Breaking: American Airlines to offer Wi-Fi service next year; takes lead as first totally not-crappy airline
We got a tip that something cool is about to hit. I keep saying that the "no electronic devices on airplanes" thing is crap, and American Airlines, it seems, is seeing my point of view.
Macrovision-Gemstar: What's In TVGuide's Future
The Macrovision-Gemstar-TV Guide deal makes conceptual sense on the technology and services side, but what about the media business? What about the magazine, the TV channel, and the websites? It doe...
CompUSA to close all of its 103 stores
The consumer electronics store will run store-closing sales during the holidays to get rid of inventory. — DALLAS (AP) — Consumer electronics retailer CompUSA said Friday it will close its stores af...
Software Freedom Law Center goes after Verizon over GPL
The Software Freedom Law Center on Friday said it has filed a suit against Verizon Communications alleging that it has violated the terms of the General Public License, which governs the use of thousa...
Apple's $15 billion cash hoard
Pop quiz: Which tech company has the most cash? — (A) IBM (IBM) — (B) Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) — (C) Intel (INTC) — (D) Google (GOOG) — (E) Apple (AAPL) — If you picked E, congratulations. A...
The Crazy Cousins Thank Gordon Crovitz
One of the nice things about having a blog is that I can mouth off on just about anything I want and include whatever I want too (such as, for example, shamelessly making videos of my kids in a fruitl...
Facebook Members Sell Their Own Ads
More than 1,500 Facebook users have started placing advertisements on their own profile pages-despite the social networking site's rule against such ads. — They are posting them with the help of a M...
Commodore 64 still loved after all these years
(CNN) — Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people's hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twent...
The Dr. Seuss Jumble: Naming Web Sites
Could it possibly be true? Has all wit and cleverness already dried up in the naming of Web sites, less than 15 years after the Internet was opened to the public? — In the beginning, Web sites anno...
Edgeio To Shut Down - In The DeadPool
Edgeio, a company I co-founded in 2005, had a final board meeting this evening and made the decision to shut down operations of the company. We are putting it into the TechCrunch DeadPool. — Edgieo...
Western Digital 1TB MyBook Drives Infested With DRM? [Peripherals]
The guys at Wired and BoingBoing stirred up a hornet's nest this morning by alleging that Western Digital's 1TB MyBook World Edition external hard drives "won't share media files over network connecti...
First Passport, now fraud: ex-MS employee charged
The former Microsoft employee associated with the company's notorious December 1999 Hotmail outage has been charged with fraud. — Carolyn Gudmundson was indicted Thursday on charges that she raked i...
EchoStar Now DISH Network — Spins Off SlingBox, Set-Top Biz
Spins Off SlingBox, Set-Top Biz — EchoStar, the satellite broadcasting company, is finally changing its name to DISH Network, according to a filing with the SEC. Why the change? EchoStar wants its n...
Coke Promotes Itself in a New Virtual World
COCA-COLA lovers will have a new place to hang out starting today, and it is an island on the Internet that is shaped like a Coke bottle. — At CC Metro, the name of the island, visitors can set up a...
Macrovision Buying Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 Billion
Content protection firm Macrovision (NSDQ: MVSN) is acquiring Gemstar-TV Guide for $2.8 billion in cash and stock. The companies say there will be opportunities to combine Gemstar's guide services wi...
HTC Shift Gets (Carbon) Dated? [Delays]
HTC Shift Gets (Carbon) Dated? — While the HTC Shift was supposed to be released in November, the world is still waiting anxiously for this quasi-UMPC device to show up in stores. Now the company h...
A note to Nancy Pelosi regarding the PRO IP act
This morning I read about Chairman Conyers' proposed PRO IP act, and as others in the technology industry have, I lowered my head sadly. While I only recently became an American citizen, it seems qui...
Sub Domains To Be Treated As Folders By Google
Matt Cutts of Google said at PubCon that Google will be treating sub domains similar to how they treat folders on a site. I reported this at the Search Engine Roundtable on a post by Tedster at Webma...
Nyko Reveals Wireless Wii Nunchuck
Exclusive news and first pictures revealed. — The Wii is a pretty slick system in many ways, from the small and understated proportions of the console to the minimalist yet powerful Wiimote. In our...
Hackers Launch Major Attack on US Military Labs
Hackers have succeeded in breaking into the computer systems of two of the U.S.' most important science labs, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory. — John E. Dunn, Te...
The Cult of Kindle
I'd not given Amazon's Kindle ebook reader much chance of succeeding given the stratospheric price tag combined with DRM, but then I started reading the customer reviews for it and just realized that ...
Syria blocks access to Facebook
DAMASCUS, Syria - Syrian authorities have blocked Facebook, the popular Internet hangout, over what seems to be fears of Israeli "infiltration" of Syrian social networks on the Net, according to resid...
PHS300 Turns Your 3G Cellphone into a Personal Hot Spot [Gadgets]
Three months ago, CradlePoint brought out a portable router that let you turn your EV-DO mobile into a wi-fi router, and now they've done it again for 3G phones. Connect your 3G mobile or USB modem t...
Novell, Red Hat and Gartner war with Facebook for PR flop award
Save the fear leader. Save the hurled — Radio Reg Is there a PR professional decent enough to join the Open Season crew? Like you, we thought "no." But, as it turns out, Lonn Johnston from Page On...
Research Firm Says Yahoo, MSN, & Google Have Major Page-Caching Flaw
A "significant" vulnerability has been found in the page-caching technologies of the three major search engines - Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft Live Search. Researchers at Aladdin Knowledge Systems disc...
FTC Slaps AdultFriendFinder For Porn Pop-ups
Adult dating site AdultFriendFinder, rumored to have been acquired in November for $1 billion is on the wrong side of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with a settlement that restricts AdultFriendFin...
HTC Shift Gets (Carbon) Dated? [Delays]
HTC Shift Gets (Carbon) Dated? — While the HTC Shift was supposed to be released in November, the world is still waiting anxiously for this quasi-UMPC device to show up in stores. Now the company h...
Crapgadget: nano knockoff (with a camera), Millennium Falcon joystick, Fly Bar pogo
Ah, what to do with all those crappy, cut-rate gadgets flooding our inboxes like a tidal wave of cheap plastic and leaden circuit boards spawned from the hellish manufacturing facilities of nameless, ...
PHS300 Turns Your 3G Cellphone into a Personal Hot Spot [Gadgets]
Three months ago, CradlePoint brought out a portable router that let you turn your EV-DO mobile into a wi-fi router, and now they've done it again for 3G phones. Connect your 3G mobile or USB modem t...