Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski lays out a plan for 21st century digital access, citizenship, literacy, and safety.

VoxOx's claim on a robust feature set makes it a powerful, if slightly unstable, multi-protocol chat and VoIP client--now with free universal translation for all IMs and tweets.

As the Web generation descends on the South by Southwest Interactive show in Austin, several location-based start-ups try to put themselves on the map.

The case of a "runaway" Prius in San Diego demonstrates how claims about electronic flaws requires investigators to look carefully at the human element too.

A court decides to fine a man for offensive messages sent to his former lover on Facebook. What kind of precedent might this set?

Software giant's patch process speeds up after researcher releases code on Net that can be used to target the vulnerability and take over PCs.

Was it a glitch or a mischievous prankster who pulled the fire alarm during the South by Southwest Interactive Festival? Or maybe a sign that it's happy hour?

It's been four years since laptop computers passed desktops in U.S. unit sales. But laptop vendors can't rest, with the Netbook phenomenon sweeping the world and the iPad coming.

The annual interactive festival has only been under way for hours, but already the scene is full of energy--and lots of people.

Tim Cook will get $5 million plus some extra stock options as a reward for filling in for Steve Jobs last year.

In the search for cloud-based music storage, Microsoft has all the pieces to offer an unparalleled experience on Windows Phone 7.

Game developer and guru tells developers that if they want to create the next best seller, they need to get inside the player's head.

Marketers are everywhere at the annual digital-culture fest. It sort of makes your face start to melt a little bit.

Indexed DB isn't a sure thing, but it's got most of the right allies in the browser world to become an enabler of the cloud-computing vision.

A new FCC tool tests whether consumers are actually getting the broadband speeds they're paying for.

Last year was a tough one for most businesses, but for cybercriminals it was one of the best yet.

Billions of dollars are at stake in the FCC's net neutrality rule making, which could mandate rules for broadband Internet access over wireless and wireline networks.

The Troyak ISP, which has been linked to the Zeus botnet, was briefly taken down this week. The takedown occurred on the heels of the RSA Conference last week, where there was much talk about the "cat-and-mouse" game of trying to squelch cybercrime. Otherwise, things got a little testy at the ICANN meeting in Nairobi, and iPad pre-orders got rolling. Oh, and the Internet was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Seriously.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission plans to release a national broadband plan next week that will lay out an ambitious set of goals for broadband deployment and adoption.

Twitter on has turned on its new geolocation feature that allows you to tell the Twitterverse where you are when you tweet.

Back in early 2005, I covered URLwell, a clever menu-bar program that made it easy to store URLs you want to check out at a later time. Unfortunately, URLwell was last updated less than a month after I wrote that review, but I recently discovered a candidate for replacement: Quiet Read, which adds a few useful features of its own.

Mozilla has begun offering Firefox 3.6 to users running older versions of the open-source browser.

The unveiling of six-core desktop processors by AMD and Intel mark a step in the evolution of chip technology, not a revolutionary move, mostly due to the lack of software that can take advantage of the advances.

Apple started taking orders for the iPad tablet Friday, with early adopters rushing to order one of the most hotly anticipated products in recent memory.

One of the things I love about Stardock's icon-organizing Fences program is the way it can quickly hide all your desktop icons. Just double-click any empty area and poof: They're gone. A second double-click brings them back again.

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Microsoft will unveil Silverlight Analytics Framework at the Web designers & developers conference kicking off March 15 in Las Vegas, while Preemptive will launch Runtime Intelligence Analytics Provider for Silverlight.

But sales of all gaming hardware, including the Sony PS2, PlayStation Portable, and Nintendo DS, are down from a year ago.

The agreement puts Microsoft's Bing search on Motorola's Android smartphones.

Promising consequences if Google flouts China's censorship laws, Chinese authorities also chide the U.S. for its human rights record.

Software and service bundles are designed to make implementation time and cost predictable.

