News on Technology

In the initial news about Apple going DRM-free, I saw it reported that Apple would let you convert your existing files to DRM-free. However, what was left out of the reports I saw (though, people in our comments pointed it out) was that Apple wants to charge you $0.30 for the...

In these post-Wall Street meltdown, post-Bernie Madoff, post-bailout times, the reception to another filthy rich dot-commie will be lukewarm, at best

Phantom loads from turn-off electronics add up to a lot of wasted energy. Good for You, Good for the Planet says its technology cuts vampire energy to zero.

Actually, it is always time for a dancing dog video. That's especially true before boarding the Southwest Airlines bus to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today and, thankfully, leaving behind the Steve-Is-Dead meme (but did you know if you spin an iPod wheel...

I still haven't quite figured out why people think that it's illegal to be a jerk, but there's just some part of people's brains that makes them believe that if they don't like something, it simply must be illegal. A model named Liskula Cohen is apparently really, really peeved...

One True Media, which makes the small-business-focused SpotMixer ad creation software, has also been named an "authorized reseller" for the video arm of Google's AdWords service.

MOG demo'd the next version of their popular music service to me today, and I was impressed. It combines a best of breed interface with free on demand streaming and a Pandora-like music recommendation engine. The trouble is, it may never launch because only two of the four major...

In past years, it was almost impossible to fly in to McCarran International Airport without landing in the middle of a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) marketing fest. When I arrived Tuesday even the diminished consumer electronics efforts from last year were AWOL, reflecting a...

Tod Nielsen to become COO at virtualization company where he hooks up with former boss from his Microsoft days, VMware CEO Paul Maritz

Vacation rentals are big business. HomeAway, which owns a dozen or so vacation home listing sites, just raised $250 million in a venture round that values the company at more than $1 billion. But listings are spread across lots of sites - what the industry needed was a good...

We've covered how and why many patent infringement lawsuits are filed in East Texas, but in March of last year, courts were given more leeway in transferring those cases out of East Texas to somewhere more convenient. Of course, that hasn't stopped the massive filings in East...

The world's largest maker of Internet infrastructure equipment is now helping big media companies build social networking Web sites.

Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology described as, “a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.” AR...

Financial software firm attacking both online and offline money management.

AOL's EVP of Products and Marketing Kevin Conroy is leaving to take a new position at Univision. This isn't much of a surprise - we speculated on his future back in July when he announced (internally) the shuttering of four of his products (Xdrive, AOL Pictures, Bluestring and...

Dear Mr. Know-It-All, I'm a college student who makes money volunteering for medical experiments. Do I have to accept whatever fee the researchers offer me, or can I negotiate for more? In principle, you're entitled to the same economic rights as the researchers, who likely...

Sounds like there may be ugly news in the offing for IBM (IBM) employees. According to comments posted to an IBM employee site operated by the Communications Workers of America, the company may announces as many as 16,000 layoffs before the end of the month. Were that to happen,...

With the launch of Skype integration, Truphone's mobile VoIP service is fast becoming a unified client for other VOIP and messaging services. As well as the ability to make low-cost calls over Wi-Fi or GSM networks and send cheap SMS, it is now supporting Skype and other...

One never knows..something exciting just may happen at Macworld 2009. Really. Just in case, John intrepid reporter John Paczkowski and crack photojournalist Adam Tow are in place to catch the action. John will be liveblogging the event, and Adam will be posting new photos every...

Today's keynote presentation by Phil Schiller has been widely regarded as a relatively lackluster affair. That isn't to say it went badly - I'm genuinely excited about some of the new software updates. But the Macworld keynote in years past has been home to some very major...

Pandora Radio, the personalized internet radio service that has remained among the most popular iPhone apps on the iTunes App Store since its inception in July (and that I've previously called the iPhone's killer app), will be releasing its most significant update yet later...

Picasa is a credible competitor to iPhoto--especially for those who have recently switched to the Mac.

Atherton Bartelby is a Brooklyn-based graphic designer, art director, writer, blogger, and photographer. He authors a blog at Curious Affairs. We’ve all been there: You’re at a party hosted by that one fabulous friend, and populated with the best of your mutual circle...

Britney Spears wasn't safe. Neither were Barack Obama and Bill O'Reilly. The latest to be hacked is popular Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) news site MacRumorsLive.com, on the day of Macworld Expo, no less. At around 9:30 this morning, pranksters hacked into the live updates, saying "Steve...

In 2007,Steve Jobs predicted that half the music offered at his iTunes store would be sold without Digital Rights Management -- the lock and key system that the music labels wrap their songs -- by the end of that year. Better late than never: Apple finally has deals in place with...

