August, 2008 Issue

Microsoft today took another step in its strategy to beef up Live Search versus Google and Yahoo, unveiling a complicated deal to buy Greenfield Online and its subsidiary Caio, a European-based online price comparison and shopping site.

Mozilla has renewed its agreement with Google that was set to expire in November, extending it into 2011. The deal carries with it the reinstatement of the Mozilla and Eclipse Public Licenses that were recently cast aside.

Google's approach to privacy is a decade behind Microsoft, the Redmond software giant's chief privacy strategist told ZDNet Australia on Thursday in a video interview.

The newest Wi-Fi protocol, 802.11r, which has become the de facto "Wireless VoIP standard", is now a published standard of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standards board.

Apple plans to release a fix next month for a security hole that enables someone to access data on a password-protected iPhone, according to a MacWorld report.

First Intel, now Big Blue is keen on SSDs. IBM said it is testing a 4-terabyte high-speed solid state drive array targeted at the enterprise, as the technology giant gives its imprimatur to flash memory-based storage.

Deceased television network The WB has been resurrected, at least on line, emerging from beta as an ad-supported streaming TV show repository.

One day after Microsoft released the second public beta for Internet Explorer 8, readers have contacted CNET News with warnings about its installation and sites and services that are incompatible. While such behavior is expected of beta software, some problems appear to exist within Microsoft services themselves.

If in the last week or so you've noticed that your desktop background in Windows XP Professional goes completely black exactly every 60 minutes, don't worry, it's not a virus.

Nanosolar, a maker of thin-film solar panels, said that it has raised $300 million to accelerate production of solar-power facilities in Berlin and San Jose, Calif.

DENVER--Google is taking advantage of the presence of innumerable state and federal bureaucrats attending the Democratic convention to engage in some old-fashioned product pitchmanship.

In the old days, designers often had little more than gut checks and rules of thumb to determine the efficacy of creations such as advertisements or newspaper layouts. Later came expensive eye-tracking tests that showed how people scanned pages or computer screens. Now, though, Google, has the benefit of millions of users using its Web site to get things right.

DENVER--During the primary campaign, Hillary Clinton lashed out at her rival, saying she was the only candidate with the right plan "to create 5 million new, green collar jobs." She dismissed Barack Obama thusly: "My opponent doesn't have much experience creating jobs at all."

Fox Interactive Media grabbed the most market share among digital display ad publishers in the month of June, according to a report released Tuesday by ComScore Ad Metrix.

Attorneys for the makers of Mac OS X-compatible computers told reporters Tuesday they plan to argue that Apple's EULA violates provisions of the Sherman and Clayton antitrust laws.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have released an extension for Firefox 3 that can protect wireless network users from so-called "man-in-the-middle" attacks.

The two companies have signed a confidentiality agreement which should keep the details of the talks secret.

The guys who created Lonelygirl15--the scripted Web series that fooled many viewers into thinking it was the real video diary of a cute 16-year-old girl--are back with a new project.

The concept of privatizing the browsing experience has been the impetus for an entire segment of the anti-malware industry. Now, Microsoft has confirmed it will be claiming that segment for itself in the next version of Internet Explorer.

The new N85 and N79 smartphones for European high-speed mobile networks will be followed by a North American edition of the N96. Each will offer a 5 Mp camera with Zeiss optics, integrated turn-by-turn GPS navigation, and N-Gage gaming.

Adobe has launched Photoshop Elements 7 and Premiere Elements 7, the company's hobbyist-level photo and video editing suites which are now more closely tied into the company's growing online toolkit.

Google expects to graduate a feature from its labs to its main search page in the next week to help users execute faster and more specific searches. The feature, called Google Suggest, automatically recommends options for the rest of your search term as you type based on the most popular searches.

The Finnish phone maker is expected Tuesday to take the lid off the two newest additions to its N-Series line of smart phones.

As CNET News first reported last week, Internet Explorer 8 will include a way to surf somewhat anonymously, allowing the user to suspend browsing history, cookies, and other identifying information. Mozilla had considered such a feature for its Firefox 3 release, but dropped it for technical reasons. Apple Safari also includes a similar feature.

Let's say Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama sent every one of those "here's my V.P." text messages from his own cell phone. And let's say his mean, nasty carrier charged him 10 cents for each one. According to Nielsen's numbers, his bill would've been $290,000--that's because the statistics firm says that the SMS campaign stunt reached 2.9 million people.

