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Another week, another round of bad news for those who bring you the bad news. Some California newspapers tell their employees to take a week off -- without pay. A 24-hour news channel run by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune is signing off due to a lack of investors. The Washington Post's Book World stand-alone section is stand-alone no more. The CBS station in the nation's top television market guts its on-air sports department. And speaking of sports, when was the last time the number of media passes handed out for a Super Bowl actually declined from the previous year?...

Michael Arrington helped make the technology blogosphere a must-read for many. Now, the influential TechCrunch blog founder says the blogosphere is showing its appreciation by encouraging some to abuse him Arrington announced Wednesday he will take some time off after he was spat on earlier this week as he was leaving a Munich conference. The incid...

Google has been outspoken on the subject of Net neutrality: It does not want to see Internet service providers limit accessibility based on pricing or other criteria. Now, it is offering consumers the tools to observe firsthand how encumbered their Internet access can be if an ISP prioritizes content. These tools, which are available immediately, ...

Cisco Systems is adding another layer of intelligence to its network switching products The company announced a new software technology on Wednesday, called "EnergyWise," that lets businesses keep an eye on energy consumption by means of wireless devices and Ethernet-connected phones and cameras....

It's not news that industry leaders in many markets are rushing to join the "earth friendly" revolution. Their "green" initiatives range from new eco-friendly products, such as paper towels made of recycled paper, to corporate programs promoting community involvement, such as Dell's "Plant a Tree for Me," which allows customers to add US$4 to their printer purchase to offset carbon dioxide by planting a tree.

The budget cuts and spending freezes resulting from the current economic downturn have reduced the number of legitimate opportunities for sales representatives; therefore, organizations are placing a renewed emphasis on cutting costs and customer retention to combat certain economic realities. In an ongoing attempt to meet the expectations of pros...

Toolbars and add-ons bring increased functionality to Web browsers andthe computers that run them. UK-based SpinVox does the same thingfor cell phone users. The company offers several services that convertvoicemail to text messages or e-mail and allow message broadcasting tolisted recipients and social networks SpinVox is just beginning to market t...

Google has officially taken Gmail offline. No, the search giant has not put the kibosh on the popular e-mail service; it's added offline functionality, the company announced Tuesday. While Web-based e-mail services that are accessible from any computer with a Web connection and a browser are convenient, the applications are sometimes hindered by t...

Yahoo's stock surged nearly 7 percent to US$12.12 per share in mid-day trading on Wednesday after the struggling Internet portal reported better-than-expected fourth-quarter financial results Wall Street analysts also seemed impressed with the debut of new CEO Carol Bartz, who took over the reins from company cofounder Jerry Yang just a little more...

IBM received nearly 4,200 patents in 2008 from the United States Patent & Trademark Office, making Big Blue the undisputed king of the intellectual property game for the 16th year running A closer look at U.S. patent numbers collated by IFI Patent Intelligence reveals something else: More and more international companies made efforts to protect the...

Gone are the days when "fringe technologies" meant things like solar energy and wind power Those and other alternative energy approaches have all gone mainstream, to one degree or another, and they're gaining more steam each year....

Just a week after beating Wall Street expectations with a sterling earnings report, IBM is rumored to be laying off between 1,400 and 2,800 employees If true, IBM would be the latest on a long list of technology companies that have shed jobs in the past few weeks. Last week, Microsoft announced it would lay off 5,000 employees while Intel said it w...

Verizon Wireless has introduced a new device that routes its cell phone traffic over a consumer's household broadband connection, effectively creating a mini cellular service network inside the user's home. The new box, called "Verizon Wireless Network Extender," is designed to let Verizon Wireless customers use their cell phones at home in situat...

The U.S. Senate voted late Monday to institute a four-month delay in the nation's switch from analog to all-digital television signals in a move meant to give millions of Americans more time to prepare for the transition Television broadcasters are scheduled to go all-digital on Feb. 17, in effect tuning out anyone who has an analog television set....

The micro-blog site Twitter has inked an agreement with one or more venture capital firms that values it at an eye-popping US$250 million, according to a report published by TechCrunch. Institutional Venture Partners is named as one of the companies to have signed a term sheet, but no other details are mentioned. Twitter declined to comment to E-...

A recent ruling by the Supreme Court, reversing a nearly 100 year old statute outlawing price setting, is in the spotlight for retailers, lobbyists and economic theorists. For the past 96 years, retailers have been protected under an umbrella of antitrust laws prohibiting the collusion of manufactures from establishing and maintaining minimum prices for retail and consumer goods. The implications of the new ruling present a significant change to the relationship between price, value and demand in the U.S. market...

Nokia is gearing up to make moves in both hardware and software. Its next flagship phone, the N97, is gearing up for release in Europe in the first half of this year -- though availability in the U.S. is still hazy. On the software side, the Symbian Foundation is scheduled to begin operations within the same time frame. TechNewsWorld spoke with Ir...

It was supposed to be a legal showdown between the people who bring you The New York Times and the people who bring you community news; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists at the Gray Lady covering wars, presidential campaigns and Wall Street corporate meltdowns vs. low-paid reporters telling you about neighborhood zoning disputes, school district elections and reviews of new local restaurants...

In an effort to rekindle some love for the old-school kitchen telephone, Verizon Wireless is getting set to roll out a brand-new touchscreen VoIP phone that offers visual voicemail, calendaring, text alerts, local traffic, weather reports and the ability to send turn-by-turn directions to Verizon Wireless phones. The new phone is called the "Verizon Hub."

The mobile Internet is fast becoming mainstream. One reason is clearly the growing prevalence of high-end handsets that are less telephones than they are entertainment centers, fashion statements, and content-consumption vehicles. And every bit as important as the devices are the all-you-can-eat data plans that come with them. These two factors alone -- the astonishing popularity of handsets such as the iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm, and the G1, and the end of stifling limits on data consumption -- explain much of the growth in mobile content consumption; but let's not forget the other key dimension, which is the content itself...