News on Technology

Speculation about the former eBay chief executive running for California governor is growing, with the latest hint being that she has resigned from four corporate boards.

Sling Media declares a deadline for its upcoming SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone, and reveals a new trick in the app's retinue.

RipCode, a company that offers online video streaming and transcoding services, has closed a $12.5 million funding round led by Granite Ventures with participation from existing investors Hunt Ventures, El Dorado Ventures, Vesbridge Partners, and ATA Ventures. The company, which...

Problems and potential conflicts coming from the bond ratings agencies were well-known well before our financial crisis hit, but still many are pointing the blame finger at those ratings agencies. And, it's certainly tempting to do so. Just as with the famed financial analysts...

Moving further away from its one-price-fits-all model, the company will allow top four music labels more price flexibility.

I have significant problems with any sort of compulsory licensing scheme, which basically gives the power to a tiny group of people to establish the business models and cost structures for an entire industry. It's as if people who support compulsory licensing don't believe the...

You hear about 3D printing here and there, but for the most part it's a bit irrelevant to the average person because fabrication is messy, difficult, and prohibitively expensive. Even dedicated DIYers have to get their stuff custom made. Hopefully that will all change with...

U.S. Internet users watched 12.7 billion online videos in November, an increase of 34 percent versus year ago, according to ComScore data.

Picasa is a credible competitor to iPhoto--especially for those who have recently switched to the Mac.

Mashable’s New Year Networking event takes place on January 15th: come join, mingle and possibly find a job! As part of the event, we are offering two free tickets and a free Mashable Job Board posting to any company hiring in January. For more information on this offer,...

Who would have guessed that in the New Year, Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, would be for the most part stable, but fall victim to hackers and phishing schemes? Well, it's true, and it will be interesting to see if this threatens Twitter's long-term viability as it...

Sounds like there may be ugly news in the offing for IBM (IBM) employees. According to comments posted to an IBM employee site operated by the Communications Workers of America, the company may announces as many as 16,000 layoffs before the end of the month. Were that to happen,...

Microsoft said its Xbox 360 had the strongest holiday season of its lifetime, while Sony and Nintendo both tout their own sales success.

For those Web companies that comply by it, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is turning out to be their best friend. Last week, Universal Music Group (UMG) was denied a summary judgment by a Los Angeles court in its copyright infringement case against Veoh. (Court order...

After a number of the microblogging service's most popular accounts were compromised, Twitter has come out and said that it was a hacker, not the phishing scam that's been making the rounds recently.

Dan Schawbel is the author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, and owner of the award winning Personal Branding Blog. Between current economic conditions and the technological evolution of the Internet, the traditional approach most job seekers have taken...

Dell needs a software business to grow, and it could hardly do better than to buy into open source through Red Hat.

It's well known that the Great Firewall censorship brigade in China employs tens of thousands of people monitoring what's said across the internet -- but perhaps far more effective has been the fear factor imposed on various ISPs by the government threatening them with...

Longtime Server and Tools unit head Bob Muglia is now president of the company's server unit.

Web searches rise again for Google in November but drop again for Microsoft as U.S. searches overall increase, Nielsen says.

Smarter-email startup Xobni has raised $7 million in a B round of financing from Cisco Systems and existing investors Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Atomico. Three of the four existing investors increased their ownership stakes in the company. But...

Open source offers solid footing for those wanting to keep their jobs in the recession.

The iPhone is the hottest platform around, leading some small-time developers to overnight riches and spawning over ten thousand apps in only a few months. But without knowledge of Objective-C or the intricacies of the iPhone SDK, many talented designers have no way of getting...

Toshiba's industrial systems company creates a unit dedicated to building large-scale power plants using solar photovoltaic panels.

This segment investigates breakthroughs researchers have made in identifying what people are thinking by conducting brain scans, and why the Supreme Court might one day get involved.

EMI's lawsuit against Michael Robertson's MP3Tunes has never made much sense. MP3Tunes isn't distributing any MP3s. It just lets you upload and store your own music, or, if the songs are publicly available elsewhere, to access those tunes. EMI threatened MP3Tunes if it didn't...

