Articles by Keith Regan

Branching out into yet another area of the Web, search engine Google has quietly unveiled a social-networking site designed to compete with the fast-growing Friendster. Like Friendster, an invitation from an existing member is required to join the site, known as Orkut, which breaks free of its parent in many ways, lacking the distinctive, stripped...

Buoyed by a wave of consumer demand for personal computers, number-two chipmaker AMD's business turned profitable during the last quarter of 2003 for the first time in more than two years AMD said it earned about US$43 million in the fourth quarter, a dramatic turnaround from its year-ago loss of $854 million. Revenue reached $1.16 billion, slightl...

Following the lead of high-profile Linux vendors HP and Novell, Red Hat has announced it will offer legal protection to all existing and future customers of its enterprise installations of the open-source operating system The company said its Open Source Assurance program will include an "intellectual property warranty" that indemnifies customers a...

Signaling that 2004 likely will be a year of solid growth for the technology industry, IBM has raised its hiring forecast, saying it plans to hire 15,000 new employees in the coming year The new outlook represents a 50 percent increase in the amount of hiring Big Blue envisions. Last fall, IBM indicated it could add up to 10,000 new workers in key ...

Microsoft has lost its bid to have a US$512 million patent-infringement award thrown out of court. Instead, a federal judge ruled that a jury acted properly in awarding the payout to Eolas Technologies and the University of California The award stems from an August 2003 ruling that Microsoft infringed on patents held by the university and Eolas. Th...

The technology sector roared out of the gate with strong earnings reportsfrom IBM, Yahoo and Apple. Optimism about strong sales and profits wasmuted only by somewhat cautious outlooks for the coming year The reports brimmed with good news about the end of 2003. IBM beatexpectations with US$25.9 billion in revenue, a 9 percent jump, anda healthy pro...

Several bellwether U.S. technology firms got a major boost Tuesday as Chinese telecommunications firms dished out more than US$2 billion worth of contracts to such firms as Intel, Motorola, Lucent Technologies and Juniper Networks The Telecommunications Industry Association said four Chinese companies awarded the contracts, totaling $2.32 billion, ...

Microsoft has announced it will extend some forms of support for two older versions of its Windows operating system well beyond planned phase-out dates. The company justified the move by saying customers in far-flung countries are not aware enough of its phase-out schedule and thus have not upgraded to current Windows versions in sufficient numbers...

Technology heavyweights IBM and Intel have agreed to provide seed funding for a new legal defense fund aimed at thwarting attempts by The SCO Group to sue Linux end users and creators The Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) said the two companies, along with MontaVista Software, provided US$3 million toward what it hopes will become a $10 million n...

Hewlett-Packard has shaken up the high-tech industry, saying it will work with Apple Computer to build its own version of the Apple iPod and will include Apple's digital jukebox software on its new personal computers The partnership provided the biggest surprise so far during a hectic week of one-upmanship at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Ve...

Reviving one of the pioneering brands of the Internet boom in an effort to stop cost-conscious customers from jumping to discount ISPs, America Online has unveiled a cut-rate Internet access option bearing the Netscape brand. AOL said its Netscape access service will feature unlimited dial-up access for US$9.95 per month and will serve as a stripp...

Underscoring the potential it sees in positioning computers as entertainment devices, Intel has announced it will establish a venture capital fund to back startups that develop home entertainment hardware and software. The chipmaker said its venture wing, Intel Capital, will oversee the Digital Home Fund, which will have a US$200 million bankroll....

Yahoo is poised to end its long-time relationship with search-results provider Google, setting the stage for the two leaders in paid and traditional search to begin competing more fiercely for market dominance The breakup has been expected for a while, as Google has become more of an all-around threat to Yahoo by offering paid search listings and n...

As Microsoft's long-planned strategy to transform the PC from a work device into an entertainment hub takes shape, the company intends to use this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to ratchet up its efforts to capture more of the billions of dollars spent on home entertainment According to published reports, Microsoft plans to unveil a ...

As Apple Computer's annual gathering of loyal fans at Macworld approaches, a growing number of users of one of the company's most popular products, the iBook notebook computer, are threatening protests and mulling class-action lawsuits These vocal Apple critics say the company has not done enough to address, or even acknowledge, serious flaws in th...

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by America Online against a group of Florida computer technicians, whom AOL had accused of maintaining computer networks that were used to batter its e-mail servers with spam targeting its millions of users. The suit, one of many legal and other approaches AOL and others have tried to use to gain an ...

Early reports suggest holiday e-commerce sales grew well over 30 percent from 2002 levels, helping the e-tail industry record its best-ever season, even without the type of must-have gift items that have driven sales in past years. Total holiday season spending online -- measured from November 1st through December 19th -- reached US$15.8 billion, ...

Microsoft has agreed to settle a patent infringement lawsuit filed by software firm SPX, which already has convinced a jury that Microsoft infringed its patents related to online meeting software, which SPX sells under the NetMeeting name. The settlement between Microsoft and SPX came not long after the jury publicly awarded SPX and its subsidiary...

Saying its business would be much larger today if Microsoft had not pushed to create a "new monopoly" in the media player market, RealNetworks said it has filed a civil suit against the software giant seeking US$1 billion in lost revenue and damages RealNetworks claims Microsoft used its dominance of the desktop operating system market to "restrict...

It shouldn't come as a surprise, because it happens every year, but somehow it is still slightly startling. With the calendar officially out of pages and the rest of 2003 now measurable in days, another year has sped past. It's about time now for news organizations to start collecting their biggest stories of the year. Those lists do more than jus...