The Wi-Fi Alliance wants to make voice a part of Wi-Fi networks, and has introduced a program to certify products, it announced on Monday.

June 27, 2008 (Computerworld) Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox 3.0 browser uses memory much more efficiently than its rivals, according to an independent tester who wrote a memory-monitoring utility to track usage by Firefox, Internet Explorer (IE), Flock, Opera and Safari.

Select users are now being treated to the next version of the company's portal, which integrates social networking characteristics into the site.

Google has released a software module that can turn Windows PCs into devices that streams media files to other devices.

Starting July 1, users who have registered domains with Yahoo's small-business site will see their annual fee for the service jump from $9.95 to $34.95.

Here's a roundup of recent juicy Google tidbits:

The decision to allow custom top-level domains will be a "nightmare" for brand managers, analysts and lawyers have warned.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers voted on Thursday to relax rules for naming websites.

Verizon used to offer "unlimited" BroadbandAccess, its name for its 3G EVDO service. After an investigation by the New York State Attorney General that led to no charges, Verizon agreed to change its terms and terminology. Their new high-end plan had a 5 GB cap, exquisitely spelled out, with 49 cents per MB ($490 per gig!) overage charges with new contracts; a lower-end plan capped usage at 50 MB per month. As you approached the monthly limit, you're warned via email, text message, and your connection software, which shows actual--not estimated--usage.

On Tuesday, the FBI announced the indictment of a former technology director accused of hacking into the system at a Houston organ bank and deleting patient files.

Chrysler is turning cars and trucks into wireless hot spots.

Multiply, a social network that has done a fine job of flying under the radar since its 2005 launch, has announced a new paid-account program that focuses on media storage. Called a "digital scrapbook," this premium feature will cost $19.95 annually.

Yahoo has fixed a vulnerability in its Web mail site that could allow a hacker to get access to a person's account.

Beijing Wicity is setting out to cover several key parts of Beijing with Wi-Fi access, and it is supposed to be free until after the Olympics, but service is spotty in advertised coverage areas.

If you're trying to adopt good e-mail habits and clear our your inbox, creating a system to deal with all of your incoming e-mail is an essential first step. But one of the reasons e-mail often gets stuck in an Inbox is that a reply is needed, but the time and energy required to craft that reply is too daunting. Here are a three tricks to help you speed up the process-at least part of the time.

Talkster, a company that provides free ad-subsidized international calling, can now be used with Skypeout, which already enables Skype users to pay for calls to landlines as they go.

Chipmakers have been applying lessons learned in mobile computing to servers in an effort to increase efficiency by lowering power consumption. But a noted Google engineer threw some cold water on the approach on Monday, arguing the two styles of computing are too different.

Motorola today unveiled a new 5-megapixel camera brought to market with the aid of Kodak, with emphasis shifted to the built-in camera and away from the features on the phone itself.

The organisation that manages the world's most important web address extensions — what goes after the dot in a URL — is to hold a vote on Thursday that could see an entire new generation of URLs made possible.

There are now more than a billion PCs in active use worldwide, according to analyst house Gartner.

Carefully managed virtual servers can make the job of attackers more difficult by reducing the time that any one version of a server is exposed to the Internet, according to a George Mason University professor who has developed software that phases virtual servers in and out of use.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in this week on the Jammie Thomas file-swapping case, where the judge has asked for public comment on whether just making a file available for download on a P2P network should count as copyright infringement. In its filing (PDF), the EFF goes for the jugular, seeking to show that the RIAA's entire approach to file-swapping cases is flawed.

Despite continued fighting in the nation, Afghan Wireless Communications and rival Roshan both said their subscriber numbers have each hit 2 million in Afghanistan, marking fast growth in a nation that in 2002 first launched mobile phone services.

In an response to the new wiretapping law that was introduced in Sweden this week, The Pirate Bay will ask international ISPs to block traffic to Sweden, to protect their customers. In addition, the BitTorrent tracker will add SSL encryption to their site, and roll out a new VPN service.

