Susan Kuchinskas

Joining an online message board or newsgroup discussion can be risky considering it’s sometimes hard to tell who’s your friend and who’s your foe. Microsoft says it is working on a way to tell the difference. Microsoft Research sociologist Marc Smith Tuesday said the company is building graphical tools that could give users new insight […]

SGI and Sun Microsystems have joined forces to build a bridge between their popular graphics technologies. Together, they will create Java bindings to the OpenGL application programming interface (API). Open GL is a cross-platform 2D and 3D graphics technology from Mountain View, Calif.-based SGI that was adopted as an industry standard in 2001. It’s used […]

Online auction marketplace eBay said it settled with the U.S. District Attorney’s office, paying $10 million to end charges that it violated the U.S. Patriot Act by transmitting funds earned through online gambling. San Jose, Calif.-based eBay bought the rap along with PayPal, the person-to-person payment service it acquired in July 2002. The U.S. Attorney […]

“We delivered the results,” a triumphant Meg Whitman told analysts in eBay’s second-quarter earnings call. Indeed. With a second-quarter net profit of $109.7 million, (33 cents per share), the San Jose, Calif.-based online auction marketplace beat estimates by 2 cents a share for the quarter. During the same, year-ago period, profits were $54.3 million, or […]

Hewlett-Packard Wednesday said it has acquired PipeBeach, a Stockholm-based developer of VoiceXML products for an undisclosed amount. Based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML), VXML provides a high-level programming interface to speech and telephony resources for application developers, service providers and equipment manufacturers. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published the second version of its […]

Amazon.com Tuesday reported it’s losing less money while saving more. The Seattle-based Internet retailer, which has moved from bookselling to a soup-to-nuts approach with wares that include everything from garden tools to magazine subscriptions, said its net sales for the second quarter of this year were $1.1 billion, compared with $806 million in the same […]

The State of California won its antitrust suit against Microsoft . Now, the payoff: coupons good for cash off on still more hardware and software. California consumers’ four-year-old class action suit against Microsoft came to a close on Friday, when the San Francisco Superior Court granted preliminary approval of the settlement. Starting today, Californians can […]

A battle being fought by porn producers this week in a California Court could end up costing billions to media giants like AOL-Time Warner. Acacia Research is suing New Destiny Internet Group, which operates X-rated site HomeGrownVideo.com, for patent infringement. A U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Tuesday issued injunctions, resulting from […]

Electronics contract manufacturer Sanmina-SCI Thursday confirmed it is buying server maker Newisys in a deal set to close in a few days. San Jose, Calif.-based Sanmina said Newisys’ technology would be combined with its manufacturing services to help it transition from 32-bit to 64-bit computing. Newisys, an Austin, Texas, startup headed by former IBM and […]

Two providers of online trading applications, eScout and Perfect Commerce, Wednesday said they would merge to create a unified product line they say will allow for better B2B transactions from sourcing through electronic invoicing and payment. Launched in 1998, Kansas City, Mo.-based eScout operates a supplier network that connects with a wide variety ERP applications, […]

A coalition of domain name registrars filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Marina del Rey, Calif.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) seeking to block the launch of VeriSign’s global waiting list for domain names. A group of approximately 23 URL registration companies calling itself “The Domain Justice Coalition” say ICANN’s approval of the […]

Intuit is bolstering its electronic tax preparation offerings with the acquisition of Income Dynamics, maker of ItsDeductible. The all-stock transaction, worth about $10 million, closed on July 11. Last year, TurboTax users were offered help figuring out how much they could deduct for all those stationary bikes, t-shirts and sweaters they donated to charity. The […]