Workers' comp carrier taps Riddle to oversee strategic direction of claims operations and medical cost management.

DecisionMaker Rating Enterprise customers will be able to minimize overhead, create multiple cloned environments and quickly perform "what if" analysis with version 7.1, the vendor says.

Using RingCube's virtual desktop, which copies apps, data and permissions to a USB drive.

Lehman Brothers used accounting gimmicks and had been insolvent for weeks before it filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, but there was not extensive wrongdoing, a court-appointed examiner has found.

The appetite and sense of urgency for world financial reform have waned as markets have rebounded and the world economy has shown signs of recovering, the head of exchange operator NYSE Euronext said.

Warren Buffett had at least three opportunities in 2008 to help Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, but failure to enlist his aid contributed to Lehman's bankruptcy and the global financial crisis, a court-appointed examiner said.

The enhancements fall within the company's APEX project, an agent-focused series of technical initiatives to be completed in 2001 that will allow the company to fulfill new customer needs and provide what the carrier describes as outstanding service to its policies with advanced straight-through processing to its independent agents.

Spiking sales of PCs, external drives, and optical drives signal increasing revenue for the storage sector.

$7 million, five-year deal involves support services for closed books.

Column about why IBM CEO Sam Palmisano deserves his $24.3 million pay package, and why the labor-movement groups screeching about it are all wrong.

AP - Apple Inc. is giving its chief operating officer a $5 million bonus for "outstanding performance" running the company while CEO Steve Jobs was on medical leave.

AP - A federal court Friday upheld regulations that require cable TV companies to make sports programming and other channels they own available on equal terms to rival TV providers such as satellite companies.

AP - Porn Web sites can't park themselves at a ".xxx" address quite yet.

AP - China's top Internet regulator insisted Friday that Google must obey its laws or "pay the consequences," giving no sign of a possible compromise in their dispute over censorship and hacking.

AP - DVD-by-mail service Netflix Inc. has canceled a sequel to a $1 million movie-recommendation contest, avoiding a potential courtroom drama over the privacy rights of its subscribers.

AP - Lenovo Group expects wireless Internet products to account for up to 80 percent of its sales within five years as it pursues expansion in faster-growing emerging markets, CEO Yang Yuanqing said Friday.

AFP - The adult entertainment industry is going to have to wait a while longer to see whether it gets its .XXX domain name.

NewsFactor - Microsoft's Xbox 360 video-game console moved to the top of the U.S. market in February. The software giant's console had been number two behind the Nintendo Wii for nearly three years.

NewsFactor - Eager to be the first on your block with an iPad? Apple started taking orders for the tablets on Friday. Wi-Fi models running from $499 to $699 will be available on April 3; 3G models, costing $629 to $829, won't be available until late April.

AP - THE DISPUTE: Cable TV providers challenged a five-year extension of federal regulations requiring them to make channels they own available to rivals such as satellite TV.

PC World - Some of you World of Warcraft addicts may be familiar with Blizzard's Armory app for iPhone that lets you keep track of your character and guild, and generally blurs the line between your online and offline world. Running with that same concept is AFK Interactive, which has created a mobile development platform that will bring similar functionality to all kinds of mobile phones, including "dumb" ones.

Macworld.com - Toon Boom Animate 2 announced

AP - Shares of QAD Inc. sank Friday after the business software provider reported a drop in fourth-quarter revenue and predicted another drop for the first quarter.

AP - RadiSys Corp., a maker of servers that support wireless phone networks, said Thursday it acquired privately held Pactolus Communications Software Co. Terms were not disclosed.

PC World - The Troyak ISP, which has been linked to the Zeus botnet, was briefly taken down this week. The takedown occurred on the heels of the RSA Conference last week, where there was much talk about the "cat-and-mouse" game of trying to squelch cybercrime. Otherwise, things got a little testy at the ICANN meeting in Nairobi, and iPad pre-orders got rolling. Oh, and the Internet was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Seriously.