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Apple's new iPad may look like a thin, fragile piece of hardware, but it's apparently strong enough for publishing houses to use as a powerful wedge against Amazon in their negotiations over e-book pricing. Hachette Group became the latest publisher to announce it was going to move to the "agency" r...

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wants to know if Google's current dustup with China has the potential to create more cracks in that country's Great Firewall. So late Tuesday, the Illinois Democrat sent letters to 30 top technology companies -- including Apple, Facebook, Cisco, Verizon and Amazon -- asking the...

A brief stroll through the Google Solutions Marketplace shows you that the search giant is already working and playing well with others when it comes to the business of specialized business software. Need something to give your Google Calendar a little sharing and productivity boost? What about enha...

The movie industry loves a gala premiere, with red carpets, paparazzi and Klieg lights sweeping a glittering marquee. YouTube's announcement this week of its new movie rental strategy is about as far away from that scenario as you can get. Instead of the commercial first-run features that are popula...

The Gray Lady may once again ask for some green if you want to view something that's black and white and read all over. Reports surfaced over the weekend that The New York Times is about to announce another attempt at a paid-access business model for its Web site, with management apparently deciding...

The overheated weapons and steroid-pumped terrorists featured in "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" made a lot of noise in the gaming industry leading into the holidays. However, by the time receipts were totaled, it was a familiar little mustache-wearing plumber and his arcade-style melodies that san...

The company that made its billions selling ads for Web searches is now officially in the telecommunications business, as Google demonstrated Tuesday with the launch of its branded Nexus One smartphone. However, can the same success that saw "Google" become a verb be translated to the burgeoning mobi...

Sometime within the next two years, you'll feel like ducking for cover the next time the Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" team blows something to smithereens. Yet you'll be in the comfort of your living room, wearing oversize glasses while watching a new 3-D television channel whose very existence ...

2009 may have been a year of recession, but don't tell that to the blue-skinned aliens of "Avatar," the hormonal teen wizards in the new "Harry Potter" film or the needy talking dogs of "Up." Their adventures in special 3-D theater screenings helped push U.S. box office receipts past home DVD sales ...

Verizon recently doubled its early termination fees to US$350 for customers who want out of their wireless phone contracts -- a fee much higher than competing carriers charge. However, there's no need to worry; the extra money coming into Verizon not only helps the nation meet its mobile broadband g...

Those following the progress of U.S. broadband initiatives were going to need a bandwidth boost of their own Thursday; there was a lot of new data to digest. Dual announcements captured the attention of industry officials and consumer advocates: Vice President Joe Biden announced the initial list of...

Wednesday's announcement by the Federal Trade Commission that it is suing Intel over its business practices must have looked like computer-generated deja vu to the technology industry. Those who were around for the Clinton Justice Department's case against Microsoft in the late 1990s are hearing fam...

Amazon seems to be writing a self-help book of its own. You could call it, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective E-Reader Companies, and the first item on that list would appear to be: Lock in an exclusive deal with one of the most popular business writers ever. Amazon announced on Tuesday that Steph...

For all its graphics firepower and blockbuster action, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" couldn't blow up the perception that the video game industry is still reeling from the recession's aftershocks. Industry market-watchers NPD Group released November sales figures Thursday, showing continued year-...

For every traditional media publisher who tries to place Google at the scene of the crime -- the death of newspapers -- the search giant offers up a new alibi. The latest defense exhibit is Wednesday's announcement of Google "Living Stories," an online experiment that organizes news around a specifi...

Did someone just blink in the great Google vs. News Corp. paid content smackdown? The latest round of digital brinksmanship involving how the search giant aggregates news stories behind paywalls got more interesting Tuesday when Google announced a couple of measures to placate publishers, including ...

You may think it's annoying when you see the same commercial repeated during a 2:30 ad break in prime time, but have no fear -- there is a method to an advertiser's madness. They simply want to make sure you are exposed to that product's branding/logo even as you're fast-forwarding past it on a digi...

Call it the "New Moon" strategy at Microsoft. Team Google and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. are having a lovers' quarrel over search aggregation of news content; Murdoch claims Team Google is nothing but a bloodthirsty vampire draining potential ad revenue. So like a hunky werewolf in a certain blockb...

Many companies would give up their right to right-click to be able to duplicate Apple's success with iTunes. However, only one actually has the pieces already in place to do that, and its executives announced their intentions Thursday to take on Steve Jobs' company with its own online content servic...

From high-flying Internet pioneer to movie punchline: AOL's nadir may have come when Nicole Kidman's character in the 2004 remake of "The Stepford Wives" asks a group of husbands of robotic spouses where they work. "AOL," answers one man. "Is that why the women are so slow?" Kidman responds. The jok...