Search

The Federal Communications Commission has declared war on the practice of telecom carriers surreptitiously nickel-and-diming their customers through a practice called "cramming." This refers to those nagging mystery charges that pop up on many consumers' telephone bills -- some 20 million people all...

Amazon's self-publishing e-book platform appears to be overrun by spam or low-quality e-books. Of the thousands of digital books being published through Amazon's self-publishing system each month, many are spam, either developed via Private Label Rights or even using toolkits that help people produc...

This week, 2K Games and Gearbox Software debuted "Duke Nukem Forever" for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. For the game's developers, it was a momentous occasion. Fans had been waiting 15 years in video game purgatory, they said, for the launch of the mythical Duke Nukem game. For some game revie...

Wireless carrier T-Mobile has entered the group buying market with its own daily deal offering. Called "More for Me," the nationwide service aggregates deals from such originators as Living Social and Groupon. The service is available to anyone who owns an Android handset -- not just T-Mobile subscr...

A new partnership between Comcast and Skype will let Comcast subscribers place video calls through their television sets. The new service will require some setup -- customers will need to install Comcast-provided equipment including an adapter box, video camera, and special remote with a QWERTY keyb...

Somewhere in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I just know the owner of a certain day spa is rubbing her hands with glee. You see, on New Year's Day morning, as I was blearily checking my emails, I clicked on one of the many group buying sites to which I subscribe and saw an offer I simply couldn't p...

Pandora, an Internet music service, is scheduled to begin trading shares in an initial public offering on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "P." Last week, the company ramped up its plans, increasing its IPO price range by at least a third and boosting the number of shares to...

Many firms are not properly prepared for the response to a daily deal offering. "These offers can be wonderful if they are analyzed correctly by the company," said Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. "If they are not, then it can easily be a disaster." The daily deal sites are ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that found Microsoft unlawfully infringed on i4i's document-editing patents by incorporating its technology in some of its Word products. The $290 million penalty is small change for Microsoft, but the verdict could have more troubling implicati...

Spending on online advertising is expected to jump 20.2 percent over last year's spending, according to new figures from eMarketer. If this category of ad spend does indeed reach $31.3 billion, as the company has projected, it will return to pre-recession growth levels and be accompanied by steady i...

On a single day in March earlier this year, The Orange County Register's website generated $188,000, mainly by selling nearly 5,457 customers on its daily deal: a Catalina Flyer catamaran round-trip ticket for $34. A portion of the revenue was generated by a side deal. For an industry poised to reac...

Once upon a time there was an online group called "The Point." It was a nebulous organization with the vague goal of using the power of social media to to do such things as crowdsource a design for the Chicago Stadium or launch a petition. One day, one of its members got the bright idea to use its n...

It seems Microsoft doesn't want to take any chances with rollouts of future Windows tablets. The company is reportedly asking a special favor of each chip maker with which it will be working on tablets. It wants the chip suppliers to each partner with one -- or possibly two, according to some accoun...

An end to Sony's PlayStation woes is presumably in sight: The company has announced it will restore full functionality to the PlayStation Store by the end of this week. That includes in-game commerce, the ability for players to redeem vouchers and codes, and full functionality of Music Unlimited as...

After much rumor and speculation, Twitter and TweetDeck announced what many had already concluded: the popular third-party client has been acquired by Twitter. The terms of the deal were undisclosed but various news reports put it between $40 million and $50 million. Of perhaps greater interest, at ...

Square, a startup founded by Twitter alum Jack Dorsey, has rolled out revamped versions of its iPhone/iPad and Android apps. The company is positioning the offering as an alternative to NFC (near field communication) technology, the next-generation standard -- once it is finally settled -- for mobil...

Verizon Wireless is planning to cancel its unlimited data offering for smartphones this summer, replacing it with tiered packages including a family plan, according to comments made by CFO Fran Shammo at the Reuters Global Technology Summit. It will be a blow to some heavy users accustomed to the fl...

Amazon has reached a momentum milestone: Its customers are purchasing more Kindle books than print books -- hardcover and paperback combined. This day was clearly coming. In July 2010, Kindle book sales surpassed hardcover sales. By December of that year, Kindle books overtook paperback books, beco...

If the Internet is the equivalent of our solar system, then Netflix would be Jupiter, its largest planet. That, at least, is the imagery that Sandvine evokes in its latest report, "Global Internet Phenomena Spotlight." Netflix has ascended to the No. 1 Internet traffic spot, the firm found, accounti...

The leak of a memo from HP CEO Leo Apotheker describing a tough upcoming quarter prompted the company to deliver its quarterly earnings report a day earlier than planned. The results for the second quarter were actually in line with expectations, but the company lowered its guidance for the rest of ...