Ed Sutherland

UPDATED: Following a theft of several laptop computers from a benefit consultant, retirees are being urged to monitor credit records. The five laptops stolen last month contain personal information of Towers Perrin clients’ current and retired employees, said the pension and 401K management giant. In a statement, the company said it recently became aware of […]

News of the theft of a computer containing the personal data of 38,000 cancer patients across five states highlights the evolution of identity theft. Medical data is now more prized than Social Security numbers, privacy advocates tell internetnews.com. While Social Security numbers are increasingly common, a medical record of cancer or AIDS patients is worth […]

Mobile carriers Verizon and Cingular unveiled two video services for that the iPod and YouTube crowds might help along. Despite mobile video having only niche interest, the carriers used the giant Consumer Electronics Show to unveil live video services offering TV as well as video messages. “Video on phones is problematic,” Gartner’s Ken Dulaney said, […]

Motorola stock fell on preliminary word that profits from cell phone sales won’t match expectations. According to analysts, the blame rests at the feet of the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker. In a statement, Motorola said fourth-quarter 2006 sales will reach $11.6 billion to $11.8 billion, down from the $11.8 billion to $12.1 billion projected […]

Google will reportedly announce an investment in Chinese peer-to-peer file-sharing service Xunlei. More than 80 million users have installed Xunlei software and it attracts more than 50 million visitors to its Web site, the report in the state-owned China Daily said. The announcement is seen as Google’s latest effort to chip away at Baidu.com’s leadership […]

Security researchers claim that the first flaw to hit Microsoft’s new operating system is now for sale by malicious hackers. The flaw, which was discovered in December, was dismissed as a limited threat. But Marc Maiffret, founder and CTO of eEye Digital Security, said virus writers and malware authors are still shopping it around as […]

Can retail giant Amazon loosen Yahoo’s grip on the online question-and-answer market? That question won’t likely appear on Askville.com, Amazon’s new free Q&A service that competes with Yahoo Answers and fills the space Google vacated. Open since December, Askville.com hopes to foster a community atmosphere by allowing users to ask and answer questions for free. […]

YouTube’s failure to implement anti-piracy tools by the deadline may cause serious problems for Google, curtailing lucrative partnerships with media companies and turning Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of the video site into a lawsuit magnet, analysts say. Despite repeated pledges in 2006 to deliver “by year end” content identification tools able to scan the 65,000 […]

NextWave Wireless said it will pay $13.3 million to acquire privately held Go Networks. The deal gives NextWave, which develops WiMAX gear, entry into the mobile Wi-Fi arena. Mountain View, Calif.-based Go Networks becomes a NextWave subsidiary. The acquisition follows NextWave’s acquisition of wireless spectrum in Europe and the U.S. The purchase follows field tests […]

Former video-on-demand movie download service Intertainer has filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Google , Apple and Napster asking a Texas district court to block the trio from offering video downloads. In the lawsuit, filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Intertainer claims the companies infringed on a 2005 U.S. […]

With the approval of the $86 billion merger of AT&T and Bell South , AT&T is setting a new course, positioning itself to return to its wireless roots. Although AT&T groused about the final terms of last week’s merger agreement hammered out with the FCC, that final step put the company on the road to […]

UPDATED: A quick and easy exploit of a flaw in Apple’s QuickTime application may have Mac and Windows users beginning the New Year with a fresh round of security concerns. The exploit kicks off the Month of Apple Bugs (MOAB) project, the goal of which is to reveal problems with the Mac OS X operating […]