Christopher Saunders

A federal judge denied the Federal Trade Commission’s request for an injunction against D Squared Solutions, a startup accused of spamming PC users with Messenger Service “pop-up” ads promoting its spam-blocker software. While the FTC earlier called the San Diego, Calif.-based D Squared’s actions nothing short of “extortion” — and that its messages could even […]

America Online officially unveiled its Love.com dating service today — an effort to woo dollars from the lucrative Internet personal ad market while leveraging its massive instant messaging network. The service, which launches with a free, 60-day preview, marks AOL’s latest foray into one of the hottest areas in online content and advertising. As a […]

America Online is poised to unveil the next version of its client software, and which includes an enhancement to its built-in instant messaging that offers streaming videoconferencing. The Dulles, Va.-based Internet giant, a unit of New York media conglomerate Time Warner , plans to launch the next version of its flagship client software, codenamed Tahiti, […]

Internet security researchers have uncovered a flaw in Yahoo! Messenger that could render a user’s computer vulnerable to remote access by a hacker. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Web portal and public instant messaging giant issued a security patch Wednesday evening to remedy the problem, which stems from a buffer overflow error. Tri Huynh, a security researcher […]

In the latest move to monetize its popular AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) network, America Online is poised to launch an online dating site that will leverage IM. During coming weeks, AOL plans an advertising campaign announcing Love.com, an online personals service in the vein of InterActive Corp’s Match.com. The ads will encourage users to sign […]

Developers working in the new Macromedia Central application execution and distribution environment will soon be able to integrate instant messaging and presence capabilities from America Online’s IM networks. According to terms of an agreement months in the making and announced today at Macromedia’s MAX conference in Salt Lake City, developers creating Flash-based applications for distribution […]

Microsoft faces $62.3 million in damages after a jury’s decision that the software giant willfully infringed on a patent held by printing software player Imagexpo, LLC, in its NetMeeting whiteboarding feature. The lawsuit, brought against Microsoft in Oct. 2002 in federal court in Richmond, Va., stemmed from charges that the company infringed on a patent […]

IBM’s Lotus Software unit next week plans to reveal the next wave in its “Workplace” strategy, introducing a slew of additions to its enterprise instant messaging and collaboration offerings. For the uninitiated, “Workplace” represents both a concept and a specific brand of Lotus solutions. Those solutions are all based on a Java 2 Enterprise Edition […]

It’s no secret that AOL prizes its massive audience of instant messaging users. In 1997, AOL launched its desktop client — AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) — for its IM network, setting in motion the feverish growth that instant messaging has seen in this country, first among teens, and more recently, among adult professionals. Today, millions […]

Microsoft is the new recipient of just the latest in a string of patents protecting instant messaging and related technologies. As a result, the patent landscape is as muddy as ever when it comes to IM. The new Microsoft patent, 6,631,412, covers a “System and method for activity monitoring and reporting in a computer network.” […]

Instant messaging might be one of the hottest new channels of communications to hit the enterprise, but it’s also widely known to bring with it a myriad of security holes, if the IM used is of the public, consumer-grade variety. Now enterprise security technology vendor Symantec has some figures to back up that suspicion — […]

Continuing its efforts to interoperate with leading public and enterprise instant messaging providers, Reuters has signed an agreement to link its IM network with Microsoft’s MSN network, say sources close to the financial services information giant. The deal, expected to be announced tomorrow, is similar to an earlier arrangement with America Online. The unit of […]