Microsoft on Monday announced plans to track Australian delegates attending its annual Tech.Ed conference in Sydney next week using RFID tags embedded in conference badges. The move comes months after 50 academics, researchers and students at the University of Washington began a social networking experiment, which has seen participants voluntarily tag themselves. The system records the location of tags every 5 seconds and publishes movements to a Web page.

Sakar International announced on Monday that it has snapped up the Vivitar brand name and intellectual property from Syntax-Brillian in a move to expand its camera line into the midrange digital-camera market and gain greater visibility.

Google's calculator has some trouble handling math with some large numbers, an issue that's not unheard of in computing circles but that might not sit well at a supremely nerdy company that's named after a humongous number.

Small regional ISP Frontier Communications has now joined Time Warner Cable in floating the idea of instituting monthly user caps even for subscribers who don't use much bandwidth, anyway.

"Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee," read the Obama campaign's early morning SMS message to his supporters. Trouble was, even by that time, many already knew it, and some weren't even getting the message.

M2E Power, a company formed last year to charge electronic gadgets with human motion, has reported back that its system actually works.

Google's Street View service apparently thinks your "no trespassing" and "private road" signs are just for decoration.

Russians may soon get their chance to queue up to buy the Apple iPhone. Legally, that is.

In separate reports issued this week, one prominent analyst firm proclaimed the impending death of CDMA cellular technology, while another touted its resurgence. So which is it?

Within the next 10 years, the U.S., China, Israel, and a host of private companies plan to set up camp on the moon. So if and when they plant a flag, does that give them property rights?

Firefox 3.1 will run many Web-based applications such as Gmail faster through incorporation of a feature called TraceMonkey that dramatically speeds up programs written in JavaScript, Mozilla said Friday.

Despite the early kinks attending MobileMe, what's not to like about the concept? I'll include Live Mesh in the category, though Microsoft still remains in beta with the product.

An apparent case of DNS poisoning in the caches of a major China-based ISP is causing extra concern today, in light of security engineer Dan Kaminsky's recent warnings about just how serious a cache poisoning exploit could become.

A security researcher has been in discussions with Google on an exploit he plans to release that would allow a hacker to easily intercept someone's communications with supposedly secure Web sites over an unsecured Wi-Fi network, but other sites, like Facebook, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail, remain vulnerable.

Verizon and Google may be close to establishing a revenue sharing mobile search deal, according to a report which have yet to be confirmed though have certainly not yet been denied.

The Canadian software producer published a statement this morning confirming that it is discussing a sale to undisclosed third parties.

Yesterday I ranted on Facebook about how annoyed I was with it. I've also had my share of emotional posts about various topics on Twitter. And I'm frequently opinionated in my blog postings on this site.

A Brazilian man has been charged in connection with operating a botnet composed of more than 100,000 computers infected with malicious software allegedly designed to send spam, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.

Google plans to update its mechanism for ad quality scoring, a critical measurement that influences whether advertisements are placed next to search results so that judgments of ad quality are made immediately.

Victor Rook, an indy filmmaker who was once wrongly accused by Viacom of copyright violations, is happy a judge has reminded media companies to think twice before calling someone a pirate.

Following up on some previous thoughts on how open source will underlay the Cloud, I spoke today with Rich Wolski, Associate Professor at UCSB who is Project Director for the Eucalyptus open source Cloud computing project.

After the Bigfoot saga, here are some monsters that are far more real and whose creation will make you feel that humanity does have some goodness after all.

Bloggers have uncovered paperwork for two possible applications from Microsoft having to do with keeping the details of a user's browsing session private.

To remain competitive as user activity levels off, eBay has announced that Buy it Now sales will incur a reduced flat fee for an extended listing period.

A security researcher has unearthed evidence via Google and its Chinese counterpart that supports claims that several Chinese gymnasts are younger than they should be for competing.

Google is investing $10 million in "enhanced" geothermal systems--essentially technology for tapping underground heat--which it says is one of most promising forms of renewable energy.

For the most part, the only person you can socialize with on a handheld GPS navigator is the chick who tells you to turn left after 100 yards.

Whether for screening out irate ex-spouses or persistent telemarketers, a new feature announced by Verizon Wireless today enables customers to block communications with specific phone numbers.

