Business

Scams are nothing new for the Internet and its 'netizens. Whether it be the infuriating advertising brought on by Spyware, bundled adware commonly found in peer-to-peer downloading, or good old fashioned credit card number theft, the worldwide web ... has been a beacon of crime and mischief for some time. However, one interesting little scam, "click fraud", is now being targeted by some of the industry's biggest names, and the movement has both the American court and government system involved. "Click fraud" is defined as the exploitation of pay-by-click advertisements for the purpose of profit. ... (view more)

Residents of Mountain View, California -- where Google is based -- now have a new reason to appreciate their hometown company. The organization announced that it will be giving away free wireless (WiFi) Internet access to the entire city. Mountain ... View has a population of about 72,000, but with major tech firms like Google and VeriSign based there, that number can reach up to 100,000 during the day. However, Google is confident that its new service can weather the masses. "We aren't concerned about being able to handle the load," assured Google executive Chris Sacca. "We think we have built a ... (view more)

It seems major industry acquisitions are becoming pretty common this summer. Popular MP3 player producer SanDisk recently announced that it has purchased Israeli-based Msystems for a reported $1.55 billion, a move that could expand SanDisk's ... interest in storage beyond the lower-end digital market. Although it hardly has the name power of Apple, SanDisk is the dominant maker of removable flash storage cartridges. The California-based company is perhaps the strongest producer in the (almost) iPod-free 1GB player and under range. Msystems -- which was once awkwardly named M-Systems Flash Disk ... (view more)

In a recent address of tech industry executives in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer encouraged his listeners to get behind a plan that would see PCs become drastically more affordable for the world's less affluent users. The magic price ... tag? Just $100 -- a number that for most North Americans has proved hardly enough cold hard cash to purchase basic software (usually from Microsoft itself), let alone an entire system. For Ballmer, lowering PC costs to just $100 could in turn curtail rising piracy rates, which Microsoft has recently becoming increasingly determined to root out. ... (view more)

As Microsoft hurries to release the next version of Windows before its (rather tentative) January 2007 release date, a recent announcement by the company has an "upgrade breakdown" for each of its six versions of Vista. The most important part of ... this development is the XP upgrade, which allows certain editions of XP to be supplemented instead of completely replaced by Vista's technology. In short: the five versions of Windows XP, including Windows XP Professional, XP Home, XP Media Center, XP Tablet PC, XP Professional x64, and additionally, Windows 2000, all require *different* installation ... (view more)

On Monday, MySpace.com's parent company, Fox Interactive Media (owned by News Corp) announced a newly launched deal with Google that will give the search engine exclusive rights to online search results and sponsored ads on the MySpace web ... community. The deal also gives Google the same access to Fox Interactive Media's other online enterprises such as RottenTomatoes.com and Scout.com. (Source: news.com ) Agreement Stipulations The agreement stipulates that in exchange for being Fox Interactive's exclusive search engine and ad provider, Google will pay $900 million U.S. from its AdSense ... (view more)

With the North American automotive industry in a tailspin at the moment, automakers are turning to the latest and most popular technology to regain appeal. And, for anyone not stuck in a cave or buried by a landslide for the last five years, the ... clearest way to catch a techie's eye is to flash an Apple iPod -- the industry's current undisputed "Golden Toy". That's exactly what Ford, General Motors, and even Mazda are doing, as they work with engineers to integrate Apple's wares into future audio systems. Isn't this technology already out there? At this time, most iPod owners are forced to ... (view more)

Just weeks after the European Union (EU) levied them with a hefty 280.5 million Euro (or $357 million) antitrust fine, Microsoft appears to be getting its act together. As discussed previously , the fine was issued because Microsoft refused to share ... information of its operating systems with foreign competitors. This was just one example of a rather infamous month or two for the Redmond-based company, which saw itself attacked in the media for a number of controversial decisions -- including its security program Windows Genuine Advantage . This was not the first time Microsoft has been found ... (view more)

Oh, the irony. In the middle of an industry firestorm launched by Microsoft against software pirates, the tech world's most hardcore investigators have discovered that the Redmond-based company has been using cracked .wav files in its Windows Media ... Player. In its most recent operating system -- XP -- Microsoft is allegedly running hacked music files for its background sound. Microsoft has attracted intense scrutiny in recent weeks over the release of the Windows Genuine Advantage ( WGA ). WGA is Microsoft's pioneer program in the war against software piracy, as it rather forcefully "offers" ... (view more)

The good news for AMD keeps coming: just days after the announcement that it will acquire major graphics card producer ATI , it has also been reported that the first batch of AMD-powered Dell systems are not far off. The development takes a ... significant chunk out of AMD's processing chip competitor Intel, which has in the past skipped along merrily, hand-in-hand with Dell. Much like the reasons behind AMD's surprising acquisition of ATI, Dell is changing its strategy -- and allegiances -- in order to revive itself. In recent months, competition from HP, Gateway, and others have slowed Dell ... (view more)