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A day after Google announced it had bought itself some digital help in its Google Books project by way of reCAPTCHA, reports surfaced of new governmental objections to a settlement the company reached last year with publishers and author groups. The attorneys general of five states have filed a clas...

It's back to the future for Palm, which is dropping Microsoft's Windows Mobile in favor of its own proprietary platform, webOS, unveiled earlier this year. Palm CEO John Rubinstein reportedly told investors in a conference call on Thursday that the company wants to dedicate all of its future develop...

For this week's installment in the E-Commerce Times' series on travel-planning Web sites, I took a spin around Orbitz, completing my tour of the top three aggregators. Thus far, my biggest complaint about travel sites in general has been overcrowded user interfaces that waste space with self promoti...

The headline on the Official Google Blog makes sure you know what a CAPTCHA is; "Google Acquires reCAPTCHA" is written in the now-familiar wavy, squiggly-style font that you are used to seeing when you want to log on to certain Web sites or post links on Facebook. When confronted with a CAPTCHA, you...

Online retail sales are projected to increase by 11 percent this year to US$156 billion, according to Forrester Research. Although that's good news, it's a small decline from last year's growth of 13 percent. It's clear the down economy, with the lack of credit access and low consumer confidence, ha...

The federal government has launched Apps.Gov, an online app store for federal agencies and workers, in the hope of reducing the $75 billion a year it spends on IT. Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra introduced the site Tuesday. The goal is for the federal government to leverage the efficiencies ...

Adobe's planned acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture took nearly everyone off guard when it was announced Tuesday. Now that the idea has had a chance to sink in, though, it seems to be growing in popularity. "I think it really does make sense," said Steve Ashley, an analyst for investment rese...

Innovations of the past few years provide an interesting hint at the future of e-commerce. Consider the following scenario: A CIO of a retail company gets off the phone, sits back, and begins to read his new monthly retail systems contract. The days of dealing with large development teams, countless...

Chasing down rumors in the video game blogosphere can be as risky as a Bowser boss battle in "Super Mario Galaxy." That's the caveat for reports that an image of a retail advertisement announcing a $50 price cut for Nintendo's Wii console had been captured in the wild by a Kotaku reader. Unfortunate...

It's not perfect, and it won't solve the advertising crisis in traditional publishing, but Google's Fast Flip news-viewing product may represent a small step toward helping pen-and-paper publishers make a profitable leap to the digital age. It allows users to slide through tiled screenshots of news ...

The growing popularity of online video has become the tipping point for advanced CE in the home. Consumer interest and demand for this content -- from user-generated videos of stealthy cats to streams of classic 1980s shows like "Airwolf" -- have prompted service providers and CE manufacturers to ex...

The parent company of T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. wireless company, is considering a bid for Sprint Nextel, the carrier just north of it on the size chart, according to a British newspaper. Deutsche Telekom could make the offer within the next few weeks, it said. Such a deal, if it were to ha...

Just as the evolution of the speed-skating boot set new standards for the sport, innovation in today's constantly evolving e-commerce landscape has worked as a catalyst to move it forward. E-commerce practitioners from all industries need to be ready to step up and embrace innovation as a means of s...

The Department of Justice has asked Yahoo and Microsoft to supply it with more information about its proposed search advertising tie-up that the duo announced earlier this summer. Both companies have said they are cooperating with the inquiry. Indeed, they all but predicted this would happen when th...

Like every new generation, today's youth are unlike their predecessors, and they are poised to make a significant impact on society and business as they enter the workforce. While this may not seem like a revelation, what is important to keep in mind is who is pulling some of the strings that are al...