In his Open Road blog, Mat Asay was skeptical about some browser market share data because the sample audience was heavy on techies. The July 2008 stats for the site in question, W3Schools.com,

EA's hostile takeover bid for software company Take-Two Interactive is finally set to expire after a series of extensions failed to cull outstanding stock in the company necessary for a takeover.

Over the weekend, I spent some time playing online. I did so on Xbox Live and through games on both my PS3 and Wii. All the while, I was thinking about the one simple fact that kept sticking out in my head: for now at least, I can play online with my Wii and Playstation 3 and the experience is basically the same.

Microsoft's Live Mesh hasn't officially expanded to include Macs just yet, but the software maker has said that folks in more countries can now take part without having to wait for an invitation.

Google on Monday announced the launch of FreetheAirWaves.com, a site promoting the unlicensed use of "white space" spectrum.

Many technology industry executives are surprisingly inept when it comes to planning and executing reorganizations effectively.

Microsoft said on Monday that the server version of Windows 7 will not be a major release and will bear the name Windows Server 2008 R2.

Finally, someone is wising up to the fact that the Nintendo Wii doesn't address the bloodlust of most gamers.

It's the ultimate summer Friday news story: CNN Webcasting a press conference hosted by the men who claim they nabbed a dead body of the legendary creature known as Bigfoot.

The next time U2 manager Paul McGuinness wants to rant about music piracy on the Internet, he may have to add his own boss to his list of targets.

Andrew Mager posted an illustrated play-by-play of Saturday's WordCamp, a conference devoted to the popular open-source blogging platform WordPress. According to Mager's report, the hosted version of WordPress has 2.3 million new blogs in 12 months and 35 million posts, and more than 6.5 billion page views.

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing are over for Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the founders of would-be Facebook rival ConnectU who earned spots on the U.S. rowing team. The identical twins ended up placing sixth overall in the men's pair event; they don't take home any medals, but it's still a more than respectable finish. To get there, the pair had to make it through two rounds of heats, a semifinal, and then the grand final; just making it to the last round is a big accomplishment.

Being fabless isn't so hip these days.

New Yahoo board member Frank Biondi has a knack for being at the center of a firestorm. So the fact that Carl Icahn successfully got Biondi on board this morning, probably means a new storm is on the horizon.

It should come as no surprise, but Google sites officially continued to dominate the Web landscape in July, drawing more than 141 million unique visitors and placing Yahoo and Microsoft at second and third place, according to analyst group ComScore Media Metrix.

I wrote recently about the need for violent video games on the Nintendo Wii and, for clarity, the main point of my message is that the Wii is a great platform for a game that has physical interaction.

Two trends continue, as evidenced by this month's comScore Top 50 report, released this afternoon: One, Google's going nowhere but up. Two, it can still go up when overall Internet use in the US is actually going down.

With its tagline, "upload. share. archive.", it may have been inevitable that the magazine-sharing Web site Mygazines.com would face allegations of copyright infringement.

As a city slicker who grew up thinking milk comes from a store, I wasn’t sure if I’d “get” playing Alawar’s Farm Frenzy 2, a game all about farm management and profit. Much to my surprise, however, the game’s challenging levels and cute graphics were eggs-actly what I needed on lengthy plane rides this past weekend.

Netflix has fixed or patched whatever problem it had that shut down its 55 distribution centers this week, and has begun shipping DVDs again.

Bits and pieces of Google's acquisition of FeedBurner continue to seep out. Friday marked the quiet "public" launch of AdSense for Feeds, a service that was soft-launched to a small group of AdSense users back in May.

Microsoft is launching its Windows 7 blog, but it still doesn't have much to say.

Though redolent of dogs barking jingle bells, the "Condom a Capella" ringtone -- sponsored by the BBC World Service and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation -- seeks to break social taboos regarding the prophylactic.

In a move which could end up meaning either everything or nothing, the developers of a "lifestreaming" application have agreed to be acquired by a company whose track record with acquisitions hasn't always been pretty.

After several years of waiting, video game fans will soon be able to get their hands on the long-awaited new title from legendary designer Will Wright, Spore.

Fire Eagle, Yahoo's new geolocation service, is fresh out of the company's Brickhouse development team, and third parties are lining up to cut deals.

A site for entrepreneurs to rate--and rant about--venture capitalists has touched off its first legal action.

