Some Web designers are staging an online revolt against an old version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, which they say is hampering the ability of the Web to move forward in a cool and interactive way. The designers say Internet Explorer 6, which was released in 2001 and since has been updated twice by Microsoft Corp., is crippling the Internet's potential and slowing down the online experience. They also blame IE 6 for giving webmasters a collective headache, because they ...

Hurricane season is two months old and not a single named storm has popped onto the radar. If that makes people complacent, it only makes weather watchers worry even more about what is to come. Officials and insurers are concerned about the ramifications of a "Big One," and Florida, the most ravaged of states, is looking at several novel approaches to riding out the storms — or even preventing them altogether. The most innovative is a proposal from ...

Microsoft knows a good thing when it sees it. And what Google has going on with its search advertising business is a good thing -- which, of course, is why Microsoft want a bigger piece of it. To that end, it struck a deal yesterday to power the searches on Yahoo's various properties. The deal will increase the market share of Microsoft's search platform, Bing. The boost will help. In June, according to estimates from comScore, Microsoft's share in the ...

A significant redesign is finally coming to the Yahoo.com home page, one of the most well-traveled destinations on the Internet, and the company's search page will follow suit starting next month. Yahoo plans to let people in the United States start selecting a new, more personalized version of the home page beginning Tuesday afternoon. The revamp lets people select basic applications to use not just Yahoo sites, but also others' such as eBay, Facebook, and Twitter, said Tapan Bhat, ...

Tendai Biti is Zimbabwe's outspoken finance minister and MDC party Secretary General. The 44-year-old lawyer has openly criticized president Mugabe and his government, but was the main negotiator in forging a coalition government. As well as working with his political enemy, he now has the daunting task of rebuilding a collapsed economy that had an inflation rate of 500 billion percent in December 2008 and and unemployment at 95 percent. The global software firm has created an online tool ...

The recent hacking of a Twitter employee's personal e-mail account is raising questions about the security of storing personal information and business data on the Internet. The Web has been buzzing since a hacker allegedly broke into a Twitter administrator's personal e-mail account about a month ago and used that information to access the employee's Google Apps account. That account housed some of Twitter's private financial documents and notes, according to Twitter's official blog. Some of those documents circulated the ...

In less than a week, Google announced an operating system to compete with Windows, while Microsoft announced that Office 10 will include free, online versions of its four most popular software programs -- a shot at Google's suite of web-based office applications. And not more than a month and a half ago, Microsoft unveiled its new search engine Bing, which it hopes will steal market share from Google and finally make it real money online. From the news of it, ...

The world's richest people are spending millions arming their super-yachts with military-style technology and trained personnel to fight off potential attackers. The threat of pirates and growing fears that yachts may be their next target have led many owners to equip their vessels with the latest James Bond-like technology. Hidden chambers, escape pods, tracking devices and ex-marines employed as security guards have all risen in popularity. "It is only a matter of time before pirates move from cargo ...

Google's netbook-friendly Chrome OS takes direct aim at Microsoft, whose eight-year-old Windows XP leads the netbook market. But the odds are stacked against Google. In competing with Windows, Google Chrome OS will have to deal with many of the same challenges Linux has: compatibility, usability, and unfamiliarity. The record isn't good: In the past year, Linux-based netbooks have rapidly lost market share to Microsoft, as people find that Linux doesn't work as expected, may not support the applications or peripherals ...

China's last-minute decision to postpone a controversial content-filtering application on computers sold there is the latest example of the trouble that Western technology companies face doing business in the world's fastest growing economy. The software application, called "Green Dam Youth Escort," unleashed a flood of complaints toward Beijing, making strange bedfellows of human rights groups such as Amnesty International, Chinese "netizens" and trade groups representing the largest international businesses in China. Groups representing some of the largest companies in the ...