Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been ordered by a federal judge to testify in a class action lawsuit over the "Vista Capable" debacle. US District Judge Marsha Pechman gave consumers the go-ahead in February to file a class action lawsuit against Microsoft for providing misleading information about Windows XP computers being able to run Vista. Plaintiffs in the case allege that Microsoft artificially inflated demand in the run-up to Christmas 2006, by falsely advertising that PCs would be capable of running the full version of the firm's delayed Vista operating system.

With e-book sales exploding in an otherwise sleepy market, Random House announced Monday that it was making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series.

Verizon Wireless has apologized to President-Elect Barack Obama after several employees took a peek at his cell-phone records, but privacy advocates say what happened to Obama is just an example of what is happening to thousands of Americans.

Facebook has won a $873 million judgment against a Canadian man who bombarded users with millions of unsolicited messages about drugs and sex. Facebook's lawsuit targeted Adam Guerbuez of Montreal and his business, Atlantis Blue Capital. Facebook alleged that Guerbuez had fooled users into revealing their passwords so he could send out more than 4 million messages that included promotions for marijuana.

The Pentagon has banned, at least temporarily, the use of external computer flash drives because of a virus threat officials detected on Defense Department networks. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would provide no details on the virus Friday, but he described it as a "global virus" that has been the subject of public alerts.

In its latest move to increase Internet search traffic, Microsoft has turned to an old rival, Sun Microsystems, for marketing help. Sun will promote a Microsoft toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser to U.S.-based Web surfers as they download Sun's Java software. The move comes in the wake of data showing that 35 percent of Web searches are conducted from the browser's address line, built-in search boxes and add-on search toolbars.

Facing more pressure to profit from its huge audience, YouTube is letting advertisers promote their commercial clips alongside the search results at the Internet's most popular video site. Just as they do at Google, advertisers can now tie their commercials to specific words entered into YouTube's search box.

A study from Attributor Corp. finds that on average, the audience perusing unauthorized online copies of newspaper and magazine articles is nearly 1.5 times larger than the readership on their own Web sites. Can media companies figure out a way to mine advertising revenue from the traffic flocking to their pirated stories posted on blogs and other sites?

Transition officials call it Obama 2.0 -- an ambitious effort to transform the president-elect's vast Web operation into a modern new tool to accomplish his goals in the White House. Obama's team is determining how best to convert his army of online activists into a viral lobbying and communications machine. Staffers are reluctant to discuss specifics, but Obama clearly is poised to become the first truly "wired" president of the digital age.

The Nintendo DS and Sony PSP are outdated and the iPhone is the "future of gameplay," according to Apple's vice president of iPod marketing Greg Joswiak. "A big part of that is not just the device itself... but it's the electronic distribution of the apps as well," he says. Is he right?

A fake, 14-page version of The New York Times was circulated widely on the streets in New York this morning, and it was backed up by a professional looking online version of The Times. The headlines declared that the Iraq War had ended and other falsehoods. The Yes Men, a left-wing activist group, took credit.

AT&T, the largest ISP, is testing the idea of limiting the amount of data that subscribers can use. AT&T will initially apply the limits in Reno and see about extending the practice. In November, AT&T will limit downloads to 20 gigabytes per month for users of their slowest DSL service, at 768 kilobits per second. The limit increases with the speed of the plan, up to 150 gigabytes per month at the 10 megabits-per-second level.

Sun has announced it will promote a Microsoft toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser to U.S.-based Web surfers as they download Sun's Java software -- which is required to view some Web sites. Microsoft is focusing on toolbars and default settings because 35 percent of Web searches are conducted from the browser's address line, built-in search boxes and add-on search toolbars, as opposed to a search provider's Web page.

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said he was not interested in becoming CTO for the nation under President Barack Obama. Schmidt publicly endorsed Obama and supports his plans for more investment in renewable energy but told the New York Times. "I am extremely happy serving the shareholders of Google as the C.E.O., so I have no interest in serving as a government employee."

Mark Papermaster has been ordered by a U.S. judge to stop work immediately in his new role at Apple as he could be violating an agreement with his former employer of 26 years, IBM. IBM filed a "non-compete" lawsuit against him alleging that as a key designer and executive Papermaster was "privy to a whole host of trade secrets and confidences" used by Big Blue to design products.

Regulatory scrutiny has prompted Google to abandon its advertising deal with Yahoo, the search engine giant announced Wednesday.Yahoo said in a statement that is "disappointed" that Google elected to kill the deal.

Apple won't let Opera release its Mini browser for the iPhone, says the Opera boss. Jon von Tetzchner made the comments to the New York Times last week. Apple holds a monopoly on the distribution of iPhone applications, and can do what it likes in its self-appointed gatekeeper role. Apple has already used the terms and conditions to ban a tethering modem application Netshare, and a podcasting application, Podcaster.

