Amazon.com has filed suit against the state of New York claiming the state's Internet Sales Tax Collection law requiring online companies to pay state sales tax is unconstitutional and violates a 1992 Supreme Court finding. Amazon filed its suit on April 25, claiming that the newly enacted state law...

Sun Microsystems announced a $34 million loss in its fiscal third quarter as the company continued to repurchase its stock, reinvest cash in the business and pursue acquisitions and expansion in emerging markets. That's a steep drop from the $67 million the company made in the same quarter in 2007.

IBM released an on-demand, cloud-based suite of products targeting small and medium-sized businesses looking to offload security, e-mail continuity and archiving services. The Express Advantage product line -- which is meant to offload some of the more data-intensive processes an IT department has t...

Skype released a beta version of its mobile Voice over Internet Protocol application that can be downloaded to a variety of phones. The application, which the company says is still unstable, will allow people to set up group chats, see when contacts are online, make SkypeIn and SkypeOut calls and ta...

Google unveiled its mobile image ad service, which allows publishers to create rich-media ads along with more traditional text ads for the relatively untapped mobile advertising market. The service, Mobile Ads, can also be tied with AdSense and like other Google products will use keyword targeting t...

The former president of the One Laptop Per Child project stepped down from his position earlier this week as the non-profit continues restructuring and faces competition from the private sector. Walter Bender directed the MIT Media Lab for six years before joining Nicholas Negroponte's OLPC project ...

Sony Computer Entertainment pushed back its open beta test for the launch of Playstation's Home, a 3-D virtual world, from the summer to the fall, marking the second time the company has delayed the launch of the product. Unlike traditional games, Home is a sandbox world designed to allow players th...

A new software application allows users to publish information from their Facebook social networking account directly to their personal blogs. Six Apart, steward of the TypePad blog publishing system, released Blog It, a software application that enables users to cross-post information on Facebook t...

Gawker Media, one of the most recognized blog networks, announced the sale of three properties -- including political blog Wonkette -- as Publisher Nick Denton tries to bolster the company in preparation for an online advertising slowdown. Throughout the past several years, Gawker Media has made wav...

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a predictive traffic system that combines historical traffic data with real-time updates from GPS-enabled devices in order to build real-time maps for drivers. The services, which runs on the Live platform, grew out of research by Eric Horvitz, who has been working on ...

Yahoo rolled out a limited video-sharing service for its online photo-sharing service, Flickr, which will allow its members to upload short videos and integrate them with photo sets and slide shows. The new service isn't a competitor to the likes of YouTube or other video sites that specialize in th...

HP has jumped into the "mini-computer" market with an education-focused computer that costs less than $500. The HP 2133 Mini-Note PC is part of a growing segment of the computing market that focuses on laptops that come with basic functionalities -- Web surfing, e-mail, instant messaging plus video ...

Sun Microsystems, one of the largest server makers, announced that it would increase the number of products certified for use with Ubuntu Linux, one of the fastest growing open source operating systems. The upcoming expansion -- which is expected to be detailed in the coming days -- is the latest de...

A newly launched global position system service allows its users to access real-time traffic data -- generated by the customers -- in cities around the country. The GPS service, run by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Dash Navigation, helps drivers find directions; however, the Internet-based service constan...

Microsoft has opened up its Contacts application programming interface for the Windows Live platform, which will allow third-party developers to build applications that transfer and share contact information across various social networks. The move -- part of a larger strategy to adopt an open API s...

The U.S. Department of Justice has cleared the way for competing satellite radio services to merge into one company amid fears that the combined service would create an unstoppable monopoly. Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio first announced intentions to merge in February of 2007 -- 10 y...

The Ubuntu developer community moved its long-awaited upgrade, Hardy Heron, into beta release on Friday. Ubuntu is a Linux-based operating system designed for general consumers. The development of the OS, first released in 2004, has been sponsored by Isle of Man-based Canonical and the company's own...

The Federal Communications Commission raised a record $19.5 billion with its wireless spectrum auction, which officially closed on Wednesday. The auction, which started Jan. 24, consisted of 261 rounds of bidding for five blocks of the 700 MHz spectrum. The revenues will be transferred to the U.S. T...

Yahoo announced it expects to double its operating cash flow in the next three years despite an uncertain stock market and on the heels of Microsoft takeover bid. The three-year plan, released Tuesday, said the company expects its operating cash flow to increase from $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion whi...

Larry Augustin strives for collaboration. Augustin and James Vera launched VA Research in 1993 with the hope of providing a Linux-based operating system for personal computers. After the company bought out its biggest rival -- Linux Hardware Solutions -- the company changed its name to VA Linux Syst...