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The net neutrality debate has officially taken a left turn into weirdness, following weekend revelations that AT&T has asked the Federal Communications Commission to investigate the Google Voice application as a potential violation of open communications policies. This would be the same AT&T...

Big businesses often use big bucks to go green. Small businesses, on the other hand, haven't a dollar to spare even for a good cause like saving the environment. Shouldn't they just pass on the whole green scheme -- at least until the economy improves? Not necessarily. "Effective power management is...

After much speculation, Twitter CEO Evan Williams confirmed on the microblogging site's own blog that it has closed a "significant" round of funding. Williams didn't cite the dollar amount, but it has been widely reported that six investors are prepared to pump close to $100 million into the company...

Verizon and Palm are reportedly scrapping over terms of a contract that would give the carrier the right to offer Palm's Pre smartphone. Back in May, Lowell McAdam, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless, said the carrier would offer the Pre in January. Reports that Verizon changed its mind appeared ...

For years, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have been gut-punching each other with price cuts while the Nintendo Wii just sits on the sidelines with a smug little grin on its face. While the two bigger consoles entered the market with huge MSRPs, the Wii planted itself at $250 and stayed there for...

Continuing the E-Commerce Times' exploration of travel-planning Web sites, I paddled over to Kayak this week, and after a few minutes of playing around with the site, I was inexplicably struck with the desire for ice cream. Specifically, Haagen Dazs' five simple ingredients ice cream. No doubt, you...

In what may signal the earliest start for the holiday shopping season ever -- at least as it applies to the video game industry -- Nintendo of America on Thursday confirmed that will indeed be dropping the price of its Wii console by $50 to $199. This is Nintendo's first price cut for its market-lea...

The world is yours, or at least that's the promise e-commerce offers. Get your products, services or information online, and you can gain customers anywhere. It can be challenging, though, to build an active worldwide customer base that buys and comes back for more. It's a competitive world, and stu...

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison can be a wellspring of newsworthy comments. Little wonder, then, that for close to an hour on Tuesday, IT journalists were rapt as he ruminated on the subjects of the day in an interview with Sun Microsystems' Ed Zander at the Churchill Club in Silicon Valley. Ellison didn't...

Facebook, meet Facecard -- a digital-age marriage of e-commerce and social networking, and that's what the founders of Edo Interactive intended in 2008 when they came up with the idea of prepaid debit cards, or Facecards. In fact, if you ask Edo Interactive CEO Ed Braswell the classic Facebook statu...

You may have seen the link recently sent to you by one of your Facebook friends: If the social network were its own country, it would be among the five largest in the world, thanks to its 300 million members. That "country" includes fertile, undiscovered territory for online advertisers, as represen...

Oftentimes, 100 percent of the value of a startup company may be based on the company's intellectual property. If a company's value is based upon its technology or its branding, it is vital that the startup entrepreneur take the appropriate steps to protect its intellectual property. Beyond the obv...

Amazon has launched its own line of consumer electronics products, starting with audio video cables and blank DVD media. It plans to add more accessories and other items in the coming months. The company is leveraging its formidable brand name for this endeavor, positioning AmazonBasics products for...

For so-called Net neutrality advocates, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's Monday morning speech at the Brookings Institution must have reached their ears like sweet music -- legally downloaded music, that is, delivered on a very fast wireless connection. Genachowski told the Brookings audience that ...

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 ...