Google Wave, a product that promises to revolutionize online communication, will go out to about 100,000 beta testers Wednesday. The Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave." Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs ...

The Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave." Google demonstrated Wave at the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, California, in May. The closed group of beta testers will help Google fish bugs out of the application before a public release by the end of the year, according to the Google ...

Tracy Rodriguez of Houston, Texas, is not a trained private investigator or police officer. But with a gentle tap on her iPhone screen, the mother of three can access information revealing the sex offenders who live within a 10-mile radius of where her children practice sports or watch movies. The information, provided by an iPhone app called Offender Locator, helps Rodriguez make more informed choices, she says. When the app pops open on her phone, there is an eerie sketch ...

What's hot off the presses this week? Any one of the more than 2 million books old enough to fall out of copyright into the public domain. Over the last seven years, Google has scanned millions of dusty tomes from deep in the stacks of the nation's leading university libraries and turned them into searchable documents available anywhere in the world through its search box. And now Google Book Search, in partnership with On Demand Books, is letting readers turn ...

Say you're buying a dog. You know the breed you want; you can picture it in your head. But what was the name? A bull terrier? A pit bull? A bull mastiff? Or what if you're in the market for a new camera You saw a friend with a credit-card-thin model at a party last weekend. But was that a Canon A Nikon A brand you've never heard of If you're like many people, you'd turn to the Internet for ...

Fighting raged Tuesday between security forces and militants in northwestern Pakistan, leaving 43 militants dead and two commanders captured, authorities said. The cause of the outage, which Google said lasted an hour and 45 minutes, was not apparent by early Tuesday evening. "We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now -- we are too, and we definitely feel your pain," Google Engineering Director David Besbris wrote in a 4:15 p.m. ET post on the Gmail blog. ...

Gmail, Google's popular free e-mail service, was inaccessible to many of its 36 million users Tuesday afternoon, causing widespread chatter on Twitter and other social networks. The cause of the outage, which Google said lasted an hour and 45 minutes, was not apparent by early Tuesday evening. "We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now -- we are too, and we definitely feel your pain," Google Engineering Director David Besbris wrote in a 4:15 p.m. ET ...

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that federal investigators' seizure of drug-test results of more than 90 major league baseball players five years ago was illegal. The decision recommended new guidelines for computer searches to prevent investigators from using information about people who are not named in a search warrant but whose private data is stored on a computer being searched. Investigators looking into steroid use by professional baseball players obtained search warrants and subpoenas for the drug tests results ...

Her identity revealed, a blogger who posted rants about model Liskula Cohen said she was the real victim in the case and plans to sue Google for violating her privacy. Rosemary Port and her lawyer said Monday that they will file a $15 million lawsuit against the search engine giant for not doing enough to protect her identity. "I not only feel my client was wronged, but I feel now it sets precedent that anyone with money and power can ...

Three years ago many would have dismissed the notion that a significant supply of the world's automotive fuel could come from algae. But today the idea, while still an adventurous one, is getting much harder to ignore. Back then there were only a handful of companies seriously focused on producing algae fuel. Now there are well over 50, according to Samhitha Udupa, a research associate with Lux Research. The number should double within the next year or two, ...