InsideTech

NEW YORK - You might call him the Mickey Mouse of video games. He's reminiscent of a doughnut, round and sweet and comforting. He's also a vessel, devoid of a real personality so you can live vicariously through him. Mario, the pot-bellied Italian plumber with a penchant for rescuing princesses, collecting golden coins and gobbling magic mushrooms, has been around for ...

Nov. 16 - Ever wonder how much Google knows about you? If you have a Gmail account, watch videos on YouTube, store presentations on Google Docs or make calls through Google Voice, it's no wonder. The first Web site on this month's Seven Sites list may not put your mind at ease, but it will enlighten you. 1. www.google.com/dashboard: I ...

WASHINGTON - With the technology industry looking on, the Supreme Court on Monday will explore what types of inventions should be eligible for a patent in a pivotal case that could undermine such legal protections for software. A ruling that sides with the Patent Office could bar patents on processes and methods of doing business, such as online shopping techniques, ...

A big ad partnership from Microsoft may in time help Yahoo rediscover its magic, but over the last year the company has seemed very lost.  With its search engine powered by Bing and its team now focusing on APIs and the advertising partnership, Yahoo has yet to prove itself a legitimate competitor to Google. Now an embarrassing debacle is earning the ...

WASHINGTON - As federal regulators take their first tentative steps toward policing the wild west of medical information online, pharmaceutical companies are pressing their case to market drugs via Google, Twitter and other Web sites. The Food and Drug Administration will convene a two-day meeting beginning Thursday to hear the drug industry's position on Internet marketing. The agency has agreed to ...

It may only be early November but the holiday-themed ads are already on TV and the more excitable retailers are dusting off their decorations. Likewise, it may seem a little early to be making predictions for the coming year, but a lot of what is likely to happen can already be seen. It's a bit like the unlit Christmas lights that ...

The Fall is here and it is cold and nasty. So what's a better way to stop thinking about it than checking out some of the most interesting tech-related videos of the past few months? Lean back and watch these funny and innovative videos that have recently popped up on this site and others around the web. If you want us ...

NEW YORK - Footage leaked from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" reveals that players of the upcoming video game can shoot innocent civilians in an airport in a realistic rendering of a terrorist attack. The game, which has an "M" rating for mature audiences, comes out next month in what its publisher hopes may be the most lucrative launch ...

Governments have been allowing Microsoft to enact new and renewal contracts under "no-bid" conditions - handing billions of $$ to the software monopoly. Now Open Source companies are banding together to fight back.

It is fitting that Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system arrives ahead of Halloween. When Microsoft buries Windows Vista for good on Oct. 22 and replaces it with Windows 7, the ghostbusters in Redmond will have exorcised a demon. If you haven't experienced the frights of Vista firsthand, you've no doubt heard about them: how it takes forever to power ...

NEW YORK -- You have good reason to be skeptical when someone says millions of ordinary television viewers are about to start surfing the Internet on the living room's electronic hearth. We've heard that Web-on-your-TV convergence promise for more than a decade, with ambitious efforts to make it happen including AOL TV and WebTV Networks. Each time, the optimists have ...

Forget that Apple has been carefully courting businesses and business users; forget that the iTunes App Store has over 78 pages of business-specific applications.  Apple is insisting to one very disappointed Swedish customer, J. Martin Wehlou, that its iPhone Apps aren't business tools and are not meant for business use. The incident began when Mr. Wehlou contacted Apple seeking details on ...

The Obama administration has been more willing than previous administrations to implement open source technology, as the new WhiteHouse.gov content management software (CMS) system has been switched over to the open source Drupal. Open source is already used by the U.S. government throughout numerous websites and departments, according to tech guru Tim O-Reilly, but the White House using Drupal will only ...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration has given a green light to the Homeland Security Department to be more competitive and choosey as it hires up to 1,000 new cyber experts over the next three years, the first major personnel move to fulfill its vow to bolster security of the nation's computer networks. The announcement follows a wave of cyber attacks on ...

BAKU, Azerbaijan - A court in Azerbaijan sentenced two bloggers to prison Wednesday for a fight in a restaurant, but the defendants say the charges were a pretext to punish them for political dissent. The U.S. swiftly condemned the court decision, calling it "a step backwards for Azerbaijan's progress towards democratic reform." Emin Abdullayev and Adnan Hadzhizade were convicted of hooliganism ...

SEATTLE - Microsoft's Bing search service will pull more information and tools from other Web sites as the company tries to distinguish itself as part of its challenge to market leader Google. Traditionally, search engines from Google Inc. and others respond to users' queries by offering links to other sites that Web surfers can go to for information. Microsoft Corp., ...

SAN FRANCISCO - Amazon's Kindle can read books aloud, but if you're blind it can be difficult to turn that function on without help. Now two universities say they will shun the device until Amazon changes the setup. The National Federation of the Blind announced Wednesday that the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University in New York won't consider big rollouts ...

SAN FRANCISCO - The first touch-screen BlackBerry phone, the Storm, got a few things right, but generally it was a chore to use. Good thing a lot can change in a year. Though not without flaws, the latest version of the device, the BlackBerry Storm2, is the phone Research In Motion Ltd. should have released last year: It's faster, smarter and ...

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co., looking to expand into a business long dominated by Cisco, said Wednesday it has agreed to buy networking software and equipment maker 3Com Corp. in a deal the companies valued at $2.7 billion. HP also issued a preliminary report Wednesday for the three months that ended in October, saying it earned 99 cents per share, ...

Adobe Systems plans to cut 680 full-time employees worldwide which represents about 10% of the company's workforce. After Adobe's acquisition of Omniture in late October, the company announced 9 percent of Omniture's 1,200 employees will be released in a separate round of job cuts in the future. The company - which is best known for Photoshop and Flash - will have ...