[Software News] Opera opens new round in browser battles
[Software News] A New Front Is Opened in the Browser Wars
Opera Software, the Oslo-based producer of the Opera browser, has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft, alleging that the software giant is unfairly abusing its dominant market position by tying Windows to Internet Explorer. The complaint also alleges that Microsoft is hindering Web interoperability by failing to adhere to widely accepted Web standards. In a press st...
[Software News] CBS Radio Eyes Internet for Growth Opportunities
NEW YORK Two months ago, when wildfires scorched hundreds of square miles in Southern California, forcing the evacuation of a half-million people, listenership spiked on KNX Radio, the CBS-owned outlet in Los Angeles. But the uptick wasn't for the station's on-air signal; listeners had instead tuned into the station on the Internet. Not surprisingly, audiences in the L.A. market were despe...
[Software News] Groups say FTC, law firm hiding DoubleClick conflict
San Francisco - The Web site of a law firm employing the husband of U.S. Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras contradicts an FTC explanation that Majoras has no conflict of interest in reviewing DoubleClick's $3.1 billion acquisition by Google, two privacy groups said Thursday. On Wednesday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democrac...
[Software News] Indie filmmakers can score Moby freebies
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Dance musician Moby has launched a Web site that gives his music away -- to the right people, of course. He is licensing his music for free via mobygratis.com to help out indie and student filmmakers. "I was a philosophy major and I had a minor in film," he says. "Ever since then, I've had a lot of friends in the world of independent an...
[Software News] Wall Street Beat: AT&T, Cisco shine as clouds loom
San Francisco - Mixed economic news and forecasts of weak IT spending for at least the beginning of next year caused IT investor confidence to waver this week, though upbeat analyst presentations from Cisco and AT&T and online e-commerce figures brought some cheer to the holiday season. Macroeconomic news is making technology investors uneasy. Wednesday morning, the U.S. Federal Reserve Board cu...
[Software News] J.K. Rowling fairy tales sell for $4M
LONDON - A book of fairy tales created, handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling sold for nearly $4 million at auction Thursday. The buyer, Web retailer Amazon.com Inc., now owns one of only seven copies of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," which is leather bound with silver mounts. Amazon, in its unaccustomed position as a buyer rather than seller of books, was represented by London art agent Hazl...
[Software News] Cisco Readies Online Entertainment Platform
Cisco will introduce next year its Entertainment Operating System (EOS), a platform for delivering multimedia content to online communities. EOS will be the first major product of Cisco's push into helping media companies connect with their customers. It will combine a delivery system, a social networking platform and a set of tools to help consumers find the content they want, said Dan Scheinma...
[Software News] Ex-JBoss founder joins startup
San Francisco - JBoss founder Marc Fleury has resurfaced as a paid advisor to Appcelerator, a startup based in Atlanta that makes a toolkit for developing rich Internet applications (RIA). Red Hat bought JBoss, a maker of open source middleware, in 2006 for $350 million. The outspoken Fleury oversaw Red Hat's JBoss division until quitting early this year, and since then has largely avoided the l...
[Software News] Do Searchers Really Care About Privacy?
Ask.com might not be the leading search engine, but it's trying to prove it's the most consumer-friendly with its latest privacy move. The question is whether consumers really care as much as privacy advocates claim they do. On Tuesday, Ask.com launched a new product designed to give consumers more control over the privacy of their online searches. The technology, called AskEraser, allo...
[Software News] Report advises caution shoppping online
NEW YORK - Some popular online retailers don't do enough either to inform customers how their personal information could be used or to give them control over it, according to a public interest research group. CyberStreetSmart.org, a project of the New York Public Interest Research Group, has issued "screen door" and "steel door" awards to retail Web sites after evaluating their protections for custo...
[Software News] Microsoft buys Multimap to boost advertising strategy
San Francisco - Microsoft continues to make acquisitions to boost its online services and advertising strategy. Early Wednesday, the company said it snapped up Multimap, a U.K. company that provides online mapping for Europe, North America, and Australia. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal. Multimap, based in London, will act as a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, and employees...
[Software News] Copyright Battle Erupts over Porn 2.0
Despite a reputation as the most profitable of businesses, life is not all beautiful women, hot tubs, and a constant stream of money for porn kings these days. In a tell-tale sign of financial stress, Vivid Entertainment Group -- one of the largest pornography shops -- is suing a Web site called PornoTube and its parent company for copyright infringement. Vivid is asking for $4.5 million in dam...
[Software News] FTC Charges Money Processors Supported Online, Telemarketing Fraud
The Federal Trade Commission has joined seven states to charge debit card payment processors with violating federal and state laws for allegedly debiting consumers' accounts for fraudulent telemarketer and Internet sales. The FTC filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. It charges processors with violating Section 5 of the FTC Act by unfairly pr...
[Software News] House member questions Google
WASHINGTON - A House Republican on Wednesday sent a letter to Google Inc., asking the Internet search company to provide more information about its search practices and targeted advertising. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in the letter he was concerned about the privacy and consumer-protection implications stemming from Google's proposed...
[Software News] Microsoft buys online mapping company Multimap
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Wednesday it has acquired Multimap, one of Britain's top online mapping companies. Financial terms were not disclosed. Microsoft's acquisition is the latest in a series of deals in the consolidating digital mapping industry. Dutch navigation device maker TomTom NV launched a takeover bid for digital map maker Tele Atlas NV last month. M...
[Software News] Microsoft buys Britain's Multimap
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - US software giant Microsoft announced Wednesday that it had bought British online mapping specialty firm Multimap. The purchase comes as Microsoft strives to break the stride of rival Google, an Internet juggernaut that recently upgraded its mapping service to automatically locate people using mobile devices to get online. Microsoft billed Multim...
[Software News] EBay focusing on
SAN JOSE, Calif. - EBay Inc. will focus on improving the "user experience" in 2008 in hopes of making the world's largest online auction more satisfying for its millions of users, a top executive said. Engineers significantly updated eBay's home page earlier this year — for the first time since 1999 — and made its search engine faster. Next year they'll focus on rooting out sellers with un...
[Software News] Microsoft Buys Multimap, European Online Mapping Company
Microsoft is growing its global footprint again, this time putting a geographic stamp on Europe by buying Multimap, a leading British online mapping company, for an undisclosed sum. The Multimap purchase appears to be an acquisition that's as much about growing Microsoft's customer base as it is about technology. Multimap, which was founded in 1996, is the second largest consumer mapping...
[Software News] Online video helps troubled borrowers spot fraud
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fraudsters are targeting troubled borrowers facing foreclosure in a scheme that could leave homeowners with even more debt than they otherwise would face, a new online video warns. In the video that dramatizes a common case of fraud, a homeowner receives an unsolicited offer to help settle mortgage debt but ends up homeless and with battered credit. Under a common sc...