First Ann Coulter, now Newsweek’s Dan Lyons, otherwise known as Fake Steve Jobs. The former cried banishment from NBC before clawing her way back onto the Today show. The latter confirmed to WebProNews he was banned from CNBC after a fiery tirade against Silicon Valley Bureau Chief Jim Goldman for getting “bullied,” “played and punked” by Apple about CEO Steve Jobs’ health. “It’s true I’m banned,” Lyons said via email. read more

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AOL is changing the name of its sports site from AOL Sports to FanHouse.com, the name of its popular blog.Along with the rebrand FanHouse will feature columnist Jay Mariotti, Kevin Blackistone and Lisa Olson, who will provide daily commentary and analysis on all things sports related.AOL says FanHouse will continue its tradition of Super Bowl reporting and will still feature the "Super Sunday Ad Poll," that allows users to watch and vote for Super Bowl commercials.read more

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eBay says its sellers and buyers gave a record $36 million to U.S. nonprofit organizations in 2008 via eBay Giving Works.John DonahoeeBay CEOGiving Works allows people to donate to nearly 15,000 organizations in the country while on eBay. Donations were up almost 20 percent in 2008, with nearly 1.5 million people donating to a cause.read more

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The Presidential Blackberry. Wouldn't you love to get a glimpse of what's on it? That's precisely the problem, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin told WebProNews. While President Bush travels generally incommunicado--that is, unthinkably for most us, sans mobile phone--the President-Elect is in a very public argument for retention of his pre-election smart phone. read more

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The Internal Revenue Service has announced that starting on January 16 it is expanding its e-file program for 2008 federal tax returns.IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman recommends taxpayers consider e-file this year as the best option to file accurate tax returns and receive fast refunds. The e-file program includes new improvements to the Free File program that will allow nearly all taxpayers to e-file for free.read more

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CBS is launching a new midseason mystery drama called "Harper's Island" that will feature original online content separate from but related to the TV program.CBS teamed with EQAL, the creators of lonelygirl 15 for the 13 - episode series and is launching the social aspect of the show with a site dubbed Harper's Globe that will be complimentary to the television storyline of Harper's Island.read more

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United Airlines announced it will being offering inflight Internet service to passengers on board its p.s. transcontinental route between New York and California starting in the second half of 2009.United will be using Aircell's Gogo Inflight Internet service which will allow customers to surf the Web, check email, and send instant messages. The service will be available to customers traveling in all classes for a flat fee of $12.95.read more

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The number of Internet users in China rose nearly 42 percent by the end of 2008 from the previous year, putting its online population at 298 million, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).China continues to have the world's largest Internet population and 91 percent of users have broadband connections.read more

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Wealthier households are visiting lottery websites with more frequency than their lower income counterparts, Hitwise reports. Heather Hopkins’ investigation was prompted by AP report about rising sales of state scratch-off lottery tickets. read more

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Blockbuster has partnered with Sonic Solutions to offer Video on Demand on a wide variety of consumer electronic devices in an effort to stay competitive with Netflix.The two companies are working with a number of consumer electronic manufacturers, including Sonic's CinemaNow, to expand the ecosystem of interoperable devices offering the Blockbuster service.The devices will include PCs, portable media players, Blu-ray Disc players, set-top boxes, mobile phones and Internet -connected television sets.read more

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Google has started a program in which resellers can begin selling Google Apps to businesses. Naturally, you would sell the apps to customers, and then kick up money to Google. read more

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GiiNii introduced a pretty cool mobile device at the Consumer Electronics Show called the Movit Mini. It looks like a great way to access the mobile Internet and social networks as well as any number of applications one decides to put on it.read more

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At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Sony introduced its new convenient and lightweight laptop computer the VAIO P Series Lifestyle PC. This looks like the perfect device for business travel. read more

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In 2038 we’ll likely be weaving tales for our grandkids about how we used to instant message with paper notes instead of our brainwaves and how, when we were really little, stereos were once considered nice furniture pieces. They may be especially interested because, if Richard Wilcox is right, all the really important computers just dialed back to 1901. read more

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The House Appropriations Committee wants to put $6 billion towards expanding broadband to rural areas of America."For every dollar invested in broadband the economy sees a ten-fold return on that investment," the committee said in a report. The plan is part of an $825 billion stimulus package to be voted on by Congress.Broadband advocates support the proposal but want measures in place to ensure transparency and accountability.read more

