Articles by

Google has formally launched its 3D mapping and imagery technology, launching a service called Google Earth, a name that seems to fit the search company's global ambitions Google Earth uses satellite-based maps based on the Keyhole technology Google acquired earlier this year to create three-dimensional, interactive maps that users can manipulate t...

Apple is turning podcasting into an everyday activity for the average person. The iPod maker said it plans to program everything users need to discover, subscribe, manage and listen to podcasts into iTunes 4.9, the latest version of its digital music software and online music store "Apple is taking podcasting mainstream by building it right into iT...

At the early dawn of the office cubicles, the expensive and elegantly dressed secretarial pools were eliminated as grown-up executives were ordered to type and lick stamps. This great cost savings certainly pleased the CFOs, but quietly halted the intellectual interactions that such pools had offered, while keeping most adults pretty dumbfounded and sluggish for a decade...

Matt Drudge may be the world's most famous blogger, having outed former President Clinton and his pudgy paramour Monica Lewinsky online. His successors on the Internet made blogging a political force during last year's presidential election, and may have helped George W. Bush retain the White House for the Republicans But business blogs -- not poli...

Google has formally launched its 3D mapping and imagery technology, launching a service called Google Earth, a name that seems to fit the search company's global ambitions Google Earth uses satellite-based maps based on the Keyhole technology Google acquired earlier this year to create three-dimensional, interactive maps that users can manipulate t...

Gamers with 3D-enabled mobile phones will soon be able to carry Quake with them The first-person shooter, first released by id Software in 1996 for PCs and followed by three sequels, is thought of as a ground-breaker in 3D gaming. id Software and publisher Pulse Interactive said Quake Mobile will be faithful to the original game. The next-generatio...

AMD is accusing Intel of serious abuses of its dominant position in the computer microprocessor industry, saying the industry giant coerced manufacturers including Dell, HP, Sony, Acer, Fujitsu and others away from AMD products, thereby limiting the challenger's ability to compete The allegations are part of a federal antitrust complaint filed by A...

Ratcheting up the Web e-mail wars once again, Yahoo is about to launch an extensive makeover of its service, saying the new iteration will offer faster message loading, search functions and an easier-to-use interface that mimics traditional desktop e-mail programs The new version is expected to be released to some current users in beta form in the ...

IBM and Sun yesterday announced a 10-year extension of their Java technology agreement along with plans to deliver IBM middleware support for the Solaris 10 operating system on SPARC, x86 and x64 systems. Analysts said the agreements play a key role in Sun's new direction "The next wave of economic and social progress will spring from ever-growing ...

AMD yesterday launched its AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 processor, a chip designed to provide realistic graphics resolutions and enhanced PC performance on 3D games and other intense applications As PC gaming continues to escalate, AMD has been on a mission to provide the fastest processor on the market. The company claims its Athlon 64 FX family of process...

European consumers are being driven away from online banking and commerce by fears that their identities will be stolen and their financial resources raided by information highwaymen Survey results released yesterday by Entrust, a publicly traded digital identity security firm located in Addison, Texas, showed 13 percent of consumers in the United ...

Challenges facing new offshore call centers can spill over and impact clients and customers of those clients. Driven by cost considerations and the availability of personnel, U.S. firms are increasingly turning to offshore call centers -- but are often doing so without fully understanding the constraints facing those facilities Here we explore the ...

People often ask me how likely it is that an open-source license like the GNU General Public License will ever be enforced. When they ask that, they usually mean: "If I violate it will I get caught?" It's a legitimate question, if one lays aside moral rhetoric, such as the idea that proprietary software companies are merely evil capitalist agents seeking to abuse the rights of free software developers...

There are few of us who would choose to go anywhere without them, but we've all wished at one time or another that we had a magic jamming device that could hang up cell phones in the face of a loud, annoying user nearby. The fact is, for most of us, the only thing that makes us more angry than a fellow cell phone user is finding that our own cell phones can't get reception...

Google has launched a playback feature that enables users to watch video online without using third-party plug-in software from the likes of Microsoft or RealPlayer, stepping up its video search capabilities while taking aim at some huge tech targets Instead, the new feature in Google Video uses the open-source VLC media player format, which can ha...

As the two sides pushing different standards for the next-generation DVD format continue to send mixed signals on a unified technology, Microsoft and Toshiba announced today they would be collaborating to create products compatible with the HD DVD format, which is competing against the Sony-backed Blu-ray Expected and predicted by some industry obs...

Microsoft announced Friday that its long-in-the-works Longhorn will enable RSS (really simple syndication) feeds "The fact that they're announcing it now keeps them in the news," Laura DiDio, senior analyst, Yankee Group, told TechNewsWorld. "It keeps users, developers and competitors very well aware that Microsoft is not being static or stagnant, ...

Serving a victory to the entertainment industry and a potentially damaging blow to peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing firms, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that P2P firms can be sued if they encourage the use of their products to illegally swap copyrighted music and movies The unanimous court ruling in the case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Gr...

AMD today launched its AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 processor, a chip designed to provide realistic graphics resolutions and enhanced PC performance on 3D games and other intense applications As PC gaming continues to escalate, AMD has been on a mission to provide the fastest processor on the market. The company claims its Athlon 64 FX family of processors ...

Sun Microsystems today introduced a new workstation aimed at computer-aided design engineers and software developers -- with a price point low enough that the company hopes it will woo users away from the competition The Sun Ultra 20 Workstation enters the market with a starting price of US$895, or $29.95 a month on a three-year subscription, with ...