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Web usability guidelines aim to help you keep and serve your customers, rather than driving them to your competitors' sites out of frustration. Usability is important for every Web site, but becomes absolutely vital when a large portion of your revenue comes from Web sales. Over the years, I've read...

In a move to attract more small business customers, Microsoft is launching a subsidy program to allow this growing business demographic to receive credits toward consulting services when they purchase Microsoft software. Small businesses that purchase a minimum of five copies of Microsoft Office or ...

RealNetworks and Microsoft have reached a set of agreements to end one of the most bitter private antitrust matters in the technology sector, with RealNetworks receiving as much as US$761 million in cash and marketing considerations for its music and games services from the software giant and the tw...

Looking to beef up its PayPal online payment service and enhance its reputation with online merchants outside of its online auction kingdom in particular, eBay said it would acquire the payment gateway system of security company VeriSign. EBay said its PayPal unit, which it took over in a US$1.5 bil...

Continuing a pattern of kinder, gentler software licensing terms and relationships, Microsoft announced this week its simplified, virtualization-ready Windows Server licensing that allows as many as four virtual instances of the software on one physical server for the same price. The software giant ...

Rising gas prices may be withering consumer confidence these days, but online retailers see a silver lining in the disturbing trend. "People are going to be less inclined to drive to shopping centers," Bernard Baumohl, executive director of the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton Junction, N.J. told...

Continuing a pattern of kinder, gentler software licensing terms and relationships, Microsoft announced this week its simplified, virtualization-ready Windows Server licensing that allows as many as four virtual instances of the software on one physical server for the same price. The software giant ...

Google unveiled its latest beta product offering -- the Google RSS reader -- at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week. The Google Reader is a Web-based RSS reader designed for the search engine's registered users. Similar to the online service offered by NewsGator, Google Reader allows u...

In a case seen boosting the credibility and profile of blogs as sources of news and opinion, the Delaware Supreme Court this week found that four bloggers accused of defamation had the right to remain anonymous. The court ruled that a lower court was wrong in ordering an Internet service provider to...

Pressing forward on its private anti-trust lawsuit against leading chipmaker Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has subpoenaed records from several Intel customers, including major PC makers and smaller vendors. AMD hopes the records will help bolster its argument that Intel used its market share ...

It's party time in blogland. So say analysts in the wake of two successive blog-related acquisitions this week. First, yesterday AOL said it would acquire Weblogs, Inc. Today, Verisign said it has purchased Weblogs.com. VeriSign purchased the company and its ping service from Scripting News in a US$...

The upcoming turning of the calendar to January of 2006 brings more than a new year. It also marks the start of what some say is the most sweeping demographics change to hit the American workforce since World War II. That's because during 2006, the first of the Baby Boomer generation will turn 60 ye...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission took action against spyware this week by asking a U.S. District Court Judge to halt an operation that allegedly plagued users who clicked for free file-sharing software with performance-slowing, private-information-gathering software that also altered search results...

Shareholders of long distance provider MCI overwhelmingly approved a plan for Verizon Communications to buy the company for US$8.4 billion, one of the final hurdles for the major telecom merger. MCI said 88 percent of its shareholders voted in favor of the merger, despite attempts by some investors ...

Dell computer has officially opened what it calls its largest, most advanced manufacturing plant in North Carolina, a move meant to underscore the company's commitment to operating in the United States but one that has already created its share of controversy. Dell opened the 750,000-square-foot fac...