Security researchers Friday warned of a new, massive spam campaign that tries to convince users to install the long-running Storm bot Trojan on their PCs.

On Saturday, it will be exactly 60 years since the world's first stored-program, electronic, digital computer flickered into life in a laboratory at the University of Manchester.

California's governor and attorney general are asking Internet service providers to help stop the dissemination of child pornography.

Dan Hesse told attendees of a communications trade show Wednesday that its much hyped 4G data network will see its first commercial deployment in September in Baltimore.

Investors and industry watchers may have their eyes on Yahoo's executive departures and coming reorganization, but for most people involved with Yahoo are just users of the company's technology.

A US-based IT security watchdog on Thursday issued a clear warning to email users: if you want information about the earthquake in China, get it from a news site and not from a link to a video that arrives in your email inbox.

With hundreds of millions of user names already tapped out, Yahoo has now decided to add two more domains -- ymail.com and rocketmail.com -- to its e-mail addresses for Web users.

Apple on Thursday released a new version of Safari for Windows that includes a security fix for a high-profile carpet-bombing desktop attack vulnerability previously dismissed by the Cupertino vendor. The Safari update is only for Windows users, not Mac OSX versions. Version 3.1.2 of Safari for Windows can be downloaded and installed from Apple Downloads, or you can download Safari 3.1 here.

The government has renewed its threat to introduce laws to force ISPs to control online illegal downloading and file-sharing of music and films.

Ever the publicity hound nipping at Google's heels, Ask.com has issued an open letter to the public about adding a privacy policy link to its home page.

Yahoo Mail, the top provider of Web-based e-mail, is letting users sign up with the ymail.com and rocketmail.com domains in an attempt to attract new users and keep existing ones loyal.

Google on Wednesday added a new factor, Web page loading speed, to the criteria by which it judges which text ads to place next to search results.

Bon appetit for Cooking.com: The kitchen appliance retailer announced Wednesday that it has pulled in $13 million in venture funding in a round led by Azure Capital Partners. ORIX Venture Finance also contributed venture debt to the round, and Azure partner Michael Kwatinetz is now on the company's board of directors.

Over the past few months, many countries have looked into the possibility of disconnecting file-sharers from the Internet. Today, France is the first to present their new “3-strikes” law, which allows anti-piracy outfits such as IFPI, RIAA and MPAA to police the Internet.

The European Commission appears to have thrown its weight behind the principle of net neutrality, after the telecommunications commissioner told a global internet forum that the issue was "a political question to be answered by the people".

Net phone provider Skype is expected to begin public testing on Wednesday of a new version of its software that aims to make casual video chatting more common.

A group of investors has agreed to take over Philadelphia's Wi-Fi network, just as EarthLink was set to pull the plug on the network.

It's been a while since a major Skype release, and on Wednesday, the eBay-owned VoIP communication service will issue the first of several planned version 4.0 beta builds for Windows that are anticipated to drop over the next few months. (Stay tuned for the link; we'll also supply it when we've got it.)

LAS VEGAS--Verizon Communications is boosting speeds for its Fios fiber-to-the-home service, the company plans to announce Wednesday.

A 19-year old Chinese man is in police custody after allegedly hacking into a provincial seismological bureau's Web site to place a false earthquake warning, Chinese state media reported Monday.

US lawyers tried to pressure 'Nasa hacker' Gary McKinnon into agreeing to extradition, the Law Lords heard on Monday.

There are a number of reasons for a company to implement wireless networking.

Plans for a national UK cybercrime policing unit remain on track despite the government stalling on funding, according to the Metropolitan Police Service's e-crime chief .

EBay will open a tool used by 700,000 of its merchants to external developers, the next step in an ongoing effort to promote the creation of applications for its online marketplace.

During the last couple of years, hundreds of people have received letters from lawyers demanding compensation for the alleged uploading of copyright works. Their demands state that if you don’t pay up, you will be taken to court and dealt with severely. However, when people refuse to pay - nothing happens.

A SECURITY FEATURE which gave punters total privacy has been dumped from the final version of Firefox 3.

