much fanfare last fall, when IBM filed a complaint alleging that Amazon had infringed five of its patents related to e-commerce....

A team of astronomers working with NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory has witnessed the brightest supernova ever seen, leading them to suggest that a similar explosion may be imminent in a star in our own galaxy "This supernova was not only bright, but also rather slow in its development, which means that when you take into account that it stayed bri...

Sun Microsystems is previewing a new family of Java-based solutions for creating and deploying rich Internet applications (RIA) for use on mobile handsets, set-top boxes, PC desktops and anywhere else the Java Runtime Environment is deployed Sun previewed the solutions, organized under the name "JavaFX," at its JavaOne Conference in San Francisco T...

Social networking powerhouse MySpace and Photobucket, a photo-sharing site, have come to terms on a possible buyout deal, according to published reports A preliminary deal has been reached, and the acquisition of Photobucket will cost MySpace up to US$250 million, Reuters reported Monday, citing unnamed sources familiar with the negotiations....

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has fallen short in his bid to win a seat on the board of directors of sagging handset maker Motorola, with the company announcing that preliminary estimates of votes show all incumbent board members re-elected The results -- which won't be finalized for a few weeks as proxy votes and those cast directly during the s...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is attempting to provide some solace to current and former employees whose personal information is on a computer hard drive that was "discovered missing" late last week The TSA said it will give the employees free credit monitoring for up to one year, ID theft insurance up to US$25,000, fraud alerts ...

Reigning PC king HP's second quarter results will exceed earlier guidance, thanks to strong sales of PCs and enterprise-class servers, the company announced Tuesday. The news sent the company's stock to a six-year high HP's revenue for the quarter will be between US$25.5 billion and $25.55 billion, well above its earlier estimate of $24.5 billion, ...

Marketers assume that Googling for information is an automatic response the instant a Web surfer opens a browser. For many Internet users, the theory is true. However, for a number of reasons, and with increasing regularity, many people bypass search engines altogether in favor of a technique called direct navigation. Simply put, direct navigation is when a user directly types a Web address into a browser...

The most common and least understood marketing barrier facing outsourcing service providers is the absence of a strong brand. Most brands associated with IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) companies are selected based on criteria relevant to the location of outsourcing firms, rather than the location where they intend to do business In the outsourci...

Symark Software has released PowerBroker version 5.0 for the Linux operating system, the company announced Monday Symark makes security administration solutions for heterogeneous IT environments. PowerBrokerprovides Unix and Linux workstations and networks with increased security and accountability bydelegating administrative privileges and grantin...

There are two main camps of software developers that dominate the world today: those that work primarily in a Microsoft .Net framework and those that work primarily in a J2EE (aka "Java EE") framework However, even this one-two punch of heavy-hitting frameworks comes with a caveat:...

Parents are becoming more restrictive when it comes to regulating the video games their children play, according to a recent study commissioned by theEntertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) Sixty percent of parents with children under the age of 17 never allow their kids to play M-rated titles, the study found, while 34 percent sometimes permit ...

Marvell Technology Group announced several changes to its leadership after an internal investigation found that stock options grants were routinely backdated, the company announced Monday. The firm indicated that more changes could be on the way Marvell's CFO George Hervey has resigned, the company stated. Meanwhile, cofounder Weili Dai will give u...

Nearly half of American adults have a "distant or nonexistent relationship" with information and communication technology (ICT) such as the Internet, mobile phones and other gadgets, according to a new report by the Pew Internet Project (PIP). The study examined the sort of technology used by adults, how they use it and how they think about technology...

After more than two years of testing, Microsoft is launching Windows Live Hotmail, the successor to MSN Hotmail, making it available in 36 languages across the world The software giant has closed the public testing period and has started the process of migrating users to this major upgrade of its Web mail service....

Wal-Mart Stores has launched a 10-year pilot project to use solar power at 22 Wal-Mart sites in California and Hawaii, the company announced Monday Solar energy providers SunEdison, PowerLight and BP Solar will supply an estimated 20 million kilowatt-hours per year across the Wal-Mart locations, making this one of the largest solar power initiative...

Dell has jumped on board the Microsoft-Novell collaboration to deliver Suse Linux to enterprise customers The Microsoft-Novell agreement, announced last November, is designed to let the two companies jointly build, market and support solutions that improve interoperability between Microsoft Windows solutions and Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise-based...

Cable providers keep piling on the goodies in their quest to sell TV. Comcast's newest enticement is a Web-based dashboard that will allow its triple play customers to easily manage their communication tasks The new service will be called the SmartZone communications center, said Comcast, the nation's biggest cable company. The company described th...

Google's YouTube-related legal struggles have mounted in recent days, with NBC Universal and Viacom lending support to a California journalist's copyright infringement suit against the video-sharing site, and a third lawsuit filed by England's top soccer league Both NBC Universal and Viacom -- which already has a US$1 billion copyright suit of its ...