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The European Union (EU) announced Friday it has reached an ambitious agreement to increase the use of renewable energy to 20 percent of all energy usage by 2020. The EU also agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent in relation to 1990 levels over the next 13 years The objective is to combat global warming and lead the world in renewable...

Internet phone service provider Vonage on Thursday was ordered to pay Verizon US$58 million after a jury found it infringed on three patents owned by telecom giant Verizon Communications The award against Vonage covers both penalties and a percentage of subscriber revenue -- royalty payments to Verizon for use of the disputed technology. Vonage is ...

Microsoft plans to submit a new photo format to an international standards group that it claims offers the highest quality images available with improved compression techniques The format, dubbed "HD Photo" -- formerly called "Windows Media Photo" -- is taking aim at the JPEG format, a 15-year old technology that is still the most popular format us...

What's the big deal with having a false persona? We live in a world of fake names, and "World of Warcraft" and Second Life are only part of it. Want to participate in an Internet discussion forum? You'll have to create a user ID, and most likely it won't have your first and last name in it What about MySpace? Does anyone believe all those MySpace p...

The millennium celebrations are long gone, the global Y2K scam has been forgiven and forgotten, the public psyche is in sync with media, and all appears to be going forward normally Though the masses are oblivious to it, a new storm is clearly visible to global circumnavigators, though. It is kicking up dust but soon will cut a clear path. Here it ...

There's no other series of business processes that are going through more of a transformation today and impacting customer relationships more than order management These series of processes have gone through multiple owners, first starting with IT, who adopted them as a quick way to achieve ERP (enterprise resource planning) system consolidation go...

Listening to the newscasts, one might begin to think that Americans should this Sunday brace for a digital world run amok. Billed as a "mini-Y2K", this weekend could produce myriad horrors, if you believe broadcasters' reports Hospitals could incorrectly dispense medications. On Monday, conference rooms could be overrun by workers arriving for a me...

Last week's first annual Tech Policy Summit in San Jose, Calif., turned out smaller than expected, but did feature some big names and key insights into tech issues. The biggest surprise was Google's apparent flip-flop on the issue of net neutrality "None of us want any kind of heavy-handed regulation," said Andrew McLaughlin, Google's head of glob...

Forget Nintendo Wii's motion-sensing controller. After less than six months on the market, Nintendo's groundbreaking video game controller technology may be on the way out following the unveiling of a new game platform that controls gameplay using a player's thoughts and emotions Emotiv Systems gave attendees a peek at its revolutionary brain compu...

Connecticut lawmakers are pushing a bill that would require social networking sites such asMySpace.com to verify users' ages and obtain parental consent for minors who want to post profiles Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, along with Democratic and Republican leaders of the General Law Committee, introduced the legislation on Wednesday, a day a...

Online advertising revenues reached nearly US$4.8 billion in the fourth quarter, making 2006 the third straight year in which ad spending set a new revenue record, according to a report released Wednesday The revenue figure for all of 2006 came in at $16.8 billion, 34 percent higher than the previous high-water mark of $12.5 billion set in 2005, ac...

In a modern-day continuation of an ages-old battle, the Turkish government has banned YouTube in Turkey because of offensive content posted by a Greek contributor Greeks and Turks have been battling on Google's video-sharing site in recent weeks, trading insults in their video posts. When a Greek user posted a video portraying Mustafa Kemal Ataturk...

Mixing flash memory with the traditional spinning disk, Samsung's new hybrid hard drive for Vista-based notebooks will improve boot-up speed, extend battery life and increase reliability, said the company The hybrid drive, the first of its kind, according to Samsung, is currently being sold only to notebook manufacturers. However, Samsung said it w...

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is calling on Congress to create a sweeping privacy law this year which would give consumers increased control over how their personal information is used by third parties Speaking at the annual meeting of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) on Wednesday, Gates also said financial institutions, governments an...

Consumer reaction to downloading movies and TV programming from the Internet has been less than enthusiastic. For some, it's a hassle to move entertainment content from their PCs to their living rooms In recent months, the gadget industry has focused a lot of its resources on cooking up solutions to bridge the PC-TV gap. Yet another such solution w...

Sony Computer Entertainment President Phil Harrison took the wrapper off his company's long-awaited online components for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) video game console Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Styling the new user communities as part of its "Game 3.0," Sony's offerings are an amalgam of hot trends -- online collaboration, user generated content and virtual worlds...

How mature is service-oriented architecture? In asking that question, it's important to make the distinction between the best-of-breed approach, where one picks and chooses various components within one's own SOA arsenal, or a more complete suite, a holistic full-feature set with the benefits, trade-offs and detriments of each of these approaches D...

If you're buying anything online anytime soon, you better charge it. MasterCard, Visa, American Express -- take your pick -- but don't hit the virtual checkout lane without your bank-protected plastic in hand "Use a credit card for maximum protection against money theft online," attorney Mari Frank, author ofSafeguard Your Identity, told the E-Comm...

No call should strike more fear into the heart of an online business than a call from a customer saying, "Your site won't let me do what I want to do." Chilling words, because only a tiny percentage of online consumers will actually pick up the phone to alert businesses to a problem. By the time that call is received, the business is likely to have...

Biometrics -- or biometric authentication -- refers to technology that measures and analyzes human physical characteristics for security purposes Physiological (or biometric) characteristics include, for instance, eye retinas, facial patterns and hand or foot measurements, whereas examples of behavioral characteristics include a person's gait and s...