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First came cash. Now, Microsoft is offering up prizes to try to get to you to use its Live Search product. The company announced the start of a new SearchPerks initiative Wednesday. The program awards frequent flyer-style points for Live searches that can then be redeemed for various gifts It's the latest move in Microsoft's struggle to gain ground...

Sometimes you walk away from a user group meeting concluding that the company didn't introduce much that was really new. You might get the usual product announcements or the dot-version releases and you may take a course that makes you a little smarter about the fine points of some esoteric feature that helps you to do your job. You might say that such gatherings are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. ...

Google showed off its new brainchild last week:a smartphone design in collaboration with its Android partners, Taiwan's handset maker HTC, and the wireless carrier T-Mobile USA. The phone specs are all over the place on the Internet. It looks quite attractive, but perhaps because of the Apple iPhone's lasting impression, many tech pundits gave onl...

For most businesses, data security is a mission-critical undertaking, and a summer of weather calamities drove home that point "As the recent hurricanes reminded us, off-premise backup solutions can make the difference between being out of business for good and being on hiatus for a few months," Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group...

Shares of Silicon Valley chip giant Intel closed up nearly 8.5 percent at just under US$19 Tuesday on news that an equity analyst at investment bank Piper Jaffray upgraded the stock to a buy rating The upgrade comes at a time when shares of other chipmakers such as Advanced Micro Devices and Texas Instruments are trading well below their 52-week hi...

The Motion Picture Association of America has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Los Angeles seeking a restraining order against RealNetworks. RealDVD, which became available on Tuesday, violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the MPAA maintains.

Wii gamers who felt let down by the absence of download functionality for the original "Rock Band" video game will have more than just a playlist of new songs to look forward to with the upcoming release of "Rock Band 2" ("RB2"), expected to hit stores in November MTV Games confirmed Tuesday that "RB2" will include online features, enabling players...

Microsoft has teamed with Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna to try and stamp out so-called scareware The AG and Microsoft have filed lawsuits against James Reed McCreary IV of The Woodlands, Texas. The suit names him as the marketer of an application called "Registry Cleaner XP." Also included in the suit are McCreary's two businesses,...

Several Silicon Valley Congress members have urged the U.S. Department of Justice not to interfere in the pending online advertising deal between search engine giants Google and Yahoo Mountain View, Calif.-based Google and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo are situated in the heart of Silicon Valley....

A man who made his name by founding PayPal has now made history by launching a small, low-cost rocket into space. Elon Musk, who heads up space exploration company SpaceX, successfully sent a Falcon 1 rocket into orbit over the weekend. It marked the company's fourth attempt and first success in launching the rocket SpaceX blames design issues for ...

Part 1 of this three-part series describes the size and complexity of the identity fraud problem, and touches on some of the consequences that go beyond financial damage. Part 2 offers some pointers on what consumers should do if they find they've become victims of identity fraud Recovering from an identity theft case can be more than a burden on y...

While enterprises may be on top of their security practices for the most part, data leakage as a result of end user misuse and abuse is something that might very well be flying under the radar According to a newly released global study by Cisco, "The Challenge of Data Leakage for Business and Employees Around the World," employees are taking numero...

Game publishers have been inserting advertisements into video games almost since games were first developed. But what began as static in-game product placements such as billboards advertising a publisher's upcoming title in the 1970s has become a much more sophisticated marketing tactic -- and a potentially lucrative revenue stream "The medium's be...

Oracle introduced a new collaborative platform called "Beehive"at OpenWorld last week. To be sure, it was hardly the only announcement the enterprise software vendor made -- but it did serve as grist for many bloggers "It gives users a very slick way to communicate and work together, and does an excellent job of tying together email client, IM prog...

The age of mobile computing is upon us. Small form-factor laptops,even smaller netbooks and smartphones keep us continuouslyconnected with colleagues, family, friends and our bosses around theclock These mobile gadgets make it possible to take all of our data with uswherever we go. Mobile technology also lets us bring our favoriteentertainment outl...

It's hard to dismiss the role of the Internet in this year's elections. Both political parties are using online strategies to an extent never seen before in a political campaign. From daily candidate blogs with updates on issues, to made-for-YouTube commercials, to the use of technologies such as SMS (short message service) to announce vice presidential selections, to -- perhaps most discussed -- the use of online tools for fundraising, the Internet has become a dominant force in this election. ...

Besides working overtime to crank out the US$700 billion financial market rescue plan -- to little avail as it turned out -- the House of Representatives on Sunday also passed a piece of legislation that could rack up significantly more penalties for copyright violation. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, or...

The weekend media spotlight was on the heated Congressional negotiations that produced a financial bailout bill, which promptly went nowhere. But hidden somewhere in the static of dealmaking, rhetoric and counteroffers was a strong signal of support for Internet radio The Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 passed the House on Saturday and was schedul...

Sprint's new 4G wireless WiMax network has finally moved from the drawing board to the city of Baltimore, where the company has just launched its so-called Xohm service. Xohm is basically a wireless broadband service running on 2.5 GHz (gigahertz). It is designed deliver 2 to 4 Mbps (megabit per second) downloads and work with laptops, PCs, and mo...

TiVo is teaming up with Nero to bring a new video recording solution to the PC. The companies announced Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC on Monday. The product will offer TiVo functions from a computer, without the need for a set-top box The system will be marketed toward both existing TiVo users and families that don't currently have digital video recording ...