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The digital music business saw solid global expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25 percent to $3.7 billion, according to a report from the industry trade group IFPI.Digital platforms now account for around 20 percent of recorded music sales, up from 15 percent in 2007. Despite this the music industry is still plagued by large amounts of unlicensed music distributed online. The IFPI estimates over 40 billion files were illegally shared in 2008, giving piracy a rate of about 95 percent.read more

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With the 2009 Presidential Inauguration taking place Tuesday, wireless companies are working to optimize their network capacities in and around Washington, D.C. to prepare for the expected increase in demand."For months, wireless carriers have been working hard to prepare for what could be an unprecedented Inauguration week," said Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA-The Wireless Association.read more

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The complexity of mobile applications and services is preventing their adoption and usage, according to a survey by mobile device management company Mformation.The majority (95%) of consumers said they would be more likely to try new mobile services if setup was easier. Difficult setup issues are also preventing 45 percent of people from upgrading to new, more advanced mobile phones. More than half (61%) of these mobile users say phone setup is a frustrating as changing a bank account.read more

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Last year, Google was kind enough to tailor a specific version of its personalized homepage tool iGoogle, to the ever-popular iPhone. They even offered a video showing how nice and convenient it would be for iPhone users.read more

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Akamai Technologies said today it saw a record spike in online traffic during the Inauguration of President Barack Obama.As the largest day ever for the delivery of concurrent live streaming over the Akamai network, the company reported it reached a peak of over 7 million active simultaneous streams (the majority live streams) at around 12:15 p.m. today.Total traffic on the network surpassed a rate of more than 2 terabits per second and the company also delivered over 12,000,000 requests per second at the same time.read more

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It’s too early to lock down the potential (or failures) of crowd-sourcing. Where Wikipedia, the 4th most visited resource on the Internet, logs incredible, meteoric success, and where the politicization inherent to mob rule has dragged down the populist ideals of Digg.com and others, the collaborative spirit continues to be tested and modified. In America, as on the Internet.read more

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AOL has updated its video search engine Truveo with a new application for the iPhone that includes new features and additional videos.The new features for the iPhone application includes "Intelligent Query Completion" which assists users by suggesting keywords or television shows. Users can also search for videos by length.read more

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The Better Business Bureau is warning users of social networking sites about a number of common scams that hackers are using to gain access to personal information.read more

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The Kentucky Court of Appeals ruled late Tuesday that the state could not seize 141 online gambling domains because they do not constitute a gambling device under Kentucky law.The ruling overturns a controversial decision made by Franklin County Circuit Court Judge Thomas Wingate in October that said online gambling domains could be seized by the state because the domains were illegal gambling devices that violated Kentucky law.read more

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Bloomberg (who once prematurely posted Steve Jobs's obituary) is reporting that the Securities and Exchange Commission is now examining Apple's disclosures about his hread more

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Online video applications, platforms, advertising networks and related services generated $494 million in revenue in 2008, up 86 percent over 2007, according to a new report from AccuStream iMedia Research.Value added service providers (VASP), video content management systems (CMS) and ad network revenues combined are forecast to increase 41 percent in 2009 and 38 percent in 2010.read more

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Sometimes we get so caught up with hunting down a remote few monsters, we forget about the gangs of gremlins lurking next door. A controversial new study from the Internet Safety Technical Task Force suggests minors face greater dangers from their peers than from predators.read more

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AOL has introduced new features to its Web Mail that allows users one-click access to Gmail, Yahoo Mail and other third-party sites directly from its mail page.The new version is available globally in 38 countries around the world and is the company's latest effort to make it more open to third-party content while offering more opportunities to advertisers."Web Mail is an integral part of the AOL experience and at the heart of our product offerings," said Ted Cahall, President, AOL Products and Technologies.read more

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AOL has announced that its sites saw significant growth in 2008 with page views increasing to 71 billion from 48 billion, up 47 percent for the year.Unique visitors grew from a monthly average of 70.4 million to 73.4 million, and total minutes increased from 40 billion to 47 billion year-over-year, up 17 percent, according to comScore.read more

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Since President Obama was sworn in and Whitehouse.gov has switched to a new interface, there has been an endless amount of chatter about the state of the White House's technology. Some discuss the shortcomings, while others defend it as just fine. Tradition and Transition read more

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