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In a move framed as an anniversary celebration, not a reaction to competition, Sony Computer Entertainment America is cutting the price of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) game console by US$30 Sony said the units will now sell for $169.99, "delivering a significant $30 savings to consumers." That's about the same price being charged by some retailer...

Best Buy edged further ahead of rival Circuit City in the battle for consumer electronics and entertainment spending in the fourth quarter, with high-end TVs and other devices helping drive Best Buy's gains and costs associated with a restructuring plan dragging down Circuit City's Best Buy's profit was up 18.5 percent for the quarter that ended in...

Follow service-oriented architecture (SOA) to its logical conclusions and you recognize that modern corporations will soon be operated on the equivalent of aviation's "fly by wire." The traditional governance and management means of running a business -- the levers, pulleys, cables and brute muscle -- will through SOA become more automated, rules- and event-driven, self-service, preprogrammed, policy-orchestrated ... agile...

When Phil de Vellis, creator of the "Hillary 1984" mashup video, wrote that "the game has changed," he summed up in four words the virtually earth-shaking revolution that is now changing the nature of the political campaign. Candidates in the 2008 presidential election face a landscape unlike any other in political history, and it's all because of Web 2.0

The State of Texas has charged electronics retailer Radio Shack with violating state identity protection laws, claiming the company dumped thousands of customer records behind a store near Corpus Christi, possibly exposing consumers to identity theft Attorney General Greg Abbott leveled two charges against the Fort Worth-based company this week, in...

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate automobile emissions, contrary to the Bush administration's position While rooted in a technicality -- a state's challenge to a federal agency's interpretation of the law -- the decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency is being lau...

The world's largest online social networking site, MySpace, is leaping into politics The site plans to host a virtual primary Jan. 1 and 2, 2008, in advance of traditional bellwether political events such as the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary....

XenSource released a new version of its flagship commercial server virtualization product Monday. XenEnterprise 3.2 brings to business consumers more advanced deployment options for versions of Windows and Linux as well as boosted power and flexibility of Windows guests via SMP (systemic multiprocessing) support "These are good improvements," Gary ...

Cable giant Comcast extended its regional reach Tuesday, announcing that it will buy privately held Patriot Media & Communications for around US$483 million in cash The deal gives Comcast control of a tightly focused regional network with about 81,000 video subscribers mainly focused in the central New Jersey area, not far from Comcast's home base ...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has established rules that prohibit telephone and mobile phone carriers from releasing customer records over the phone without a password In part, the new privacy rules are designed to protect against pretexting, the practice of impersonating a phone customer to gain access to personal phone records,...

British UFO enthusiast Gary McKinnon, who hacked into U.S. military computers in 2001 and 2002, lost his extradition appeal Tuesday in London's High Court McKinnon is accused of hacking into 97 U.S. military and NASA computers in the hopes of finding secret data on UFOs. He was charged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia...

Continuing its drive to expand its reach beyond the Web, Google reached a deal to partner with satellite TV provider EchoStar to deliver television spots for its advertising clients Together, the companies will create what they called the first automated system for buying, selling, distributing and measuring the effectiveness of video ads delivered...

Their mode of Cyberspace travel may be called a browser, but what they're doing at news sites on the Web is more than just browsing, according to findings released last week by the Poynter Institute Readers of news on the Web spend more time with stories they choose to eyeball than their counterparts reading printed newspapers, according to the res...

IBM is close to unveiling a new Internet browsing technology that will help the visually impaired enjoy streaming video and animation Code named "A-browser," which stands for "Accessibility Browser," the application uses and augments some of the technology found in IBM's Easy Web Browser, the software used on sites -- such as Macy's.com -- that hel...

In e-commerce, understanding the customer can make the difference between a company's online success or failure. As processes for collecting and storing data become more sophisticated and efficient, companies are able to keep databases of transactional and clickstream data that are larger than ever before This information is essential to unlocking ...

As the cost of equipping classrooms with everything from chalk to chairs continues to escalate, many school districts are turning to open source solutions as a viable alternative to expensive software for in-class computers. School IT managers are discovering not only that Linux-based distributions a great way to save money, but also that allowing users access to the software's underlying source code may introduce students to technical aptitude they didn't know they had...

Today, most corporate CEOs come up through the ranks from eithersales or operations. Fast forward a few years, though, and IT leadership may be a third route to the helm A number of trends in recent years indicate that the role is evolving, Martha Heller, managing director of the IT leadership practice at executive recruiter Z Resource Group, told ...

The video game publisher that has made a financial killing off its most popular game title, "Grand Theft Auto" (GTA), is in hot water just one week after restructuring its board of directors and promising to increase its "exceptional brands and creative resources." The latest version of Take-Two's popular run-and-gun video game, in which players in...

Mozilla fans can now download the latest version of the Minimo mobile browser to their smartphones. News of the release of Minimo 0.2 came last week as a posting on project leader Doug Turner's blog "DougT's Ramblings." The browser is available via the Mozilla Project's Web page This may, however, be the last Minimo release for a while, according t...

Xerox has announced it will acquireGlobal Imaging Systems, a provider of automated office equipment, network integration services, and electronic presentation systems, for US$1.5 billion, or $29 per share, in an all-cash transaction The deal is structured in two steps: a cash tender offer for all Global Imaging Systems outstanding shares, followed ...