Forbes magazine has completed the print/online editorial combo is announced in November, and with it, has axed 19 edit jobs, MediaMemo's Peter Kafka reports. This was the second phase of Forbes' print and digital integration. Phase one initiated in November, when it formed a...

Earlier today, I attended the rather enjoyable lunchtime "salon" on Privacy 2009: The Year Ahead, put together by Tech Policy Central and held at Facebook's headquarters. The discussion, moderated by Kara Swisher, involved Facebook's chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, along...

Two notes from Wall Street analysts came to my inbox today with top-ten predictions for what 2009 holds in store for the technology industry. J.P. Morgan's Imran Khan, for instance, predicts Yahoo and Microsoft will finally strike a search deal, video advertising on the Web...

After a number of the microblogging service's most popular accounts were compromised, Twitter has come out and said that it was a hacker, not the phishing scam that's been making the rounds recently.

Smarter-email startup Xobni has raised $7 million in a B round of financing from Cisco Systems and existing investors Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Atomico. Three of the four existing investors increased their ownership stakes in the company. But...

On the eve of Macworld, one hot rumor making the rounds is that Apple is set to announce a deal with three of the major record labels to make all tracks on iTunes DRM-free. In exchange, the service would introduce more variable pricing on music, with current hit songs carrying a...

I've yet to find anyone with a firm grip on the number of ad networks out there: 300? 400? Many more? But now there's one less: Peer39, a New York and Israel-based company, has turned off its "Semantic Ad Network" and laid off its four-person sales staff.

Apple's Phil Schiller announced at the Steveless keynote at Macworld today (CrunchGear is liveblogging it) that a new version of iPhoto will include facial recognition software. The feature, called Faces, lets you put a name to face, then it tries to find other images with the...

Steve Jobs and three major labels come to terms on a deal to make music available on iTunes without DRM. Consumers can choose between three price levels instead of the "any song for 99 cents" model the store implemented on day one.

Led by VP Phil Schiller, the Jobs-less presentation included a 17-inch MacBook Pro and DRM-free songs in iTunes.

Apple shares rebound on announcement Steve Jobs will remain CEO, while recovering from hormone therapy treatment. Apple shares jump amid decline in broader markets.

Seems like widget distribution startup Clearspring is another victim of the economic meltdown forced to make some tough decisions. We heard rumors floating that the company laid off about 20% of its staff in early December, and we've now confirmed with Clearspring that several...

—Roku player gets Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) VOD: Owners of the Roku "Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) Player" will soon also be able to download content from Amazon's VOD service. The deal adds more than 40,000 movies and TV shows to the library currently available via Netflix—though Amazon's...

The demise of the HD DVD video disc format appeared to hand the future of home entertainment to Blu-ray, but struggles continue.

In the march towards getting "rid of the box" as the going-forward philosophy in the evolving digital home, Netflix has extended its partnership with LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) and embedding its online video service directly into the new HDTVs from the Korean electronics...

Like their colleagues at Time Inc., the editorial staff at Forbes has known that layoffs have been coming to the company's magazine and Web site for quite some time. But at least they're getting it over with in one fell swoop: The company let go of 19 people today as it merged...

It's been a few weeks since the WSJ announced that the RIAA was supposedly dropping its lawsuit strategy, in favor of a backroom deal with ISPs, negotiated under dubious circumstances by NY's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, whereby those ISPs would start cutting off connections...

U.S. Internet users watched 12.7 billion online videos in November, an increase of 34 percent versus year ago, according to ComScore data.

For those Web companies that comply by it, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is turning out to be their best friend. Last week, Universal Music Group (UMG) was denied a summary judgment by a Los Angeles court in its copyright infringement case against Veoh. (Court order...

Longtime Server and Tools unit head Bob Muglia is now president of the company's server unit.

Who would have guessed that in the New Year, Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, would be for the most part stable, but fall victim to hackers and phishing schemes? Well, it's true, and it will be interesting to see if this threatens Twitter's long-term viability as it...

Open source offers solid footing for those wanting to keep their jobs in the recession.

Web meetings. Love them or hate them they’re pretty much ubiquitous these days. You may even been ready to head out for an early weekend, when you receive the dreaded email with subject line, “mandatory WebEx meeting.” What a buzz kill, right? Well now with...

theodp writes "Astronaut Dave Bowman may have found the HAL-9000 more believable had the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer been equipped with the technology described in IBM's new patent for Generating paralinguistic phenomena via markup in text-to-speech...

SanDisk and Samsung are introducing new solid-state drives for the Netbook and enterprise markets, respectively.