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Sony has changed the rules of engagement -- or rather, terms of service -- for users of its PlayStation Network. In the new agreement, users opt to give away their right to join a class action lawsuit against Sony. In addition, the agreement contains a binding individual arbitration clause. Users wh...

Research In Motion released its second quarter earnings Thursday, and numbers for the iPhone and Android competitor are looking dismal for the third consecutive quarter. The BlackBerry maker reported second quarter earnings of $319 million, less than half of the $797 million reported a year ago. Rev...

Gaming fans pose two questions: First, "Why are Sony and Microsoft so worried about selling consoles? Can't they just focus on games and online services?" and second, "In a world where digital media's becoming popular, will online shops and downloads take down brick and mortar?" Consoles are still a...

You've seen the ad a thousand times on the Internet: "1 Tip for a Tiny Belly" says the hand-lettered headline above the crudely drawn swelling-and-shrinking belly. "Cut down a bit of your belly everyday following this one weird tip," it goes on to say. If starvation caused by having funds continuous...

Google, until recently a piker in the patent-holding tech community, is rapidly beefing up its portfolio -- or arsenal, depending on how one views it -- of intellectual property. The company has acquired 1,023 patents from IBM. These patents are on top of the 1,030 Google acquired from IBM in July, ...

Netflix cut its domestic subscriber forecast on Thursday by one million customers in the wake of a major change in the company's pricing structure that favors its streaming-only service. The company discontinued its $9.99 monthly streaming and DVD-rental plan and replaced it with two plans, $7.99 fo...

The world's largest social network is going to delay its plans to publicly sell stock, according to a recent report from the Financial Times that asserts Facebook will be delaying its highly anticipated initial public offering until late 2012. An April IPO was previously rumored, but the Times repor...

Which cellphone network offers the best service for you? Simple question. The answer is a lot more complicated. When we walk out of the house each morning, we make sure we take our wallet, our keys and our wireless phone. We don't leave home without them. Our phone is our connection to our world. Ho...

A new ad sales pact between Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL has the tech companies teaming up against a common enemy, Google. By selling ad inventory on each other's sites, the three aim to hang onto ad revenue that previously was lost to third-party networks. Their goal is to convince big Web properties t...

Travelers searching for flights can now look to Google. The search engine giant released its Google Flights feature Tuesday. Flights and travel packages were previously one of the few queries Google couldn't answer as quickly or thoroughly as its travel search competitors such as Kayak, Expedia, Orb...

You might not care about your friend's innumerable Foursquare updates detailing his stops at a bank, a bookstore, and finally a local Italian restaurant, where he's having spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. You can bet, however, that marketers do. After all, the more businesses know about where th...

What risks do site owners run by having poorly written Terms of Service (ToS) or Click Agreements -- or none at all? If your company offers goods or services through its website (or for that matter, if downloads or advice are offered for a cost -- or even for free), when was the last time you looked...

California lawmakers have reached a compromise with Amazon over state sales tax, ending a back and forth battle that has raged all summer. State lawmakers approved a compromise bill that will give Amazon a one-year break from collecting state sales tax. Amazon's stock price rose nearly 5 percent on ...

VMworld 2011 occurred a couple of weeks ago, but the energized crowd of 19,000-plus attendees and the raft of VMware and partner announcements that accompanied it make it worth revisiting. Virtualization and cloud have become nearly synonymous. In fact, a few wily vendors tend to use the terms inter...

After six years of debate over patent reform, the U.S. Senate last week overwhelmingly approved the America Invents Act, a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. patent system that intends to weed out unnecessary patents and put the country more on par with international patent procedures. The bill, authored...