Business

The gains that have made 2008 a blockbuster year for the video game market continued in August; however, the rate of sales showed signs of slowing down for the month. Overall sales growth was held to single digits for the first time since 2006, according to numbers released Friday from market resear...

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GoodGuide.com Gives Up the Goods on Goods' Goodness

Kate Moloney-Egnatios' intuition led her to Intuit. She followed the signs in her career pointing to Verisign and paid her dues at PayPal. But she says her latest tech startup is even more of a winning business idea than tax preparation software and online payment/authentication systems, and the aud...

EXPERT ADVICE

Software License Compliance: Myth vs. Reality

The issue of compliance is forever on the minds of IT executives, and even more so in the last 10 years, due to increased audit activities by software vendors, complex licensing rules and the management of multiple vendors. Non-compliance with a software vendor's licensing can create uncomfortably l...

Two technology associations with significant clout on Capitol Hill are in talks to combine forces. The two organizations, the AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, and the ITAA, or Information Technology Association of America, began merger discussions several months ago. "The real syn...

Internet retail giant Amazon.com is muscling into the wine industry. The company plans to start selling wine from California's Napa Valley and other wine-producing regions in the U.S. later this year. Although Amazon has not confirmed the news, the Napa Valley Vintners Association has been holding w...

With the exception of unlimited plans, major wireless carriers have raised their prices for text messaging almost in tandem by more than 100 percent over the last three years, a fact that caught the attention of U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee. Kohl sent a lette...

Google is getting on board with a new push to bring high-speed Internet access to parts of world still unconnected. The company has joined Liberty Global and HSBC to fund a startup called "O3b Networks" -- short for the "other 3 billion" people who can't yet surf the Net. The group will install 16 l...

Things are changing at eBay. eBay says it is evolving to adapt to changes in the larger market, but it's not clear how the auction giant will fare against an emerging army of specialized competitors, and it's far from clear whether sellers will warm to its new internal price structure. Changing the ...

TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER

Is Social Networking With Shareholders Safe?

Interactive "social networking" is a growing phenomenon, as the success of MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and similar Internet sites suggests. Such social networking sites allow geographically dispersed individuals who share common interests to locate and interact with breathtaking speed and ease. Earli...

Comcast has answered the Federal Communication Commission's order -- to not only cease its controversial network management practices, but also reveal them publicly -- with a legal maneuver of its own: The cable provider has asked the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to overturn the ruling. Prior...

EXPERT ADVICE

Getting a Grip on Your Online Reputation

Today's consumer is smarter than yesterday's consumer, and with the technology available to make educated purchasing decisions efficiently and quickly, Web-savvy buyers are making the most of the tools they have at their disposal. Online reviews are permeating the Web in all shapes and sizes, from r...

Gannett has increased its stake in CareerBuilder, acquiring another 10 percent of the Web site from the Tribune Company for $135 million. Gannett now has a 50.8 percent controlling interest in the site. Other stakeholders are the Tribune, now with 30.8 percent, The McClatchy Company, with 14.4 perce...

Google is adding a video-sharing application called "Google Video for Business" to its Google Apps suite. It is designed to be a channel for companies to communicate internally with their employees. There are a number of use cases for the Software as a Service application, according to Google: It ca...

Telecommunications infrastructure giant Alcatel-Lucent has shaken up the top ranks of its management team. Seasoned telecom veteran Ben Verwaayen has taken over the CEO spot at the ailing company from Patricia Russo. The company's board also appointed a new chairman, Philippe Camus, who will take ov...

Comcast has announced that it will impose a monthly cap of 250 GB on customers' Internet usage. The company acknowledged it has been evaluating a specific monthly data usage or bandwidth threshold for its Comcast High-Speed Internet residential customers for some time. "Today, we're announcing that ...

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