Articles by Rachelle Dragani

The Center for Copyright Information and major Internet service providers are preparing to roll out within weeks the Copyright Alert System, designed to cut down on online piracy AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision volunteered to work with the CCI to develop a system of electronic messages to users suspected of illegally downl...

AOL is rolling out a cloud-based service, Alto, designed to help email users de-clutter their messy in-boxes AOL, which offered one of the first email clients adopted by the mainstream, isn't trying to draw customers away from popular services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Instead, it is offering an application that focuses on organization by design, i...

The Pirate Bay is ditching its servers and heading to the cloud in a move the popular file-sharing website says can help prevent raids by authorities The site will no longer reside at a single physical location, the company said. It called the move to the cloud "getting rid of our earthly form" and "ascending into the next stage." ...

Intel beat Wall Street analysts' earnings expectations but still reported sinking revenue in its quarterly report earlier this week, prompting a pessimistic outlook for the chip giant's fourth quarter The company brought in earnings of US$3.8 billion, or 58 cents per share, on revenue of $13.5 billion during the third quarter, compared with $14.2 b...

Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy the mobile chip division of Texas Instruments in a move that could push the online retailer further into the hardware business The reports fit in with Texas Instruments' announcement last month that it would shift the focus of its chip business away from mobile products and toward larger, more stable and lucrati...

Best Buy reportedly is attempting to keep sales from walking out the door by offering to match its online competitors in price and shipping deals during the upcoming holiday season. The electronics retailer will give employees discretion to match the price a customer finds on Amazon or other major online sites in an effort to close more sales insi...

Online outlets' share of the advertising pie grew 14 percent from a year ago, with mobile channels commanding a larger bite as more users consume content on smartphones and tablets, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Advertisers spent a total of US$17 billion on online ads in the first hal...

Worldwide PC sales slid more than 8 percent in the third quarter of 2012, according to reports from research firms Gartner and IDC. The two reports had different leaders in global sales numbers -- Gartner had Lenovo taking a narrow lead over IDC's top-seller, HP -- but both agreed that PC sales are undergoing one of the most serious declines in th...

The board of directors at Microsoft did not award company CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives their full bonuses this year following lower-than-expected Windows sales and a failure to comply with European regulations A proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Ballmer received 91 percent of his base salary i...

Dish Network is abandoning plans to develop Blockbuster into a streaming video service that would directly compete with Netflix, company founder and chairman Charlie Ergen said in an interview with Bloomberg Dish acquired the video rental chain for US$320 million in April of 2011, months after Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. Later that year, Dish...

Facebook has a new offer for users with US$7 in their pocket -- they can use that cash to pay to promote their own posts on the social network The social network already uses a complex algorithm to determine which posts appear on any given News Feed. With Facebook's new feature, though, users can pay $7 to ensure the posts they consider most newswo...

The Federal Trade Commission has put a stop to a handful of tech-support scams based mainly in India that promised to remove viruses or other malware from users' computers The scams primarily involved telemarketers contacting people in the United States and other English-speaking countries, falsely telling them that their computers were infected wi...

Microsoft is moving deeper into a strategy of content generation as part of its launch of Windows 8. The company is planning to create a news organization that will provide MSN.com with a steady stream of original content As it releases its latest operating system designed to help it compete in the evolving mobile marketplace, the redesign of Micro...

Crown Castle International is acquiring rights to operate 7,200 of T-Mobile's cellular towers in a US$2.4 billion deal that will give the carrier's owner, Deutsche Telekom, cash to expand its 4G LTE network in the U.S The deal will allow Crown Castle to operate T-Mobile's towers for 28 years. Both companies expressed satisfaction with the sale, wit...

More viewers are using their TV screens to watch downloaded or streamed video content instead of the tinier screens on their laptops, tablets or smartphones, according to new research from NPD Group. The report found that over the past year, consumers using their TV as the primary screen when watching downloaded or streaming digital content jumped...

Driverless cars might be making more of an appearance on California roads, thanks to a bill signed this week that sets safety and performance guidelines for advancing autonomous vehicles in the state. Gov. Jerry Brown and the bill's sponsor, Sen. Alex Padilla, joined Google cofounder Sergey Brin at the company's Mountain View headquarters to sign ...

MySpace is rolling out a sleek, media-centric new version of its social network in an effort to restore some of its Web popularity. MySpace was once one of the hottest online social networks, but it declined with the rise of Facebook and Twitter MySpace posted a video this week previewing its new look, along with a message from its owners teasing a...

Facebook is making changes to its search function by adding a user's search history within the social network to the Activity Log, the company said The tweaks, while still relatively minor at this point, could be part of more large-scale efforts to strengthen Facebook's search presence and compete with Internet rival Google.

Microsoft won another patent victory over Google's Motorola in Germany this week, after a European court ruled that several Motorola mobile products infringed on a Microsoft patent dealing with touchscreen data input. Microsoft has the option to pay a bond to enforce an injunction against several Motorola tablets and smartphones. Microsoft has not...

Google is poised to climb past Facebook and be this year's top earner in display ad revenue, according to new research from eMarketer Google is expected to earn US$2.31 billion in display ad revenue this year, a 38.5 percent jump from last year, just ahead of Facebook's expected $2.16 billion in earnings, up 24.4 percent from a year ago....