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Books and e-books are becoming the No. 1 sales and marketing tool for many small and mid-sized businesses. Large companies have successfully used them for years, but they were much more expensive and took much longer to produce. Now print on demand and e-books are transforming the space, allowing ev...

Amazon is testing a service that will let tablet users purchase items through mobile applications. It is expected to enhance the Kindle Fire tablet's de facto role as a shopping conduit for its users. It already is second nature for users to download books and movies from Amazon's content library. W...

Research In Motion has been accused of infringing six patents owned by Dutch semiconductor company NXP. NXP claims in a lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Florida that the BlackBerry maker has infringed on patents pertaining to data transmission, GPS receivers on mobile phones, and circuit desig...

The European Commission has opened two formal investigations of Motorola in response to grievances Apple and Microsoft filed against the company. The licensing fees Motorola charges for patented technologies used in products like the iPhone and Xbox are set unfairly high, the companies have alleged....

Groupon's announcement last week that it was revising its financial results for the fourth quarter has apparently caught the attention of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The agency is taking a look at Groupon's financials. This development caps a run of bad news for the company over the...

Visa has dropped Global Payments from the list of companies that it deems compliant with its security policies following news that the third-party vendor experienced a security breach that could have compromised some 1.5 million Visa and MasterCard accounts. The breach first came to light at the end...

It finally has happened -- the number of U.S. mobile subscribers who own smartphones is just about equal to the number who own feature phones, according to new data. As of Feb. 2012, 49.7 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers carried a smartphone -- an increase of 38 percent from Feb. 2011, when only 3...

Amazon is becoming a major challenger in the overall app marketplace, according to a new report from Flurry. Flurry looked at some of the top-ranked apps across three major app sources: Apple's App Store, Amazon's Appstore and Google Play. Together, the stores brought in 11 million daily active user...

Yahoo has been at work developing a header solution that will implement Do Not Track compliance across its global network by early this summer. The news follows the final report released by the Federal Trade Commission this week that, among other points, calls on companies to make privacy options si...

In January of this year, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office issued a patent to Amazon for its "one-click" technology, thereby marking the beginning of business method patents in Canada. This came more than 13 years after Amazon's initial patent application, which was rejected by the Canadia...

Research In Motion's recently appointed CEO Thorsten Heins emerged from his self-imposed 10-week quiet period by dropping a number of bombshells. Former co-CEO Jim Balsillie has resigned from the board of directors. Several other executives, including Chief Technical Officer David Yach and Chief Ope...

Best Buy is taking an ax to its big box retail business model. The company plans to close 50 of its larger stores and test new store formats in San Antonio and Minneapolis. The formats will be so-called "connected stores" that will emphasize tech support and wireless products. They will feature chec...

It appears that Yahoo and shareholder Third Point are digging in for a contentious proxy fight. The companies have been tussling over who will fill four seats on the board of directors, with the two sides clashing on several points, including whether Third Point CEO Daniel Loeb should get one of th...

Research In Motion has said it will offer app makers a prototype of the next smartphone in the BlackBerry 10 line at an upcoming conference in May. Good news, but is it too little, too late? The phone will not be ready to roll into the market till late 2012. RIM ruled during the last decade, but it ...

The Federal Trade Commission this week urged Congress to impose new regulations on companies that collect consumer data related to Internet browsing habits. Under the policy the FTC suggests, data brokers, or the holders of personal consumer information, must allow consumers access to that informati...