Articles by Fred J. Aun

The board of directors for radio and billboard giant Clear Channel Communications unanimously approved a slightly sweetened US$19.5 billion buyout offer from private equity groups whose prior attempts it recently rejected Asked by some major shareholders to rethink that rejection, the board announced its approval of a second amendment to the offer ...

Simplicity has been an important element in Google's success in the online search world. However, as the company has grown and attempted myriad forays into new ways of finding and presenting information -- images, video, news, maps, etc. -- it has created "silos," perhaps threatening that very simplicity This week's announcement that Google is taki...

The Defense Department (DoD) is blocking access to 13 Web sites, including MySpace and YouTube. Personnel use of popular social networking and entertainment sites is siphoning too much of its network bandwidth and creating too many security holes, the department said The Defense Department has seen too much of its vast network's resources being dra...

Social networking portal MySpace will host a series of hour-long sessions on college campuses that will allow people to ask questions of presidential candidates both in person and via the Web The "Presidential Town Hall" series is MySpace's latest foray into national politics. The social networking powerhouse also recently revealed it will hold a v...

Another month, another batch of Microsoft security fixes This month's Patch Tuesday distribution shows that even the newest offerings from Redmond contain holes that malicious yet savvy hackers can exploit. In fact, all of the seven advisories -- covering 19 flaws -- described in the latest Patch Tuesday were labeled by Microsoft as being "critical...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is attempting to provide some solace to current and former employees whose personal information is on a computer hard drive that was "discovered missing" late last week The TSA said it will give the employees free credit monitoring for up to one year, ID theft insurance up to US$25,000, fraud alerts ...

Cable providers keep piling on the goodies in their quest to sell TV. Comcast's newest enticement is a Web-based dashboard that will allow its triple play customers to easily manage their communication tasks The new service will be called the SmartZone communications center, said Comcast, the nation's biggest cable company. The company described th...

Yahoo Photos' days were numbered once Yahoo purchased Web-based digital photo storage site Flickr in 2005. Now, Yahoo Photos' number has come up Yahoo has decided to close the increasingly unpopular Yahoo Photos this summer, and it is urging users to transfer their pictures to Flickr. Yahoo is making the task as simple as possible during the three-...

Yahoo has introduced a new version of its popular Yahoo Messenger instant messaging service that eliminates the need to download and install software. Still in the beta phase, the new "Yahoo Messenger for the Web" is browser-based That means Yahoo Messenger users can log in to chat on any computer or other device with Web access, including PCs at c...

Google is partnering with the states of Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia in a joint effort to make it easier for people to find public information via the Web In announcing the arrangements, Google said the deals reflect a recognition that people are often frustrated by the inability of Web search engines, including Google's, to find supposed...

Word that the price of the so-called (US)$100 laptop will now be upwards of $175 per unit is not sitting well with long-time observers of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program, who fear the numbers might mean the initiative is in trouble Reacting to reports that OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte now figures the innovative little units will cost at...

Research in Motion (RIM) has created a new smartphone for world travelers, a unit capable of operating on both CDMA and GSM wireless networks The new BlackBerry 8830 World Edition will first be offered to Verizon Wireless customers then open to Sprint users. Also being offered is a new Global BlackBerry service that will provide wireless phone cap...

Yahoo has teamed with digital entertainment company Gracenote to provide supposedly official lyrics to hundreds of thousands of popular songs Yahoo said the lyrics, for songs from almost 100 music labels, will be free. The company also stressed that, unlike lyrics widely available at other Web sites, those on Yahoo Music will be the real deal: lega...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will give free credit monitoring to tens of thousands of people whose social security numbers were inadvertently made public on a government Web site The USDA said it is aware of no cases where the so-called private identification information was used for identity theft or other illegal purposes, but the potential...

The Nintendo Wii outsold both its competitors, the Sony PlayStation 3 and the Microsoft Xbox 360, in March, according to the latest figures from the NPD Group Nintendo continues to say it is having problems keeping up with demand for its units, citing "widespread shortages" for both the Wii and its handheld DS unit. While some industry observers w...

Social networking portal MySpace is getting into the news aggregation business as its new MySpace News feature offers users the ability to "rate" stories and control which ones get top billing MySpace News differs from other news aggregators that allow user ranking primarily because it organizes the thousands of news items it finds into 25 main cat...

Comics lovers who couldn't believe Captain America died last month will soon be able to resurrect him on their game consoles Sega and Marvel Entertainment have struck a deal wherein "Cap" and fellow Marvel Hall of Fame superheroes Incredible Hulk and Thor will star in new video games. The companies said the exclusive, multiyear, global licensing ag...

Personalized home page pioneer Netvibes is unveiling a way for anybody to become the ruler of their own "Universe," Web 2.0 style The company on Tuesday announced the beta launch of Netvibes Universe, a system that allows the creation and online publication of personal Web portals (which Netvibes calls "Universes,") that can include numerous types ...

In an expected but by no means insignificant move, Google will begin selling 30-second ads to run on hundreds of radio stations operated by Clear Channel Radio The deal is part of the search engine giant's determined expansion beyond the Internet, and it's one that should bring much-needed revenue to the struggling Clear Channel. The multiyear agre...

Hoping to expand its reach and capture more advertising revenue, CBS has struck deals with ten Internet-related companies that will distribute its content over the Web With its so-called CBS Interactive Audience Network, the veteran broadcasting company will become "the most widely distributed professional content provider online," it asserted in a...