If the door is going to be left open for a possible future merger of Yahoo and Microsoft, someone's going to have to volunteer to plant their feet there. Today, it appears a Microsoft favorite and Viacom's former CEO may do the honors.

eBay is negotiating to acquire almost 40 percent of Korean auction site and e-retailer Gmarket.

One of the Cloud related items people ask me about is how or why they would want to go outside the enterprise. Besides the obvious points around scale and cost, the reasons are variable based on your existing infrastructure as well as your business processes.

Could everyone's VMware licenses really have expired on August 12? That's the question hundreds of major data centers found themselves asking, right after midnight when they realized they weren't rebooting or resuming.

Verizon Wireless is beefing up its infrastructure in Denver to prepare for the influx of as many as 50,000 people expected to enter the city later this month for the Democratic National Convention.

It's a fundamental rule of journalism: let the facts speak for themselves.

20 – 23 August will pass World Wide event Game Convention Leipzig. The focus project of Biart – U-WARS (Underwater Wars) will presented for mass media and publishers.

Sometimes when you look at the calendar, well, it's better not to look in the first place.

Best Buy stores will begin selling Apple's iPhone 3G next month, becoming the first national retail chain outside of Apple and carrier AT&T to offer the wildly popular device.

Bug Labs, maker of do-it-yourself kits for electronic gadgets, has quietly raised a third round of financing from Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, and Court Square Ventures, CNET News has learned.

The world watched in awe as China put on what some say was the best-ever Olympics opening ceremony ever. The proceedings culminated with the lighting of the Olympic torch by one of China's sporting greats, Li Ning, who was hanging from a wire high above the crowd. Who would have thought that at the same time, one of the stadium's projectors was displaying the famous Microsoft Blue Screen of Death?

Bill's friend, the one with whom he was going on a motorbike holiday in Tasmania, suddenly died. Bill, being upset, went out and got drunk.

You can now filter the items in your Facebook News Feed depending on what you're hoping to check out, thanks to a cool new drop-down menu. Previously, you could sort the list by a few Facebook mainstays: status updates, photo-related updates, and "posted items."

Initial information suggests that Internet attacks on Georgian Web sites over the last two weeks are the work of kids, according to one researcher, while another says the intensity of these attacks is short-lived when compared with attacks in Estonia last year.

One of our biggest beefs with the Internet video-on-demand services offered on the Apple TV, Vudu, TiVo (Amazon Unbox), and Xbox 360 is that the movies are just too expensive--usually around $4 for new movies, $5 to $6 for HD films, and a bit less for older "catalog" releases. Watch just five or six movies a month, and you can easily rack up a $30 charge--not very appealing compared to Netflix's all-you-can-eat pricing plans.

Microsoft on Tuesday released its August 2008 security bulletin. Bulletins rated "critical" concern Microsoft Access 2003 and earlier; Microsoft Word 2002 and 2003; Microsoft Excel; and Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office 2003. A cumulative patch for Internet Explorer also is rated critical.

Some don't like it when others clean out their houses while they're gone on vacation, and a few might hate it when someone else cleans up. Facebook is now cleaner, brighter, and whiter, and tens of thousands are unhappy.

Four Allman Brothers band members sued Universal Music Group for more than $10 million in royalties from both hard-copy sales and downloadables.

Responses to a congressional inquiry into targeted online advertising indicate that some companies were indeed tracking their users without first asking their consent.

Yesterday's Liberty Media Q2 earnings call was liberally dosed with rather frank disclosures from chairman John Malone about potentially big business moves, including swapping its majority stake in Time Warner for AOL's dial-up business.

It's not clear why anyone should be surprised that Gmail, Amazon.com's cloud services, Salesforce.com, MobileMe, or Netflix have periods of instability or downtime. These services are not promising five-nines of uptime, and they are dependent on complex code and a vast network "tubes," as the beleaguered Sen. Ted Stevens has said, to deliver bits to users. Services such as Twitter have set a new standard for unreliability, making the other cloud-based services look good in comparison despite their outages.

Monday night offered me the first chance to really test NBCOlympics' live video. It was the first time I was home to watch the events and there was something live that I wanted to see more than what was on one of the television channels.

NASA's plans to launch new manned missions to the International Space Station three years after the space shuttle retires in 2010 aren't panning out.

School bullies who use the Internet or text messaging to harass fellow students could be kicked out of school under a bill being considered by the California Legislature.

The three students were set to highlight security holes in the automated fare collection system used by the city's transit service, at a security conference on Sunday.

