Motorola announced a series of new phones Tuesday, and while all of them have interesting form factors and compelling features, only one -- the Razr 2 -- has the potential to compete with Apple's upcoming iPhone. The reasons? There are three: form, function and sex appeal. "People buy this class of ...

In response to a Supreme Court ruling that found carbon dioxide qualifies as an air pollutant under the Clean Air Act, President Bush has called for changes designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2008. "Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must take action under the Clean Air Act...

Microsoft's push to get the free and open source software world to license its technology has ignited a firestorm of criticism and speculation. The software behemoth's actions have perhaps also generated a strong dose of fear, uncertainty and doubt -- aka FUD -- in the minds of open source developer...

Little by little, Microsoft is opening the door to the room that holds its free and open source software strategy. The latest sliver of light reveals the claim that FOSS violates 235 of Microsoft's patents. Microsoft is looking to take on the FOSS world by requiring royalties from distributors and u...

Joost, an Internet television service that promises high-quality streaming of licensed TV content, got a big hand Thursday from industry heavyweights CBS and Viacom. The two companies, along with three other venture capital firms, have invested a collective $45 million, Joost reported. Joost, which ...

Leading scientific institutions from around the world have collaborated on one the largest Web projects to date: a global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of plants and animals on Earth in a free online resource called "Encyclopedia of Life." Similar to Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia of...

Sun Microsystems is previewing a new family of Java-based solutions for creating and deploying rich Internet applications for use on mobile handsets, set-top boxes, PC desktops and anywhere else the Java Runtime Environment is deployed. Sun previewed the solutions, organized under the name "JavaFX,"...

There are two main camps of software developers that dominate the world today: those that work primarily in a Microsoft .Net framework and those that work primarily in a J2EE framework. However, even this one-two punch of heavy-hitting frameworks comes with a caveat: "One of the things that has beco...

Dell has jumped on board the Microsoft-Novell collaboration to deliver Suse Linux to enterprise customers. The Microsoft-Novell agreement, announced last November, is designed to let the two companies jointly build, market and support solutions that improve interoperability between Microsoft Windows...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary Friday of its latest report on global warming. The report, which was gleaned from the help of 2,000 scientists, calls for the world to cut emissions of CO2 and shift energy sources to renewable fuels. The report also calls for the stab...

On the surface, the recent brouhaha with Digg and the HD DVD encryption key posted on the site seems to be about cracking the code to let people copy movies. While most people may think digital rights management is a pain in the butt and a waste of time in the effort to fight illegal copying for com...

Software programmers, developers, analysts, engineers and architects are facing an ever-widening range of job roles and expectations. Organizations worldwide are asking more of these professionals, in ways rarely seen only a decade ago. "One of the things I've seen over the last three years is a dec...

VMware has filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for its planned initial public offering. The firm will offer 10 percent of its Class A common stock in the IPO, which will give shareholders of EMC, VMware's parent company, a boost and help VMware attract and retain the sof...

IBM is working to turn its System z mainframe computer into an online 3-D gaming platform, and it's doing it by putting advanced technology used in video games into a mainframe. The idea is to merge the massive transaction and account-based scalability of the mainframe with the graphics power of the...

A European team of astronomers has discovered what may be the most Earth-like planet outside of our solar system, potentially capable of having liquid water and extraterrestrial life. The planet, Gliese 581 c, named after the red dwarf star Gliese 581 that it orbits every 13 days, is about 20.5 ligh...

A pair of NASA spacecraft have recorded the first 3-D images of the sun, giving scientists and space weather experts a much-improved ability to monitor and predict solar storms that can disrupt communications satellites, interfere with widely-used GPS systems, and knock out electrical power grids. T...

The maker of the popular BlackBerry mobile e-mail device, Research In Motion (RIM), plans to let Windows Mobile-based devices run virtual BlackBerry applications. RIM will offer the new software solution later this year for select devices that run on Windows Mobile 6. Once installed, the software wi...

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission Friday that details what they call key privacy problems with Google's and DoubleClick's pending merger. The online privacy ...

Internet search engine leader Google reported massive quarterly financial gains Thursday, posting a net income of $1 billion in the first quarter of 2007, up from $592 million in the first quarter of 2006, and blowing past Wall Street's expectations. Google's 69 percent growth far surpassed Yahoo's ...

Internet auction house eBay on Wednesday beat Wall Street estimates by delivering $377.2 million in earnings for the first quarter of this year, a massive 52 percent leap. Despite the strong performance, eBay shares struggled Thursday, falling around 85 cents, or 2.5 percent. The online auction hous...