Palm is trying to revive itself as business users have embraced the BlackBerry and consumers have fallen in love with the iPhone.
Ericsson and STMicroelectronics Form Venture
The Swedish wireless equipment maker and the Swiss chipmaker announced plans to create a 50-50 joint venture that will make chipsets for mobile phones.
Advertising: A Small Empire Built on Cuddly and Fuzzy Branches Out From the Web
Given all the nastiness on the Internet — blog trolls, flame wars, vicious gossip, pornography, snark and spam — what better antidote is there than looking at pictures of cute animals?
EBay Is Planning to Emphasize Fixed-Price Sales Format Over Its Auction Model
The move is just one of the changes eBay has made in the last few months aimed at reducing its dependence on its auction business, which is growing more slowly than fixed-price sales.
Hewlett’s Printing Business Struggles
Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest technology company, continues to roll along financially — except in one traditional core business — its printing business.
Bits: Lighting the Big Apple with L.E.D.'s
New York City has contracted with the Office for Visual Interaction, a lighting design group, to install and test L.E.D. street lighting.
Bits: I.B.M. Ups Its Bet on Business Recovery Services
I.B.M. is spending $300 million to build 13 data centers around the world, dedicated to helping corporate customers keep their businesses up and running despite calamity.
Bits: Four Reasons Our Printers Are Getting Dusty
Consumer printer sales are flat. Are home printers just not as necessary any more?
Verizon’s FiOS: A Smart Bet or a Big Mistake?
As Verizon begins to roll out FiOS in its hometown, New York, the company argues that the service is proving to be more successful than it promised when it started the project.
Bits: Gartner Tech Forecast: Cloudy and Getting Cloudier
In its latest report on information technology spending, Gartner projects a massive switch by companies to cloud computing.
Student Files Are Exposed on Web Site
The Princeton Review, the test-preparatory firm, accidentally published the personal data and standardized test scores of tens of thousands of Florida students on its Web site, where they were available for seven weeks.
Dot Earth: Google to Invest in Geothermal
Google.org, the public-spirited division of Google.com, is using the backdrop of the National Clean Energy Summit to announce a new round of clean energy financing.
Game Maker Retracts Bid for a Rival
Electronic Arts said that it has withdrawn its $2 billion tender offer to purchase its smaller rival, ending a six-month-long hostile takeover bid.
Bits: Reading a Tea Leaf in the Take-Two Saga
Electronic Arts has hired Joele Frank, a specialist in public relations for mergers and acquisitions. But it’s unclear what her hiring means for the prospects of a deal between EA and Take-Two Interactive.
Bits: Has the iPhone 3G Been Fixed?
Several hours ago, Apple shipped its second software update for the new iPhone 3G. Software version 2.02 “fixes bugs,” according to the documentation accompanying the software patch.
Old Sewer Mapping System Undergoes a Welcome Update
City workers and contractors have digitized the antiquated maps of the city’s water mains and sewers.
Bits: A 'Dream' Come True: U.S. Approves the First Google Phone
HTC, a Taiwanese cellphone maker, received U.S. regulatory approval for the first phone that uses Google’s Android software.
New Web Site Aims to Be Facebook for Sports Fans
David Katz believes that his Web site, sportsfanlive.com, will compete well against established sports sites he views as stodgy and too congested for fans to wade through.
Amid Conference Halls and Keynote Speakers, a Rivalry Forms
TechCrunch50, a new entrant in the technology conference market, has sparked a dispute over the ethics of the convention circuit and the fees charged to participants.
Topic Pages to Be Hub of New BusinessWeek Site
BusinessWeek magazine is about to introduce a site that hosts hundreds of topic pages, on subjects as broad as the housing market and as narrow as the Boeing 787.
In Kenya, Mobile Growth Also Benefits Ad Agencies
Telecommunications companies are expected to spend about 4.7 billion Kenyan shillings (or $72 million) on advertising this year, according to a Nairobi-based newspaper.
New Service Applies Social Networking to App Testing
Massachusetts startup uTest is launching an on-demand service that weds application testing to social networking through a community of more than 8,000 professional testers in roughly 130 countries.
Bits: Google Starts an Advocacy Campaign for More Unlicensed Spectrum
Google is being upfront about its self-interest in building public pressure for a plan to allow soon-to-be-vacant broadcast spectrum to be used for new high-speed wireless Internet access.
Bits: NBC's Olympic Web Blackout: The View From CBS and Major League Baseball
CBS and Major League Baseball found that Webcasting a sporting event doesn’t reduce the television ratings of the same event because people watch important events on the biggest screen possible.
Bits: HDTV Becomes De Rigueur
NBC is filming the Olympics entirely in HDTV format, a sign of how much progress the technology has made — in price and popularity — in just four years.
Bits: Want Google Search Results Without Google Sites?
Timo Paloheimo, a blogger in Finland, has come up with a clever idea: Google Minus Google.
Link by Link: Like Politics? Broadcast Your View for Only $6
Saysme.tv didn’t invent the loudmouth, but, as the company’s logo indicates, it sure hopes to sell him a megaphone.
Media Talk: Fox News Joins a Social Network, but Not Its Parent’s Site
Fox News Channel wants more friends. But instead of using the News Corporation’s own social network, it’s choosing to network on the site’s chief rival, Facebook.
Drilling Down: Web Videos Where Ads Are Acceptable
People are far more tolerant of ads when they accompany professionally created content than when they come with homemade video, according to a new survey.
Media Talk: Serving 3 Brands: Burger King, Google and Seth MacFarlane
Seth MacFarlane, creator of the “Family Guy,” is teaming up with Google and Burger King to animate both an online series and ads to go with it.
Media Talk: ‘Gossip Girl’ DVD Extra Tries to Steer Buyers to the Books
The DVD set “Gossip Girl: The Complete First Season” includes a free electronic version of the original novel on which the show is based. But — OMG! — it’s an audio book.
Microsoft Lifts Licensing Restriction on Virtual Mobility
Microsoft confirmed that it will eliminate a licensing restriction that prevented customers from moving virtualized applications to a different server more than once every 90 days.