An informal poll conducted by What They Play, a sort of Rotten Tomatoes site for video games, recently pointed to parents' areas of concern in video game content.

In a Texas court case, the recording industry group may be forced to accept a lower penalty per song as part of an "innocent infringement" defense by one defendant.

Although it has been offering its financial suite in a downloadable version for quite some time, beginning with the 2009 version of Money Plus, it will no longer be sold through retail channels.

At the Race To Zero contest at DEFCON 16 in Las Vegas last weekend, seven sample viruses and three sample exploits were reverse engineered to the point where they could bypass anti-virus software. The task took one team just over two hours.

Last week, an appeals court determined that Cablevision wasn't liable for copyright infringement if their customers chose they programs it recorded. Could that ruling present a new loophole for Internet streaming radio?

Russia's actual physical invasion of Georgia has garnered much of the headline space devoted to the two countries, but the conflict is playing out online as well. Attacks against the Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's website first occurred in late July, but gathered relatively little attention. Security investigators from the United States Computer Response Readiness Team (US-CERT) monitored the attacks, and stated that they did not appear to be a test run for a major assault.

The days when Web pages were static collections of text and graphics are long past. But as the Web matures, there's a fierce competition over which technology will propel it into a medium for rich, interactive applications.

In a variation on the new math, 2.0 plus 3G equals $30 million now and about $360 million next summer.

Facebook security chief Max Kelly has assured users in a blog post that the social network is "fighting the good fight" when it comes to several malware attacks recently discovered on the site.

So you liked that blog post you just read--why don't you toss the writer a buck or two?

Simbol Mining is securing $6.7 million in a series A round led by MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures and Firelake Capital.

Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that will render people and other objects invisible.

Google recently opened its Wikipedia competitor, styled "knol" or unit of knowledge. I wrote a definition of what is cleantech to put up on knol, and upon reflection, it's probably an overview worth passing around. Especially since given my own sites CleantechBlog.com and Cleantech.org, and CNET's work here on the Greentech Blog, we have been significant contributors to defining the sector.

Intel's next-generation desktop processors will be branded "Intel Core" with an "i7" identifier for the first wave of products.

Updated at 11:43 a.m. PDT to report that the site is operational again.

As people buy more electronic stuff, there's growing concern over hazardous electronic waste. A number of new companies are trying to keep that gear from fouling up landfills--and make a buck while doing it.

I'm not a gamer and I don't play one on TV. But the upcoming debut of the Electronic Arts' game, Spore, promises to liven up an otherwise uneventful news summer.

Microsoft's regular pre-briefing on monthly security issues contained some dire news, including patches for a reportedly "Critical" vulnerability affecting Windows Media Player for XP, Vista, and Windows Server 2008.

And I was feeling so good today--that is until I read this memo from The Philadelphia Inquirer's managing editor Mike Leary to his staff, essentially establishing guidelines on how the newspaper intends to commit ritual hara-kiri.

If Linux is going to make bigger inroads on the desktop, developers need to stop cloning Microsoft Windows and instead produce more unique user interface designs, according to Bob Sutor, IBM's VP of open source and standards.

Updated August 9 at 10:21 a.m. PDT, with more perspective on the agreement.

The response from representatives of social networks impacted this week by the discovery of a type of worm that targets them specifically, appears to have come straight out of West Side Story. They're playing it cool, boys, real cool.

Religious fundamentalists in West Virginia are now being exempted from getting their digital photos emblazoned on their driver's licenses, after objections over carrying around what they conceive as the biblical "mark of the beast."

Last week, Congress sent letters to Internet platform providers expressing concern over targeted advertising. Now those letters have resulted in action from at least one company, which will now enable users to opt-out.

LAS VEGAS--I should have known it was only a matter of time.

Mozilla has launched a prototype messaging Firefox extension that it says could eventually enable users to keep track of all of their electronic communications, including email, RSS, social networks and web discussions.

When a company's lab typically comes forth with an idea for the general public, it already has a proposition in mind for why that idea is necessarily good. This morning, one of Mozilla Labs' latest ideas actually leaves that question open.

There's a new service for conference speakers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this year: lawyers on call.

LAS VEGAS--Microsoft is jumping into the responsible disclosure game.

Google acknowledged late on Thursday that it may have made a bad bet on AOL.

