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Google just keeps invading new territories, and its latest target is your computer's operating system. It's officially released the open source code for its Chrome OS, an operating system that will turn up in third-party vendors' netbooks. Those devices should start selling next year ...

Intel and AMD have finally put a long and bitter disagreement to bed, and in the end, all it took was a little open communication and understanding, along with one and a quarter billion dollars. The two have been at it for years -- accusations, threats, lawsuits. AMD said Intel engaged in anticompetitive behavior; Intel said AMD broke its licensing agreements...

Today is the day of the Droid. The Motorola smartphone touches down today in what's shaping up to be one of the biggest handset launches in recent memory. Of course Verizon is going all-in as far as advertising is concerned, but there's more to the Droid's story than a marketing campaign. ...

The Android mobile operating system is graduating soon to 2.0 status, and Google gave it a pretty nice present to celebrate: a free turn-by-turn navigation app called "Google Maps Navigation." It'll run on Android 2.0 phones with GPS, and it'll use the phone's cellular Internet connection to get live map information ...

So how's your head after that wild Windows 7 launch party with the Stepford crew? Still got the spins? OK, if you really did throw or attend an official Windows 7 launch party, then that's ... interesting. I sincerely hope you had a good time. For the rest of us, the official introduction of Windows 7 was a pretty austere affair. No human billboards this time around, no Santana, no fireworks, and no around-the-block lines at Best Buy, as far as I could tell.

T-Mobile's Sidekick users had a pretty rough time this week thanks to a mistake that first looked enormous but eventually was pretty much fixed, though with no small amount of worry and strife in between. An unfortunate series of events caused a major inconvenience for users of the smartphone, and it might have you thinking twice before entrusting a whole bunch of data to a cloud service without first making a backup copy to keep...

AT&T has its iPhone, Sprint has its Pre, T-Mobile has its myTouch, and Verizon has ... what? A BlackBerry or something? Even though Verizon is the biggest network in the land -- and even though iPhone users think about Verizon longingly every time a call goes dead -- the company is not generally known for having killer phones ...

According to ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush, nobody but nobody controls the Internet. Not China, not Comcast, not your IT guy, not Clippy, nobody. The Final Boss of the Internet does not exist. But there does exist a nonprofit that governs Web addresses, and that's Dengate Thrush's organization, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. ICANN makes sure there's some degree of rhyme and reason to the domain names that you see in the URL bar at the top of your browser...

For years, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 have been gut-punching each other with price cuts while the Nintendo Wii just sits on the sidelines with a smug little grin on its face. While the two bigger consoles entered the market with huge MSRPs, the Wii planted itself at US$250 and stayed there for nearly three years, easily beating the others month after month in units sold...

HP has just made either the most hyperactive digital picture frame on the market or the lamest tablet PC ever. ...

Android is finally getting a little more wardrobe variety. It's also moving out into new U.S. carriers. Sprint is the latest wireless company to jump in with the Android crowd; it'll start selling the HTC Hero this October. ...

When they were designing the latest generation of video game consoles -- the generation we're currently right in the middle of -- two of the three major players envisioned their systems as hubs not just for games but for all sorts of digital entertainment. Downloaded movies, songs stored on a PC, high-definition discs, etc., would all run through their platforms, so they built their systems with HD video capabilities. The results appear to be what they intended -- three or four years on, the Microsoft Xbox 360 and the Sony PlayStation 3 still look spectacular on a big screen. But their prices, at least at the time of launch, were enormous...

Congratulations, patient cheapskates: You've won the waiting game. Now you can get a well-equipped video game system for a somewhat reasonable price. The two most-advanced consoles on the market have dropped in price over the last few days, just in time for all of that back-to-school homework to get ignored. ...

The old saying used to be, "If you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all." Then the Internet came along, and the saying changed to, "If you can't say anything nice, then invent a fake user name and go to town." ...

A Toronto company aptly named "i4i" is getting its revenge on Microsoft by kicking it square in the monkeymaker. i4i has sued Redmond, claiming that Microsoft Word infringes on its patents. Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas -- where else? -- has given Microsoft two months to halt sales of the offending software. It's also ordered Microsoft to give i4i a US$240 million payout.

U.S. military service members who want to keep up with friends and family back home have often turned to social networking Web sites to stay in touch. But the Department of Defense hasn't quite made up its mind whether these kinds of sites are friends or enemies. ...

Nokia is gearing up to make moves in both hardware and software. Its next flagship phone, the N97, is gearing up for release in Europe in the first half of this year -- though availability in the U.S. is still hazy. On the software side, the Symbian Foundation is scheduled to begin operations within the same time frame. ...

Netbook computers remind me of travel toothbrushes and portable air mattresses. You use them only when you need to move a lot, like when you're on the road or camping or running around at a trade show. They're just not nearly as functional or comfortable as the at-home version ...

As the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas continued on Friday and through the weekend, it became clear that the official attendance count at this year's gadget fest will likely reflect significant shrinkage. ...

The doors to the Las Vegas convention center opened Thursday, and theConsumer Electronics Show is now officially in full swing. ...