Holographic storage developer InPhase has put its first drive ship date back to late 2009. Meanwhile GE thinks it has a CD/DVD-compatible holographic technology that can be made into a commercial product. InPhase is developing a Tapestry holographic drive which uses a $180, CD-size disc with data stored as holograms within the depths of a recording medium. Is this technology ever going to be for real?

Malware and unwanted software made strides in the first half of 2008, according to the latest security intelligence report from Microsoft, which tallied a 43 percent increase in the number of programs exorcised by the the company's malicious software removal tool. In the first six months of this year, there were some 62 million disinfections on 23.8 million machines, according to the report.

Google has begun distributing a patch to its Android mobile phone operating system, an early test for how nimbly the company can respond and how well the infrastructure works to distribute and install updates. The patch fixes a highly publicized security problem with Android's Web browser. Will Google keep Android secure?

Microsoft on Monday announced a version of Windows that runs over the Internet from inside Microsoft's own data centers. Dubbed Windows Azure, it's less a replacement for the operating system that runs on one's own PC than it is an alternative for developers, intended to let them write programs that live inside Microsoft's data centers as opposed to on the servers of a given a business. "It's a transformation of our software and a transformation of our strategy," said Ray Ozzie.

It's the hosted blogging platform of choice for sites ranging from CNN to Scobelizer--so it's a big deal when Wordpress.com goes down. A number of sites using the Automattic-owned blogging service were taken down for a short while Monday morning when a denial-of-service attack struck. Shouldn't Wordpress be more immune to this type of thing?

The credit crisis is resulting in slowdown in technology sales, according to the Wall Street Journal. Nearly 20 percent of CIOs are delaying buying or outright canceling purchases, according to a survey by CIO Executive Council. Will all of this result in a major slowdown for the tech industry?

Intel has rapped the knuckles of executives who this week hammered the iPhone for not being able to show the internet as well as a PC can. They were talking out of turn, the chip giant said. Intel's mobility chief said in a blog post, "Apple's iPhone offering is an extremely innovative product that enables new and exciting market opportunities. The statements made in Taiwan were inappropriate, and Intel representatives should not have been commenting on specific customer designs."

A recent effort to raise the prices that Internet radio stations have to pay to play songs threatened them, Apple's iTunes and others. The push for the price raises was obstructed, but what lies ahead for Internet radio and services like Pandora?

A recent effort to raise the prices that Internet radio stations have to pay to play songs threatened them, Apple's iTunes and others. The push for the price raises was obstructed, but what lies ahead for Internet radio and services like Pandora?

An article published in the New York Post indicates Facebook founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wants to follow in MySpace's footsteps and offer its own digital music store. Facebook is reportedly interested in working with Rhapsody, iLike.com, Lala.com and iMeem.com as content providers for the service. The service will be free, but users will have to view on-screen advertising. All songs would be sold through Amazon.com.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer characterized Windows 7 as an improved version of Windows Vista this week, prompting the question of why consumers and businesses should adopt Microsoft's current operating system. "It's a release that I think will do a lot what people will want to do on performance, cleanup in very nice ways on the UI," Ballmer added. "We're going to pioneer some of things in the way touch and multitouch is used in the user interface." So why should people buy Vista?

Despite turmoil in global markets, two-thirds of senior technology industry executives polled in a new survey say the economic slowdown will not hurt them as badly as the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000. Only 27 percent said they were cutting sales and marketing expenditures, and only 15 percent said they were reducing planned R&D spending.

Apple reacted this weekend to Microsoft's $350 million advertising campaign with two new "Get a Mac" spots mocking the company's exuberance when it comes to Vista's advertising budget. The first ad is titled the "V Word". The second ad in the set is called the "Bean Counter" and presents PC sitting at an accountant's desk. Here he divides a cash budget for Vista into two piles. One huge pile is for advertising Vista and a tiny pile is for "fixing" Vista.

Apple held a press conference Tuesday at its headquarters to announce new notebook offerings. Apple unveiled a thin new MacBook Pro with an aluminum casing. Plus: Graphics by Nvidia, a multitouch trackpad, and a $999 price point. Who was there?

Analyst Tim Bajarin says that the economic crisis may bring on many bargains in tech, including bargains on consumer products. He points to cocooning--which basically means that if money is tight, consumers will spend more time at home instead of going to movies and restaurants, or taking long vacations. One area that gains from this is HDTVs, he says.

Computers argued, cracked jokes and parried trick questions, all part of an annual test of artificial intelligence carried out at the University of Reading. Typing away at split-screen terminals Sunday, a dozen volunteers carried out two conversations at once: one with a chat program, the other with a human. Their job was to discern which was which. A bot called Elbot scooped up the day's top award: the Loebner Artificial Intelligence Prize's bronze medal, for duping three out of 12 judges assigned to evaluate it.