Record company CEO says licensing fees paid to the music industry by game companies are "far too small."

Publisher's casual label bringing popular how-to manuals to PC and DS, beginning with the just-released Poker trainer.

Configuring your BitTorrent client is essential if you want to enjoy optimal download speeds. In our quest to help users get the most out of BitTorrent, we asked one of the uTorrent developers how we can speed up our downloads.

The Home Office has rejected claims made by The Times newspaper that Dutch researchers have been able to fake microchipped UK passports.

Confirming about six months of speculation, the search giant said Wednesday it had launched a music search feature on its Chinese site with partner Top100.cn.

Over at our sister site, Gamespot, Wednesday, the eagle-eyed Guy Cocker noticed that Rockstar Games has officially announced its mega-hit, Grand Theft Auto IV, is coming to the PC.

Developers working on the next version of Firefox aim to release a beta to the public in August.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it has finished work on SQL Server 2008, the latest version of its database software.

Free Wi-Fi is now available at St Pancras International for the 45 million commuters who annually pass through the station.

Spammers have added Google Sites to the arsenal of online tools used to get around junk-email filters, according to a study published on Tuesday by messaging security firm MessageLabs.

Twitter's time has finally come.

Google's DoubleClick technology now can be used to deliver video advertising shown with Microsoft's Silverlight technology, and it will be used for that purpose with the Olympics video that NBC Universal plans to show online using a player based on Silverlight 2.

The goliaths of the Internet are dangling an ever-larger supply of bootstraps for folks who want to try new ideas for the Web.

Time Warner has moved a step closer to splitting up AOL's business, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Close-up photos of Australian homes, businesses and famous landmarks in cities, towns and remote areas are now available on Google Maps Australia, absolutely free.

The case against a mother who posed as a teenage boy to harass another teen online, in the process driving her to suicide, has taken another turn, as rights groups are opposing the government's criminal charges against the mother. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, along with Public Citizen and a group of 14 law professors, have filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that violating MySpace's Terms of Service agreement shouldn't be considered criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The groups believe that if the mother, Lori Drew, is prosecuted using CFAA charges, the case could have significant ramifications for the free speech rights of US citizens using the Internet.

One side effect of the FCC's recent move against Comcast's P2P "delaying" technology has been to make discussions about the dark art of network management even more pressing (and they were pretty pressing before). If Comcast can't use TCP reset packets to limit the number of BitTorrent connections a client can spawn, what legitimate techniques can ISPs use to deal with congestion ? Google's Vint Cerf, one of the grandfathers of the Internet, today weighed in with his answer: transmission rate caps.

A new worm is spreading via Facebook and MySpace, turning victims' computers into zombies on a botnet, Kaspersky Lab said on Friday.

Apple's Domain Name System patch for Mac OS X systems is not completely effective, according to security experts.

The deals between ISPs and anti-piracy organizations are a worrying trend. In just a few months entertainment industry representatives managed to convince ISPs and governments that they should have the right to accuse and warn Internet subscribers, without solid proof. The question that remains unanswered is whether these warnings will have any effect.

Security vendor McAfee has revealed plans to acquire Reconnex, a company that specialises in data-leakage prevention.

Motorola surprised Wall Street on Thursday by reporting a small profit and steady market share in its beleaguered handset business for the second quarter of 2008.

Olympic officials on Saturday said there was "no deal" with the Chinese government to restrict Internet access for foreign journalists covering the Beijing Games.

Google's Street View service didn't invade a Pittsburgh couple's privacy, the search giant said in a response to the couple's April lawsuit over the matter.

The Pirate Bay has rolled out a new feature which allows users to add tags to the torrents they upload. The tags will make it easier to structure and discover new content, and it gives users the opportunity to form tag based groups.

Time Warner has reportedly objected to the appointment of former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller to Yahoo's board of directors, according to Techcrunch.

Google's Street View mapping system has been given the all clear by the UK's privacy watchdog.

As Microsoft readies another beta release of Internet Explorer (IE) 8, the company has made a call for more beta testers via a company blog.

Microsoft announced yesterday that it had filed an action with the International Trade Commission against Primax Electronics of Taiwan over several technologies used in mice, which are sold in Best Buy under the Dynex brand name.

In mid-2005, Google began experimenting with venture capital investments in startup companies. Now, over three years later, the Wall Street Journal reports the search company has plans to start an arm dedicated only to this kind of investment.