Business

Dell added another big gun to its fast-growing retail arsenal Thursday, saying it would begin selling some of its personal computers at hundreds of Best Buy stores across the U.S. The partnership may come too late to give Dell an immediate boost during the holiday season, however, with the Round Roc...

For a small business that serves a local area -- a restaurant or gardening service, for example -- word of mouth can quickly make or break a reputation. When the conversation happens online in organized and professionally managed forums like Citysearch and YellowPages.com, reputations can be made an...

Czech Republic-based IT security vendor Grisoft is buying Exploit Prevention Labs, an Atlanta company formed two years ago by security veterans Bob Bales and Roger Thompson. The deal, expected to close Dec. 31, will give users of its software better protection from Web 2.0-savvy cybercriminals than ...

The Department of Justice is siding with the RIAA, saying the $222,000 in penalties levied against a file-sharer after a rare jury trial is not unduly excessive. Jammie Thomas, who became a celebrity for refusing to settle with the RIAA after being sued for posting music on Kazaa, was found to have ...

Consumers are enamored with HD entertainment devices. What consumers abhor, however, is the quagmire of cabling that tethers their HDTVs, high-def DVD players, gaming consoles and surround sound systems together. Hudson, Mass.-based Radiospire Networks is banking on consumers clamoring to its breakt...

Like two baseball card collectors trading player cards they already own for ones they don't, AT&T and Verizon are swapping wireless assets. The two wireless service provider giants have agreed to trade licenses, network assets and subscribers in an effort to help manage separate acquisitions mad...

Like two baseball card collectors trading player cards they already own for ones they don't, AT&T and Verizon are swapping wireless assets. The two wireless service provider giants have agreed to trade licenses, network assets and subscribers in an effort to help manage separate acquisitions mad...

Like two baseball card collectors trading player cards they already own for ones they don't, AT&T and Verizon are swapping wireless assets. The two wireless service provider giants have agreed to trade licenses, network assets and subscribers in an effort to help manage separate acquisitions mad...

Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., announced Tuesday it has acquired Beliefnet, a leading religious Web site. The purchase expands the media mogul's marketing and advertising reach into a demographic that provides the company with a balance to its other online prop...

If you're in the U.S., the next time you place a bid on eBay you'll have new competition from Japan. The online auction giant said Tuesday it will join forces with Yahoo Japan, the largest online auction site in that country. The move is seen as eBay's attempt to expand into the Asian market by work...

Living up to a promise it made investors, Dell announced Tuesday it will return to buying back its stock now that an internal accounting investigation is concluded. The stock repurchases will begin this week with the buying back of $10 billion worth of shares, the Round Rock, Texas, computer giant s...

Two years after a merger that helped herald the coming blogging revolution, Six Apart has agreed to sell its LiveJournal counterpart to a Russian media company. LiveJournal had already been operating a Russian-language version through a partnership with the buyer, a firm called "SUP." Terms of the d...

In a three-year deal worth US$4.5 billion, Dell is consolidating its far-flung advertising efforts into an integrated "new marketing model" that involves partnering with one agency: London-based WPP Group. Dell officials said they've been calling the new arrangement "Project DaVinci," a name intende...

French media giant Vivendi will buy a sizable stake in video game publisher Activision and merge the company with its own successful gaming unit, creating a game-development powerhouse. The deal will produce a new company, known as "Activision Blizzard," that will have $3.8 billion in combined reven...

The adage "those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" is particularly appropriate in the market for consumer video formats and players. Consistently, manufacturers have been unwilling or unable to develop formats compatible over a broad range of CE devices, and consumers have suffe...