Articles by Keith Regan

In a significant boost for its Internet unit, Microsoft has reached a long-term deal to work with media giant Viacom on content and advertising distribution, an agreement worth an estimated US$500 million The partnership calls for Microsoft's Atlas to become the exclusive advertising platform for all of Viacom's U.S. Web sites -- which include yout...

In a bid to settle a dispute arising from an aggressive effort to ban gambling by its residents, the United States has agreed to trade concessions meant to make it easier for some European companies to compete against domestic rivals The U.S. has approved concessions dealing with easing trade restrictions on mail services and warehousing as well as...

Google is launching a new effort to capture human knowledge on theWeb, test-driving Google Knol, a Web-publishing approach that is drawing comparisons to Wikipedia A "knol," according to Google, is a unit of information or knowledge, and the new publishing platform is being tested by individuals who have been invited to take part in a beta version,...

After a one-week delay, Novell released its fourth quarter earnings Thursday, saying that higher-than-expected costs associated with an ongoing restructuring would weigh on results even as sales of its Linux products surged higher The restructuring effort could now cost as much as US$70 million, Novell said, which is significantly higher than the $...

United Online is pulling the plug on a planned initial public offering (IPO) for its Classmates Media unit, citing unfavorable market conditions The move is a reminder that the market for technology IPOs and particularly those in the Internet space remains somewhat limited, even though Classmates -- which enables users to connect with friends and a...

Three months after a messy breakup with Apple's iTunes Store,NBC Universal said Tuesday it will make its catalog of TV showsavailable through a download service made by rival portable device maker SanDisk The shows the studio will offer through Fanfare, SanDisk's Web-based download service, include those from its main network along with USA Networ...

In a nod to its recent success and an expression of confidence in its future, AT&T will boost its dividend by the largest amount ever and buy back as many as 400 million shares of its own stock The AT&T board of directors voted to increase the company's quarterly dividend rate from 35 US cents per share to 40 cents per share. On an annual basis, th...

In a nod to its recent success and an expression of confidence in its future, AT&T will boost its dividend by the largest amount ever and buy back as many as 400 million shares of its own stock The AT&T board of directors voted to increase the company's quarterly dividend rate from 35 US cents per share to 40 cents per share. On an annual basis, th...

In a nod to its recent success and an expression of confidence in its future, AT&T will boost its dividend by the largest amount ever and buy back as many as 400 million shares of its own stock The AT&T board of directors voted to increase the company's quarterly dividend rate from 35 US cents per share to 40 cents per share. On an annual basis, th...

Though the date didn't garner the advance hype of Cyber Monday, the first Thursday in December actually set the pace for the holiday shopping season so far, with consumers spending a record US$800 million in virtual stores, according to a report released Monday by comScore Thursday, Dec. 6, marked the busiest online shopping day in the history of e...

Bidding to stake an early claim on the fast-growing mobile advertising space, Microsoft said Monday it was making display advertising space available on its MSN Mobile portal for the first time and had already signed up advertisers for the service Jaguar Cars North America and Paramount Pictures will be the first brand advertisers to use the displa...

At first glance, tech stocks may appear to have missed out on the great stock market rally of 2007. When the Dow Jones Industrial Average set a new all-time high on Oct. 2, the Nasdaq would have had to gain more than 100 percent to match its best level ever Still, for a lot of reasons, 2007 was a strong year for technology stocks, with investor ent...

Dell added another big gun to its fast-growing retail arsenal Thursday, saying it would begin selling some of its personal computers at hundreds of Best Buy stores across the U.S The partnership may come too late to give Dell an immediate boost during the holiday season, however, with the Round Rock, Texas, company saying that its machines would be...

The Department of Justice is siding with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), saying the US$222,000 in penalties levied against a file-sharer after a rare jury trial is not unduly excessive Jammie Thomas, who became a celebrity for refusing to settle with the RIAA after being sued for posting music on Kazaa, was found to have knowi...

Two years after a merger that helped herald the coming blogging revolution, Six Apart has agreed to sell its LiveJournal counterpart to a Russian media company LiveJournal had already been operating a Russian-language version through a partnership with the buyer, a firm called "SUP." Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Six Apart said the proc...

French media giant Vivendi will buy a sizable stake in video game publisher Activision and merge the company with its own successful gaming unit, creating a game-development powerhouse The deal will produce a new company, known as "Activision Blizzard," that will have US$3.8 billion in combined revenues this year and may put pressure on other publi...

The price tag on the largest database breach on record moved higherFriday with TJX agreeing to pay nearly US$41 million to settlewith credit card companies and banks that were forced to issue new cards to customers of the retailer to prevent or recover fraudulent charges TJX will pay $40.9 million through Visa and Visa USA to cover the costs associ...

Motorola CEO Ed Zander will step down from his post at the end of the year, a victim of a long and deep post-Razr market share slump at the top U.S.-based maker of mobile handsets The Schaumburg, Ill., company -- which last week fell from second to third in terms of worldwide market share behind Nokia and Samsung -- said Zander would remain in his ...

Amazon.com on Thursday launched a site that invites visitors to ask questions and receive answers from fellow users, who will be lured with Amazon currency to share their expertise and opinions Amazon is aiming to use Askville.com to leverage its own expertise insharing consumer opinions -- user reviews are one of the most popular and highly regard...

Looking to boost confidence among both investors and customers, online brokerage E*Trade Financial said Wednesday it had received a US$2.55 billion investment from a private equity firm After disclosing it had seen significant erosion of some assets due to the subprime mortgage meltdown and after an analyst raised the possibility of the company see...