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In a departure from what it did with Windows XP and Windows Vista, Microsoft has decided to give users of Window 7 Starter on small notebook PCs -- netbooks -- the ability to run as many applications simultaneously as they would like. The original plan had been to limit users of the Windows 7 Starter edition to three simultaneous applications, excluding background processes such as antivirus applications, wireless and Bluetooth, and system tools like Explorer and Control Panel.

Like many others, I was salivating at the thought of getting my hands on a new, faster search engine, and so I was impatiently waiting for Wednesday when Microsoft was scheduled to unleash Bing on the world When it made Bing available on Monday instead, I leaped on the application and began running searches on the Web with little cries of joy....

Google said Monday that it plans to build an e-book service to make electronic editions of mainstream titles available to consumers -- whether they own a specialized e-book reader or not The service should roll out by the end of the year, Google spokesperson Gabriel Stricker told the E-Commerce Times....

Part 1 of this series sketches the history of journalism in the U.S. from the pre-Revolutionary era to the present day.Part 2 recalls the emergence of the Internet and the growth of the long tail of online advertising The shift from highly centralized corporations to distributed, networked "clouds" of micro-businesses is a hallmark of the Internet ...

Last week, Microsoft announced its new search push at Google -- and unlike Live Search, which was a joke, Bing looks to have the right stuff. The question is, can Microsoft get people to move? Palm initially looked as though it was going to get iPhone users to move, but that hope started to sputter last week. It increasingly looked like Palm would follow Netscape and Transmeta in making the mistake of scaring a competitor into corporocidal (as in "homicidal," but with corporations) behavior. Rather than taking a bite out of Apple, it looks like Palm may be pwned. ...

Business Intelligence has evolved considerably in the last several years. At one time the domain of PhDs or other highly trained employees, it has become accessible to the masses. Indeed, one of the competitive differentiators among the vendors in the market -- from the huge stack players to the small best-of-breed providers -- is not whether, but...

President Barack Obama held a press conference on Friday to announce the creation of a new White House office of cybersecurity, helmed by a chief who will report to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council. That person has not yet been named, but speculation is rampant that it will be Melissa Hathaway, who led a recent two-m...

Fresh off its attempt to sideswipe Apple with its "Laptop Hunters" ad campaign, Microsoft is apparently now gunning for Google with its upcoming search engine, Bing Announcing Bing on Thursday, Microsoft promised a worldwide launch by June 3 and pointed readers to a Web site where the service would be located....

The same developers who gave you Google Maps now think they've come up with the single best way for users to navigate all the communication and collaboration tools they currently use on a computer. Judging from some early tech press/blogger reaction, as well as an early thumbs-up from the development community, Google Wave may indeed have the ability to take on not only the most popular office applications, but also the hottest social networks...

It's a love-hate relationship right up there with dysfunctional parents du jour Jon and Kate (minus 8); the media has a middle-school crush on Twitter, and the media is the first to say nasty things about Twitter while Twitter is in study hall Some of its members are using a helluva lot more than 140 characters to do their damage. The New York Time...

With an increasing number of individuals engaging in social networking, it is not surprising that Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have started to play a prominent role in litigation in the United States and Canada, at times affecting outcomes Increasingly, information contained in Facebook profiles has been used as evidence in litig...

Fidelitone Logistics, a third-party logistics provider based near Chicago, works with retailers like Best Buy, Black & Decker and Aero Bed International to manage their inventories and ship consumer goods worldwide. Mike Schoenfeld, an executive VP at Fidelitone, recently gave a group of executives from a venture capital firm a tour of the company...

America's winemakers have won a victory for online wine sales in Kansas, but the legislative battle demonstrates the challenges that e-commerce, a key force for economic recovery, still faces from outdated thinking and entrenched political institutions. Signed into law in April, 2009, Kansas Senate Bill 212 allows direct-to-consumer (DTC) wine sh...

Two upcoming e-readers demonstrated Wednesday could force changes in the market. They are Plastic Logic's reader and British firm Interead's Cool-er. Plastic Logic's reader, which has a much larger screen than the Amazon Kindle, targets business readers. The Cool-er has the same 6-inch screen size as the Amazon Kindle 2, but it's priced at almost ...

Time Warner is officially releasing AOL from its parentage. A year after announcing its intention to separate from the struggling unit, Time Warner said Thursday the time had come The company, which owns 95 percent of AOL, will buy out the 5 percent stake that Google owns -- and has said it wants to sell -- for an undisclosed amount.

Stockholm-based Spotify is still trying to navigate a maze of licensing obstacles before it can launch a U.S. version of its much-hyped desktop streaming music application. Yet its developers showed how they've been keeping busy Wednesday with an Android smartphone app demonstration during the Google I/O conference in San Francisco Spotify's demo h...

Think of the ideal software asset management (SAM) system as a monitor that displays what exactly drivesyour business operations. It provides a readout of all the softwareinstalled throughout the company's computer systems, andmuch more SAM programs also help IT departments rein in duplicate or redundantsoftware applications. Software budget overru...

In today's Internet-driven world of business, customer data -- traditionally the lifeblood of any enterprise -- takes on a new and frightening importance On the one hand, businesses have to provide partners, staff and contractors access to data; on the other, they have to ensure that data does not get lost by accident -- or stolen....

One figure that's drawn much attention in Facebook's US$200 millioninvestment deal with Moscow-based Digital Sky Technologies announcedTuesday is the implied valuation of the privately held socialnetworking company: $10 billion While impressive, the number is off a third from the $15billion figure floated after Microsoft invested $240 million inFac...

Dogged by rumors in the blogosphere about its Zune portable media player, Microsoft threw in the towel on Wednesday, divulging a few details about the upcoming Zune and confirming that the next generation of the device will be available in the U.S. this fall The Zune HD will target the same market as the iPod touch, which has proved hugely successf...