As an aficionado of great literature - I was an English major in college - I’m always on the look out for a great read. My current strategy for discovering novels and novelties is to park myself in a bookstore aisle and scour through classics I’ve always wanted to...

Doctors will be able to make face-to-face Web calls on patients in Hawaii starting Jan. 15.

Bring up a list of your bookmarks without the screen real estate hogging bookmarks toolbar using Site Launcher--a simple and pretty Firefox add-on.

Here's Mashable's latest round-up of upcoming Web 2.0 events, parties, and conferences. For more upcoming event listings, check out Mashable’s Events section. Not on this list? Contact us and let’s establish a media partnership. January 11-13, 2009: Affiliate Summit West...

Ahead of Macworld, Microsoft's top Windows marketer says that computer buyers literally can't afford to go Mac. But with the economy in tatters, the real question is will people be buying any PCs other than netbooks?

As early-stage investors look for revenue-generating businesses again, open-source companies could benefit. It's no longer fine to have downloads without corresponding dollars.

At the beginning of each year I traditionally publish a list of my favorite startups and products. This is the fourth year I've done this - previous lists: 2006, 2007, 2008. You guys get to pick the winners of the Crunchies - this list is all mine. This is a list of the products...

In the march towards getting "rid of the box" as the going-forward philosophy in the evolving digital home, Netflix has extended its partnership with LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) and embedding its online video service directly into the new HDTVs from the Korean electronics...

The demise of the HD DVD video disc format appeared to hand the future of home entertainment to Blu-ray, but struggles continue.

The entertainment industry has a long and sorry history of treating customers like criminals, despite plenty of evidence that suggests that treating customers like criminals makes them more likely to act like criminals, rather than less. SteveD writes in with an example out of...

Apple shares rebound on announcement Steve Jobs will remain CEO, while recovering from hormone therapy treatment. Apple shares jump amid decline in broader markets.

Hello, my name is BoomTown and I am a reformed CrackBerryaholic. How bad was it? Here’s the worst story: I was holding my BlackBerry in my hand, inadvertently for once, when I gave birth to my son in 2002. Long story short: I was emailing away throughout labor, suddenly had...

Talking head Rick Sanchez is one of the microblogging service's most popular users, so a whole lot of people saw when his account was hacked and displayed a message about being high on illicit substances.

A partnership with Netflix will bring access to the 12,000 films and shows in its Watch Instantly library.

Make Flickr's gallery view better with this simple extension for Firefox that lets you flip through photos quickly by pre-fetching them in the background.

So Steve isn't dying, he's just thin. WSJ got a note from Steve describing his malady as some sort of nutritional/hormonal problem and, it seems, all is right with the world. First, the note. Dear Apple Community, For the first time in a decade, I'm getting to spend the...

Superfish, a startup focused on visual search, has raised $5.3 million in a second round of funding, peHUB says, citing a regulatory filing. DFJ Tamir Fishman Ventures (the Israeli partner of U.S. investment firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson), the Individuals' Venture Fund and Xenia...

The Crunchies ceremony and party in San Francisco is just four days away. Who's going to win best startup of 2008? It's up to you. Just make sure you vote by Wednesday (we've extended the voting deadline by two days). We've got an awesome evening planned. The ceremony kicks off...

Facebook has apparently sued social networking aggregator Power.com for a variety of things, including copyright and trademark infringement, unlawful competition and violation of the computer fraud and abuse act. I'm having trouble seeing how Power.com violates any of these...

BoomTown is not saying it's going to be like watching grass grow. But 2009 is not exactly getting off to a rousing start this week--with two underwhelming blockbuster tech events taking place that already have more of an air of whimper than of bang to them. That would be the...

Sony's CEO reportedly ready to pull out all the stops in another wide-ranging reorganization. But will this be the reorg that finally does the trick?

The two companies will work on fine-tuning the Flash Player and Flash Lite for Intel's Media Processor CE 3100.

Beware this bogus message.

Apple also expected to announce a makeover for the Mac Mini, possibly has early as this week's Macworld Expo.