InternetNews Staff

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Norway’s Opera Software released on Wednesday the first test version of Opera 10, the newest version of its browser, promising faster downloads, new design and new features. Opera is the world’s third-largest browser maker, but is far behind Microsoft and Mozilla Foundation. Competition in the browser market has escalated lately after Google […]

Access to the popular social networking service Twitter and email service Hotmail was blocked across mainland China on Tuesday afternoon, two days before the 20th anniversary of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown. Before dawn on June 4, 1989, tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing to quell weeks of protest by students […]

KABUL – “What are you doing?” For the U.S. military in Afghanistan, the answer to the latest social networking craze seems to be: “Killing Taliban.” U.S. commanders launched their “social networking strategy” for Afghanistan Tuesday, using the hugely popular Web site Twitter to release information about some of their operations (twitter.com/usfora) Among their first postings […]

Accessing your bank account using your mobile phone might seem safe, but security experts say would-be hackers can access confidential information via a simple text message seemingly from your service provider. People in the industry aware of the risk see it as extremely small, as only a few people use handsets to access their bank […]

Microsoft is warning users to watch out for a new zero-day hole that’s responsible for live attacks on the Web. This latest vulnerability threatens users of Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 (SP4), Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 with complete compromise of their systems. However, so far the attacks are “limited,” according to a Microsoft […]

LONDON (Reuters) – The European Union’s executive body will study plans by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to make millions of books available online after Germany said the Internet company’s project flouts EU copyright law. The bloc’s industry ministers agreed on Thursday to ask the European Commission to look at how Google’s settlement with authors in the […]

Bing’s home page. Source: MicrosoftClick to enlarge. CARLSBAD, Calif. — Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer takes the long view on both the world economy and Microsoft’s efforts to increase its market share in search. Speaking on stage here at the D: All Things Digital Conference with co-host Walt Mossberg, Ballmer said that we’re in a “different recession,” and […]

Time Warner on Thursday made official plans to separate its AOL division sometime around the end of this year, a widely expected move that sheds one of the media company’s weakest divisions. Time Warner (NYSE: TXW), which for months has signaled such a plan was in the works, said the deal has been approved by […]

Fabless semiconductor company, RFaxis, announced Thursday the debut of its first two chips, the RFX2401 and the RFX2402. According to RFaxis, both chips offer a replacement for traditional RF front-end modules, combining all the functionality into a single-die, single-chip solution for Bluetooth, Zigbee, and WLAN applications. The chips leverage BiCMOS technology and are designed to “reduce the complexity of […]

LONDON — Cannibalization of laptop computer sales by lower-priced netbooks is currently about 20 percent, “less than speculation,” Intel’s European sales chief told Reuters on the fringes of a company event. Christian Morales said netbook sales were about 16 percent of all notebook sales globally, and a little higher in western Europe. In Britain and […]

Nokia on Monday began rolling out its much-anticipated online software and content store, Ovi Store, as it aims to follow the success of Apple’s App Store. Nokia said it had started moving Ovi Store to production servers, preparing for the global commercial launch, and the store was opened to users of a few of its […]

Yahoo is looking to buy companies that will allow it to become a bigger player in social networking and revamp its family of products, CTO Ari Balogh said on Wednesday. “It’s a good time to be buying now,” he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit, pointing to valuations that have come down from levels six […]