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After coming under fire last week for replacing aerial photos of Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans on Google Earth with earlier pictures of the city in its pre-hurricane splendor, Google on Sunday switched photos once again to reveal the city more accurately in its current state Last week's media coverage even sparked a letter from Rep. Brad Mi...

Microsoft announced the early release of a patch that will eliminate an increasingly dangerous Windows flaw from users' PCs -- a full week before the company's scheduled monthly "Patch Tuesday" cycle The software giant's move to fix the vulnerability on Tuesday was provoked by an increasing number of hackers who stepped up attacks on PCs running va...

Search giant Google may be joining the list of suitors for interactive marketing firm DoubleClick -- reportedly joining Microsoft, Yahoo and Time Warner's AOL in the potential buyer pool Google is in talks with DoubleClick's majority owner, San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday....

Gaming is no longer just for teenagers -- it's entertainment for everyone. The gaming industry is not an exclusive club for large game developers, publishers and console manufacturers. Not any more. You too are invited The Internet has reinvented gaming, and now gaming is reinventing the Internet. Over the past 10 years, the Internet and gaming ind...

Network security software firm StillSecure released Monday the beta version of its Cobia unified network platform, which allows network and security functions with plug-n-play software modules running Windows or Linux operating systems Designed for use in small to medium businesses and enterprise remote offices, the Cobia platform runs on standard ...

Last week, there were three events worth talking about, but I'll mention one of them only in passing. The first was the entry of the Xbox Elite into the market, positioned against Sony. It is almost a great product -- and for new buyers, it may be good enough -- but Microsoft could have hit a home run and didn't HP launched its small business initi...

Colleague and frequent SOA Insights Edition contributor Tony Baer at OnStrategies has a nice context analysis of recent Eclipse Foundation news, and he wonders if Eclipse may be extending itself too thinly. He says this would follow the mistakes of the waning role of the Java Community Process (JCP) I think Tony's analysis is spot-on, as usual, but...

In an attempt to get a hands-on read of the efficiency and credibility of comparison search engines, I embarked on a buying experiment for an HP Media Vault mv2020 server -- specifically a Windows-based PC tower with two 500 GB Internal Drives, three USB ports for expansion, room for an additional 3.5-inch internal drive, built-in Gigabit Ethernet and a dual processor configuration...

For the third time, The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- the overseer of the Internet's domain-name address system -- has rejected a proposal to create a top level .xxx domain, and opponents of the adult-themed suffix hope three times is the charm "This decision was the result of very careful scrutiny and consideration...

The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday said the U.S. ban on Internet gambling is out of line with international trade policy. This ruling gives hope to Web gambling firms that have been battered by U.S. regulatory and law enforcement activity in recent months The WTO ruled in favor of the Caribbean nations of Antigua and Barbuda, which had fi...

It always pays to be suspicious when unsolicited e-mails arrive, and on Friday new evidence underscored the point: A malicious e-mail purportedly from Microsoft actually serves up a worm dubbed "Grum." The e-mail, which claims to come from admin@microsoft.com and reads "Internet Explorer 7 Downloads" in the subject line, displays an image that invi...

Digital television broadcasts targeted for children will soon be available in Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge vehicles, starting with the 2008 Chrysler and Dodge minivans The service, coming from Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI), will be called "Sirius Backseat TV." While the name implies it will be available only to TV monitors in vehicles' rear sea...

The boardroom of game publisher Take-Two resembled a scene from one of its violent video games as the often embattled firm booted five of six board members who were up for reelection Among them was chief executive Paul Eibeler, who had the dubious distinction of being removed from both the boardroom and the executive suite....

Troubled PC maker Dell on Thursday said that an audit into its past bookkeeping practices found errors and evidence of misconduct. Dell said it would seek to push back the filing of its annual report for the fiscal year that ended in early February because the inquiry by its board of directors' audit committee is not yet complete "As we move toward...

Before YouTube and MySpace, the Web 2.0 was neither as widely used, nor as widely known. At that time, companies that needed online collaboration and file sharing were its main users That all ended when YouTube and MySpace became so popular. Both sites have created a "gathering place" for younger people....

The art of copying and stealing other people's content and ideas has settled comfortably into the mainstream across the globe. What formerly would have constituted an act of piracy is now a commonplace occurrence. Isn't it time to give these "borrowers" a tribute, host a gala dinner and hand out awards? Today, it is possible for anyone to borrow, c...

When Wal-Mart imposed its seemingly -- to the suppliers at least -- draconian RFID mandate, it also held out the future promise that the cost of the technology would someday be quite affordable, perhaps as low as 5 US cents per tag. That day hasn't come -- at least not yet Currently, the cost of passive tags range from as low as 11 cents to as much...

There are some 31 million households in the United States without Internet access, and almost half them don't care a jot about it Twenty-nine percent of U.S. households don't have Internet access and don't plan to get it in the next 12 months, according to a study released this week by Parks Associates....

After weeks of speculation in the Linux community, Dell made its open source plans official Wednesday, confirming rumors that it will begin selling select desktops and notebooks with Linux operating systems preinstalled. Dell said the decision was made as a result of feedback from customers on its IdeaStorm Web site "Dell has heard you, and we wil...

AT&T, Qwest and Verizon won the right to bid for US$20 billion in federal telecommunications contracts, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced Thursday Noticeably absent from the list is Sprint, which previously held the rights to bid for U.S. government telecommunications contracts....