Articles by Keith Regan

In a stark reminder of the perils some face when using the Internet to express themselves, an Egyptian blogger has been sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of insulting Islam and the country's president in his writings An Egyptian court on Thursday found that 22-year old Abdel Kareem Nabil had used his Web log postings to insult...

Bill Gates' US$135 million home outside Seattle is said to be networked to the nines, with Gates able to use his PC to control most of the houses' functions from afar Gates' company, Microsoft, meanwhile, is just one of many promising to make homes "smarter" and more connected in the future....

Google's efforts to convince video content owners to license their TV shows and movies to its YouTube video-sharing site may have hit another snag, with reports suggesting that a tentative deal with CBS may be unraveling A sweeping agreement that would have given YouTube access to video clips -- such as those from the "Late Show with David Letterma...

Hewlett-Packard posted first-quarter results Tuesday that featured a 26 percent jump in earnings amid strong sales of PCs, enterprise computer gear and printers Earnings were US$1.5 billion for the quarter compared to $1.2 billion in the year-ago period, with sales up 11 percent year-over-year to $25.1 billion....

Sony plans to offer a video download service for its PlayStation 3 (PS3) gaming console, Phil Harrison, president of Sony's worldwide studios division, said in a recently published interview The media company's long-range vision for the PS3 includes the download, storage and playback of high-definition movies and TV programs....

Sirius and XM -- the two providers of satellite radio service in the United States -- on Monday announced a plan to combine operations in a US$4.6 billion merger, but by Tuesday the deal looked to face significant regulatory hurdles The two companies agreed to a "merger of equals," which would create a single satellite radio service with more than ...

Data centers in the United States are consuming 5 million kilowatts of energy per year, an amount equal to the power consumption of the entire state of Mississippi, according to a report released Thursday The findings are a warning to decision makers to increase the efficiency of servers and microprocessors, maintains chipmakerAdvanced Micro Device...

Dell has hired the CEO of electronics manufacturerSolectron to head up a new division overseeing worldwide operations, the company announced Wednesday, as it bolsters efforts to regain its supply chain efficiency and low-cost edge Michael Cannon will become the president of global operations later this month, assuming responsibility for all of the ...

In a move that underscores the shift in classified advertising revenue from print to the Internet,The New York Times Co. on Wednesday announced a strategic alliance with Monster Worldwide to create cobranded job sites The deal calls for the two companies to create Web sites for 19 newspapers owned by The New York Times Co., including The New York T...

Time Warner was finally able to complete the spin-off of its cable division Tuesday, a move that investors have long banked on as a way for the media giant to focus on growing its TV, print, movie and online businesses Time Warner Cable became a standalone public company after a judge put a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan for Adelphia Com...

Google suffered a legal setback Tuesday as a Belgian court ruled that the search giant violated copyright law by publishing portions of a newspaper's stories on Google News without prior authorization In a closely watched case that has moved in stops and starts since last summer, a higher court upheld an earlier ruling requiring Google to remove sn...

Xerox's legendary Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) said Friday it would license Internet search technology to Powerset, a relatively young startup that aims to build a better search engine than Google PARC holds an almost sacred place in technology lore, with claims to some of the most important inventions of the digital era, including Ethernet, la...

Alcatel-Lucent, the telecom gear-making giant created by their recent merger, said Friday it would slash its payroll by 3,500 more workers than previously planned after posting a sizable loss for the fourth quarter The Paris-based company reported earnings for the first time since the US$11.4 billion merger was completed, reporting that it lost $8...

Six months after pulling the plug on efforts to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), ESPN Mobile has agreed to make its video, game scores and other content available on the Verizon Wireless network The two companies said Mobile ESPN content would be made available to V Cast phones through an exclusive licensing pact. Specific financial...

Eastman Kodak announced Thursday it would cut 3,000 more workers from its payroll, bringing the total number of layoffs close to 30,000 as the once dominant photography company tries to reinvent itself in the digital age At a meeting with investors, Kodak laid out plans to generate "profitable digital growth" in the coming year and streamline opera...

Networking gear giant Cisco Systems on Tuesday posted strong quarterly earnings and issued an upbeat forecast, which drove the company's shares higher and may raise expectations for the technology sector as a whole during 2007 Cisco said it earned US$1.92 billion, or 31 cents per share, in the quarter ending in December, a 40 percent jump from $1.3

As momentum builds behind two-factor authentication for increased security of sensitive and private data, two UK-based researchers say they have found a way that hackers can thwart the smart card and PIN (personal identification number) approach now being rolled out in England Chip and PIN is a UK government-backed security measure that requires cu...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday ordered DRAM chipmaker Rambus to license its technology to third parties and capped the amount the company can charge others for using the technology -- penalties stemming from a long-running antitrust probe The FTC's remedy is designed to correct "effects of the unlawful monopoly Rambus established in t...

In the coming weeks, the US$100 laptop developed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) foundation will go into wide-scale production. From there, the laptops will be sent by the thousands to emerging economies in Africa, South Asia and South America Meanwhile, in the United States, PC makers, private foundations, government agencies and others strive ...

Boosted by consumer demand for electronics, worldwide semiconductor sales rose to record levels in 2006, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said in a report released Monday Global sales of semiconductors reached US$247.7 billion last year, an increase of 8.9 percent over 2005, the SIA said. The year was capped by $21.7 billion in sales in...