Research carried out by ZDNet.co.uk has revealed that although virtualisation is not a priority for many companies at the moment, it rates highly in plans for the next five years.

The Hong Kong Domain Name Registration Company (HKDNR) announced late last week that the daily average number of .hk domain name spam and phishing cases drops 92 percent year-on-year.

This past weekend, I spent time setting up four new laptops for one of my business clients. Out of habit, one of the things I do when I get to the point of setting up e-mail is send test messages. I didn’t have any reason to believe that e-mail wouldn’t work, but I’m glad I stuck to my habits.

Today, Joe asks:

Most of the attention to the recent Google/Yahoo partnership has focused on the two companies' search advertising plans, but the deal has implications for instant messaging, too. "In addition," reads the companies' press release, "Yahoo and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users."

Telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks is dumping its WiMax business to focus on a more popular 4G wireless technology.

Late Wednesday, a Microsoft spokesperson told BetaNews that a TechEd session in Orlando today summarized some of Internet Explorer 8's key new features for administrators, one of them being crash recovery.

Two U.S. Congressmen on Wednesday accused China of hacking their office computers, possibly compromising information on Chinese dissidents, the Congressmen and news reports said.

Wireless technologies have played a major role in opening up internet access — and thus the ability to communicate with others in remote locations — to more people in more places.

U.S. cell phone operators are starting to embrace Wi-Fi in order to extend the reach of their high-speed wireless networks without breaking the bank, but some are being more cautious than others.

Cisco Systems will join Clearwire Corp., Sprint Nextel Corp. and three WiMax equipment providers on Monday to announce an initiative aimed at simulating WiMax innovation through the sharing of WiMax patents.

Six technology titans are banding together to jointly license patents that cover WiMax in an effort to prevent costly royalty rates that might deter adoption of the wireless technology, according to a report on Sunday on the Wall Street Journal's website.

The FCC chairman has floated a proposal that would result in a free nationwide -- but censored -- Wi-Fi Internet service, according to a recent news reports. Kevin Martin's proposal is to try again to auction off some of the spectrum that failed to garner the required minimum bid during the recent auction. The likelihood that this will happen seems to be quite low, but the proposal does demonstrate an impressive single-mindedness on the part of the FCC chair.

The City of London Police will pilot a national fraud project that will enable banks to report e-crime.

Google will invite users to try new features it is considering adding to its Gmail service, the company said on Thursday.

The rumour mill is dizzy with speculation about what 'cool new stuff' Apple's iPhone will shortly be sporting, ahead of chief executive Steve Jobs's keynote at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday.

Britain has showed off a more giving side after it was revealed the nation shares more than 100,000 broadband connections.

The amount of web-based malware on legitimate sites has increased by over 400 percent since last year, according to security vendor ScanSafe.

Mozilla has released the second release candidate for its upcoming Firefox 3 web browser, ahead of the full release in mid-June.

JetBlue passengers, rejoice. Now there is yet another way to pass the time during flights. JetBlue's free in-flight Wi-Fi will no longer require Yahoo or BlackBerry accounts to check e-mail and chat with friends.

Fulfilling a second major part of its promise to make the internal workings of its website more open, Yahoo is opening the interface for its address book for outside use.

Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan's private MySpace photos are all over the Internet now, thanks to a glitch in the bad APIs.

McAfee is set to release a study late on Tuesday that indicates the domains that tend to be the most dangerous or malware-prone on the Web, and at the top of the list is the Hong Kong (.hk) domain.

In the latest example of "opt-out" in action, an entire Minnesota town demanded that Google take down Street View imagery of its municipality, and the search giant duly complied.

A start-up called Ozmo Devices is taking on the popular short-range wireless technology Bluetooth with a new flavor of Wi-Fi.

As cable and phone companies slug it out in markets across the U.S., improving customer care is becoming a core part of their strategies.

Intel's Atom processor has been stealing the limelight when it comes to small, portable Internet devices, but Intel rivals Arm and Texas Instruments hope to change that.