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China further asserted its control over Internet information within its borders this weekend, announcing updated restrictions on online news services "We need to better regulate the online news services, with the emergence of so many unhealthy news stories that will easily mislead the public," a spokesman for the Ministry of Information Industry sa...

Dell today said it has added multi-core technology from Intel to its portfolio of dual-socket servers and workstations. Meanwhile, AMD also said today that IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun are using its new dual-core Opteron The announcements undoubtedly heighten the competition between AMD and rivalIntel. Analysts said the X86 dual-core processor mark...

Bidding to enhance its ability to compete with Google and Yahoo in the revenue-generating part of the search marketplace, Microsoft unveiled a paid-search service of its own, one that seeks to take targeting of ads to a new level Microsoft's MSN formally launched the service, known as adCenter, in France and Singapore, though analysts say a broader...

On Saturday night, Sept. 24, an undersea cable connecting Karachi, Pakistan, and Mumbai, India, to the West failed around 10:27 p.m. local time in Pakistan. The cable fault blocked 75 percent of Pakistan's Internet connectivity to the outside world and some voice traffic as well Service was restored at 1:25 a.m. the next day, but has left the high ...

The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies are investigating allegations of fraud by small charities -- or organizations posing as such charities -- that arose in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Online bill payment service PayPal, stepping up its security in response to the concerns over online theft of funds intended for hurricane victims, froze the accounts of a number of charitable projects...

As goods and services increasingly become commoditized on a global scale, companies are looking for new ways to reduce costs, customer churn, and make the most of their existing customer base. In order to whittle down their overhead, many companies are looking at outsourcing their service delivery groups. But with the reward of efficiency comes the risk of customer disconnect. By placing a third party on the front lines, companies are potentially missing out on valuable opportunities to learn from their customers...

Last week's column covered much of the breadth of software inside Windows Vista. The piece addressed some of the features that probably were not widely known and covered likely competitive threats to Apple and Linux. To refresh, Apple is going into the Vista launch weaker and much less differentiated than when they fought the losing battle with the Windows 95 system, and Vista remains too different from Linux to offer the same kind of threat there...

With worldwide ringtone sales reaching more than US$4 billion last year, some industry experts have speculated that phone tones will soon outsell CDs. Others, however, speculate that ringtones' success will be shortlived, and that they will eventually go the way of beepers: virtually extinct The question of whether ringtone sales will continue grow...

Looking to add new weapons in their arsenal against illegal file-swapping, movie and music industry groups have begun to offer a free software program aimed at helping users avoid illegally sharing files and are calling on corporations to monitor their own networks for potentially illegal activity The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) an...

Equifax, Experian and TransUnion have revealed plans to collaborate on encryption standards to strengthen their protection of sensitive consumer data, which has increasingly become the favorite target of attackers motivated by profit There was praise for the agencies' increased protection plan, which will include coordination on industry encryption...

Antivirus experts have found a virus that can move from mobile phones to computers, but analysts say the bug is neither very dangerous nor very sophisticated The Trojan, called CARDTRP.A or Sybos/Cardtrap.A by different antivirus vendors, is rated as a low risk by Trend Micro. F-Secure calls it "unremarkable" except that it runs on the mobile phone...

Nokia is making moves to draw more developers to its platform in an increasingly open-source software landscape. Part of the phone maker's strategy is getting a little cozier with the Eclipse Foundation Nokia this week joined the Eclipse Foundation as a "strategic developer" and board member. Nokia said it will support the Eclipse open-source commu...

Film and television giant Viacom is said to be close to announcing a deal to buy video-on-demand site iFilm, a move that would give it an entirely new distribution channel for its deep well of content Viacom, which owns MTV, CBS and Nickelodeon, among other TV properties, reportedly will pay about US$50 million for privately held iFilm. Neither com...

In a move to beef up on the latest online security threats, Symantec has agreed to acquire WholeSecurity, a behavior-based security and anti-phishing technology firm Phishing attacks use both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials....

Fewer of the remaining Americans not hooked up to the Internet are getting online, and fewer existing dial-up users are spending enough time on the Web to want to move up to broadband access, reports the Pew Internet Project in its latest study on U.S. broadband growth Pew's May 2005 survey indicated that 53 percent of Americans get online with hig...

A Paris-based media watchdog has set its sights on helping anonymous bloggers avoid Internet censors in countries like Iran and China Reporters Without Borders, an organization better known for tracking the abuse and murder of journalists, has turned its attention to online protesters with its "Handbook for Blogger and Cyber-Dissedents."

We've been having a debate in the graduate-level International Marketing course I am teaching regarding whether or not you can buy your way into entirely new markets through high levels of R & D spending. The knee-jerk reaction is to say the bigger the spending in R & D, the higher the innovation, therefore, entirely new markets get created as a result. What follows is market dominance, and just look at 3M, IBM, Microsoft and other global leaders, my students pointed out. Throw in the Apple iPod and case closed...

Chinese officials recently announced they will no longer consider death tolls and other relevant information about natural disasters to be state secrets. On the same day, China Telecom blocked Internet phone service from Skype. That left observers wondering whether freedom is growing or decreasing in China, a tough issue for American firms Some mig...

Reports from Reuters today of the demise of P2P file-sharing networks WinMX and eDonkey appear to be only half true. While WinMX.com does seem to have disappeared, eDonkey, which accounts for more shared files than any other network today, may still be up and running. The P2P network moved its offices from New York to New Jersey a year ago and this migration looks to be the source of some of the confusion...

Fewer of the remaining Americans not hooked up to the Internet are getting online, and fewer existing dial-up users are spending enough time on the Web to want to move up to broadband access, reports the Pew Internet Project in its latest study on U.S. broadband growth Pew's May 2005 survey indicated that 53 percent of Americans get online with hig...