Boxee is a free open source software platform that lets users control their media from a PC-connected TV. Like other media applications, you can watch movies or web video, listen to music, look at photos and more, all with your remote control. Co-founder and Inventor Dave Mathews tells us what's different about this platform and where it stands.

Passengers are being questioned over whether they were using electronic equipment just before their Qantas A330-300 plunged out-of-control over Western Australia. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has said an "irregularity" in one of the aircraft's computers may have caused the dramatic altitude change. Last July, it was claimed that a passenger clicking a wireless mouse during a flight sent a Qantas jumbo jet off course on a three-degree bank.

Advanced Micro Devices, the number two US computer chip maker, announced Tuesday it was splitting into two companies after receiving a huge infusion of capital from two Abu Dhabi investment firms. The move will result in one company that designs semiconductors and another which builds them. Does this make sense?

RealNetworks has agreed to abide by a court-ordered temporary restraining order and has halted sales of its RealDVD DVD ripping software. A note posted on the RealDVD site says that Hollywood forced the shutdown. The MPAA claims that the use of the software circumvents the DVD CCA license against illegal DVD copying.

Ask.com has launched a redesign of its search site, with an emphasis on turning up useful answers on the result page, rather than just links. Ask.com president Scott Garell said "Right now, a user doesn't get to the best answer until 3 to 4 clicks after the search box. We want to present the best answer the first time, every time."

Reports are coming in from all over of increased phishing activity around banks, some explicitly exploiting the current wave of bank mergers. Netcraft reports that the announcement that Citicorp would buy Wachovia led to a massive increase in Citi phishing. Scammers smell blood in the waters.

Pictures of Amazon's updated Kindle reader have appeared online. The new model sports rounder, smoother edges, and it's been made slightly flatter. However, it's slightly longer and wider. A joystick has replaced the scroll wheel used on first model. The SD memory card slot has been removed in favor of on-board storage. Haven't most of these e-book readers failed?

The leaders of three of Australia's largest ISP's have declared the Net neutrality debate as solely a U.S. problem. "Their problem is that unlike Australia, they (offer) truly unlimited plans," said Justin Milne, former chief of Australian ISP BigPond. "The problem with an unlimited-access plan," he says "is that it "devalues what a megabyte is worth."

Sprint has officially launched its WiMAX broadband wireless network in Baltimore, marking the technology's big city debut. With its service offering download speeds of 2 to 4 Mbps, the company sees this as the dawn of the 4G era. If you're in Baltimore or plan on visiting, you can now purchase a $60 laptop card or an $80 fixed home modem directly from Sprint or area retailers.

A law that could save internet radio stations from having to make payouts they claim will cripple them has been approved by the House of Representatives. Internet radio stations claim that new fees for playing music online set by the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) would put them out of business. The measures approved by the House will allow online radio companies to conduct their own negotiations with rights holders over what fees to pay.

Relenting to pressure from the developer community, Apple has dropped the NDAs that developers were required to agree to when they submitted their applications for consideration on the iPhone App Store.

It was nearly two years ago at the 2006 Oracle OpenWorld conference that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison unveiled a plan to have Oracle provide support to Red Hat's own Linux customers. Asked if there has been any measurable impact on Red Hat, Andrew Cathrow, Red Hat product marketing manager, responded, "To be quite honest, not at all." Oracle disagrees.

CNET Editor-in-Chief Dan Farber is predicting a far-reaching wave of consolidation in tech. He writes that: "sharks--Microsoft, Google, HP, IBM, Cisco, and Oracle--are looking at the landscape to see what fits best into their portfolios at discounted prices. Web startups aren't immune to the economic circumstances. Whatever the future holds, the threat level has gone from to yellow to red alert, and CEOs are preparing for the worst."

The Open Handset Alliance, a group that includes Google, T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola and others, is billing Android as the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. Android is expected to allow handset manufacturers and wireless carriers to customize the platform.

Millions of people watched comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates chatter about practically nothing as part of Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign. Now those lengthy "teaser ads" are relegated to the YouTube archives and Microsoft is forging ahead with the next phase of its campaign to connect with real people. The next campaign run aims to hit Apple square between the eyes with an "I'm a PC" series that features celebs like green architect Edouard Francois, astronaut Bernard Harris and celebrities such as Eva Longoria.

Activision says the game Guitar Hero: Aerosmith has earned the band more royalties than any of their albums. "Merchandising, concert sales, their ability to sign a new contract [have] all been unbelievably influenced by their participation in Guitar Hero," officials said. Are videogames the answer to the music industry's woes?

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has organized a committee to develop a standardized home-networking protocol called G.hn (as in "Gigabit home networking."). The protocol would work with all current networks, from Wi-Fi to Ethernet to power-line. Does this show any promise for home theaters and other home technologies? Will it really happen?