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NEC on Tuesday added an interesting twist to the high-definition format battle: a semiconductor that crosses the boundaries between the competing standards NEC's new chipset will be compatible with both the Blu-ray (BD) disc, which is backed by Sony and Matsushita Electric, and the HD DVD disc developed by rival Toshiba, which has the support of Mi...

Despite the Justice Department's blessing of AT&T's US$79 billion buyout of BellSouth -- the largest in a wave of mergers to alter the telecom industry over the past two years -- the deal may yet face a political battle In the wake of the deal's approval on antitrust grounds Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) delayed a planned v...

Despite the Justice Department's blessing of AT&T's US$79 billion buyout of BellSouth -- the largest in a wave of mergers to alter the telecom industry over the past two years -- the deal may yet face a political battle In the wake of the deal's approval on antitrust grounds Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) delayed a planned v...

Despite the Justice Department's blessing of AT&T's US$79 billion buyout of BellSouth -- the largest in a wave of mergers to alter the telecom industry over the past two years -- the deal may yet face a political battle In the wake of the deal's approval on antitrust grounds Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) delayed a planned v...

Michael Yang and Yeogirl Yun are hardly strangers to the realm of comparison shopping sites. The dynamic duo founded mySimon.com, which became the largest price comparison shopping site on the Internet, with over 10 million users in 2000. After raising US$30 million in investment capital, mySimon was acquired by CNET for $700 million in 2000 The pa...

As CRM solutions emerged, retailers with private-label credit cards and catalog operations adopted the technology with the clarity many other retailers lacked. They already had a wealth of information, and they understood that CRM provided a toolset for data analysis and optimization "They stressed the 'C' in CRM because they had customer data," sa...

A large part of the appeal of blogging is its simplicity. Setting up an account at one of the large blogging services like Blogger.com is as untaxing as filling in a few fields in an online form As uncomplicated as blogging can be, however, once the bloom fades on its novelty, it can become a chore. You've got to log into your host, navigate menus,...

Java backer Sun Microsystems and open source application development player Laszlo Systems have announced a partnership to support OpenLaszlo applications on Java Micro Edition (ME) devices The companies said the deal will boost the portability and flexibility of both products, and would form the basis of a new OpenLaszlo community project dubbed O...

In yet another step into Microsoft territory, Google on Wednesday released a package of applications that directly compete with the software giant's Office suite Google is using its popularity in the search engine realm to garner attention for its Web 2.0 applications, Writely and Google Spreadsheets. Writely is a Web-based word processing program ...

Data security giant McAfee said Wednesday it has fired its president and accepted the resignation of its CEO after an internal investigation into stock options accounting turned up problems that will require extensive restatement of past earnings CEO George Samenuk, who also held the position of chairman, said his decision to retire after six years...

Microsoft on Tuesday addressed 26 vulnerabilities in its monthly cycle of security patch releases, marking the software giant's largest Patch Tuesday this year Microsoft issued 10 security bulletins to patch vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and .Net. Six of the bulletins were rated "critical," a record number since the company implemented its Pat...

Small and medium-sized businesses are frequently slow to adopt new technology because of the cost, manpower and lengthy deployment cycles that can be involved, but Internet telephony is one technology that deserves serious consideration for two related reasons First, with the advent of e-mail and other services that simplify distance communication,...

The programming tool Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) has proven integral to the latest popular Internet destinations and is winning the favor of corporate supporters, including IBM and Google, as well as developers. However, there are some security issues that may accompany this cutting-edge technology tool Security experts highlighted some ...

Internet users are under attack -- and what's more, there's no bulletproof defense against hackers on the horizon. Despite hype to the contrary from marketing departments at Microsoft, Apple andMozilla, Web browsers themselves -- not just the operating systems that run them -- are to blame for many security flaws Vulnerabilities are so embedded in ...

Yahoo has launched what it ambitiously calls the largest time capsule in the history of the world. It is encouraging people from around the globe to contribute personal photos, stories, thoughts, ideas, poems, home movies -- the flotsam of every day life, in other words -- to its site, timecapsule.yahoo.com. The point, as with all time capsules, is to illustrate life in 2006...

Browser maker Opera Software has released in Europe a specialized browser for the two-screen Nintendo DS handheld, touting features that let users comfortably browse the Web from either the DS or slimmer Nintendo DS Lite Opera, which has decidedly set its sights on the mobile handset market with its Opera Mobile and Opera Mini handheld browsers, sa...

Microsites -- highly focused mini Web sites within larger ones that encourage consumers to create content -- will be growing in popularity among larger online advertisers in the coming year, according to a report released last week byJupiterKagan "The use of promotional microsites will grow most strongly among the largest advertisers in the coming ...

Microsoft on Monday announced a new beta version of Windows Live OneCare. Version 1.5 of the security software is compatible with Vista and available as a free download OneCare is the company's all-in-one, automatic and self-updating PC care service designed to help consumers protect and maintain their PCs. It is another part of Microsoft's attempt...

Google's US$1.65 billion purchase of video-sharing siteYouTube -- made official late Monday after several days of speculation -- could dramatically alter the playing field for competing Internet giants The YouTube acquisition is being hailed as a bold thrust that could turn two weaknesses in the Google empire -- video distribution and social networ...

In a growing digital media market that has witnessed YouTube carve out a niche for viral video, Blinkx is looking to make those videos easier to find online The firm, which has indexed more than 6 million hours of audio, video and TV programming to make them searchable, announced this week that Microsoft has agreed to use Blinkx technology to power...