Articles by Keith Regan

Providing a shot in the arm to the tech sector amid mounting economic worries, Petroleum giant Royal Dutch Shell said Monday it has doled out some US$4 billion worth of contracts to outsource the management of its core information technology infrastructure Shell signed the master service agreements, or MSAs, as part of a push to improve its busines...

Seeking to tap deeper into a key demographic for advertisers, Yahoo on Monday launched Shine, a Web site meant to become an Internet starting point for women between the ages of 25 and 54 Shine will offer content licensed from publishers such as Conde Nast and Hearst in nine categories, including fashion, beauty, relationships, healthy living and p...

Radio giant Clear Channel Communications warned Thursday that it cannot estimate when its planned sale to a private equity consortium may be closed The buyers, which include Bain Capital and other private equity firms, stand ready to close on the US$19.5 billion deal at the end of the month as planned, Clear Channel said....

Linux software maker Red Hat saw its stock move briskly higher Friday as investors digested a strong earnings performance and an optimistic outlook The open source software developer posted record software license sales and issued guidance that topped Wall Street estimates for 2009....

In a bid to boost confidence in the reliability of its cloud computing initiative, Amazon Web Services on Thursday launched functionality that allows users to have static IP, or Internet protocol, addresses Previously, the service did not offer static IP addresses, which made it more difficult for Web developers to create computing instances and ap...

After months of battling over the extent to which Comcast was blocking user access to the peer-to-peer file-sharing serviceBitTorrent, the two companies said Thursday they would work together to craft solutions to ensure full access Comcast plans to work directly with BitTorrent and others in the Web services and Internet service provider community...

Yahoo shares moved higher by more than 3 percent Tuesday after an analyst upgraded the stock, suggesting that Microsoft was likely to sweeten its offer for the Web portal Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney upgraded Yahoo shares to a buy on Monday, arguing that the strategic value of Yahoo made a more lucrative offer worth the software giant's money....

Google has quietly unveiled a search-within-a-site feature on its main Web search engine, giving users the ability to refine searches before going to a merchant or publisher's page The company launched search-within-a-site on March 5 after several days of testing, according to a posting to the official Google blog. The tool grew out of observations...

Opening a new front in his yearlong push to prompt major changes at the top U.S. mobile phone maker, activist investor Carl Icahn is suing Motorola, asking a court to force the company to give him access to strategic plans and other documents Icahn, who fell short in his effort to strong-arm his way onto the Motorola board of directors last year, a...

The Internet has become the ultimate democracy in many ways, leveling the publishing playing field for writers with blogging software, allowing musical acts to distribute music without a record label and giving video producers outlets such as YouTube. With e-commerce outlets such as eBay, anyone can sell virtually anything Zlio.com, a France-based ...

The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) filed eight more lawsuits against eBay sellers the group says are hawking pirated versions of software from Adobe, bringing to 17 the number of suits it filed so far this year The SIIA said it filed suits against sellers based in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylv...

Verizon Wireless detailed its plans to open part of its network to third-party devices Wednesday, saying the carrier could begin certifying devices within weeks and that the open portion of its network could be in operation by the second half of this year At its first-ever Open Development Device Conference, Verizon told about 300 representatives o...

About eight months after former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was convicted of selling stock based on inside information he was also shielding from the public, a federal appeals panel overturned the conviction Monday, clearing the way for Nacchio to be tried again before a new judge A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit r...

In a bid to cut out the middleman and drive its own Web traffic, eBay said Monday it would launch a partner network that will replace affiliate relationships the auction site has long relied on to get users to its site The eBay Partner Network will launch April 1 and give publishers and other partners "expanded access to revenue opportunities" acro...

Software maker BMC will buy data center automation firm BladeLogic in a move that could help it fend off incursions into its core market from rivals such as EMC and IBM BMC will use BladeLogic's products to round its own business service management software portfolio. When combined, the platform will include tools to help businesses manage informat...

Microsoft announced it will buy advertising management solutions provider Rapt, moving to help smaller online publishers cash in on the growth of online ads just a day after Google launched a service to do the same thing Rapt provides what it calls "advertising yield management solutions" -- products to help publishers maximize the value of the ad ...

Executives from Microsoft and Yahoo reportedly met face-to-face earlier this week but apparently did not make significant progress on a deal for the software giant to purchase the struggling Web portal Citing unnamed sources close to the deal, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the meeting took place Monday and involved executives and rep...

In an early sign of the expanded presence Google intends to have in the online ad world now that it has closed on DoubleClick, the search giant Thursday launched a Web advertising management tool aimed at smaller publishers The company formally announced Google Ad Manager after several months in testing; it is meant to complement an existing produc...

Time Warner's AOL will buy the social network Bebo for US$850 million in cash, acquiring a worldwide user base of 40 million as well as a developer-friendly platform Bebo was known to be shopping for a buyer, but the move came as something of a surprise because the social networking site already has a relationship with Yahoo, which won a contract l...

TiVo and Google have struck a deal that will enable the digital video recorder maker's users to watch Web-based YouTube videos on their television sets The service will be available later this year to consumers who own its Series 3 devices connected to the Internet through a broadband link, TiVo said....