Business

On March 21, 2006, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey sent out the first tweet: "Just setting up my twittr." A mere three years later, in February 2009, Twitter had approximately 4 million visitors. At that point, Twitter set an audacious goal of one day reaching 1 billion users and becoming "the pulse ...

A day after Google announced it had bought itself some digital help in its Google Books project by way of reCAPTCHA, reports surfaced of new governmental objections to a settlement the company reached last year with publishers and author groups. The attorneys general of five states have filed a clas...

It's back to the future for Palm, which is dropping Microsoft's Windows Mobile in favor of its own proprietary platform, webOS, unveiled earlier this year. Palm CEO John Rubinstein reportedly told investors in a conference call on Thursday that the company wants to dedicate all of its future develop...

The headline on the Official Google Blog makes sure you know what a CAPTCHA is; "Google Acquires reCAPTCHA" is written in the now-familiar wavy, squiggly-style font that you are used to seeing when you want to log on to certain Web sites or post links on Facebook. When confronted with a CAPTCHA, you...

Adobe's planned acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture took nearly everyone off guard when it was announced Tuesday. Now that the idea has had a chance to sink in, though, it seems to be growing in popularity. "I think it really does make sense," said Steve Ashley, an analyst for investment rese...

It's not perfect, and it won't solve the advertising crisis in traditional publishing, but Google's Fast Flip news-viewing product may represent a small step toward helping pen-and-paper publishers make a profitable leap to the digital age. It allows users to slide through tiled screenshots of news ...

The parent company of T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless company, is considering a bid for Sprint Nextel, the carrier just north of it on the size chart, according to a British newspaper. Deutsche Telekom could make the offer within the next few weeks, it said. Such a deal, if it were to ha...

The Department of Justice has asked Yahoo and Microsoft to supply it with more information about its proposed search advertising tie-up that the duo announced earlier this summer. Both companies have said they are cooperating with the inquiry. Indeed, they all but predicted this would happen when th...

Today's volatile economy is pushing more companies to consider the merits of a virtual workplace for some or all of their employees. Often, however, the idea fails to go anywhere because neither managers nor their workers are sure how to get started. Also, attitudes among some old-school managers po...

September is shaping up to be a crucial time for the future of Google's much-vaunted digital library. The month has already seen a flood of briefs on a proposed settlement in the lawsuit filed by authors and publishers over Google's effort to digitize the world's books. Next week, the U.S. Justice D...

It is rather challenging to hit a moving target when it keeps changing directions. That's a bit like how Cameron Brain, CEO of Open Box Technologies, felt when he set his sights on a particular business market while still in college. In 2006, Brain and a group of classmates at Rensselaer Polytechnic...

Google has proposed modifying its proposed digital books deal with publishers and authors in an effort to tamp down growing opposition to the project. The changes would limit the number of out-of-print books it places online. Industry groups were given a venue to complain about the proposed agreemen...

A rose by any other name can raise quite the stink, making the act of localizing Web sites to fit foreign cultures all the more thorny. Even if the product is as sweet as ice cream, it's possible to leave a bitter taste in consumer's mouths. "Ben and Jerry launched their 'black and tan' flavor of ic...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has temporarily stayed an injunction against the sale of Microsoft Word that had been set to go into effect next month. Microsoft will be able to continue selling copies of its ubiquitous word processing software -- at least until the appeal of the o...

Several telephone companies have suggested to the FCC that it change its definition of broadband. Verizon, AT&T and Comcast are asking the government to define broadband transmissions as anything over 768 Kbps downstream and 200 Kbps upstream. They were responding to an FCC call seeking definiti...