The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has issued a set of principles drafted by a panel of school officials and DoD personnel that address distance education. The federal government spends around $100 million each year on distance education for members of the armed forces, and the principles were released as a “preemptive move” to ensure […]

MTV is introducing a new cable channel and Web site designed to take advantage of the immense popularity of social networking software.
Sites such as MySpace (which was recently purchased by Rupert Murdoch), YouTube, and Bebo have large numbers of loyal users who go to the sites to find others with similar interests, share content, and […]

In an implicit concession to the iTunes model developed by Apple, Microsoft has announced plans to offer its own line of digital music players and compatible software. In the market for portable music, Apple’s approach of having songs in a proprietary format that only plays on Apple devices has in past few years been much […]

Last week, the House Homeland Security Committee passed a fiscal appropriations bill for 2007 that would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to take several steps that would increase data sharing. Under the terms of the bill, the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate would be renamed the Office of Intelligence and Analysis and […]

Researchers looking into how to avoid widespread outbreaks of the avian flu will take advantage of upgrades to a supercomputer at Swansea University in Wales to perform complex modeling calculations. The processing power of the computer, known as Blue C, has been upgraded to more than two teraflops. The improvements also lowered the energy usage […]

The Indian government has ordered the country’s 153 ISPs to block access to 17 Web sites, some of them blogs, causing an outcry among the country’s bloggers. The government issued a directive in 2003 noting that it has the authority to restrict Web sites if they are deemed threatening to the state or its relationship […]

Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.) has introduced a bill that would outline requirements for federal agencies to disclose computer security breaches that put individuals at risk of identity theft or fraud. The introduction of the bill follows several instances where government computers were compromised but the agency responsible for the system took a long time to […]

A new service from Google Labs promises easier searching for users with visual impairments. Web sites full of graphics and animations are fine for sighted users, but screen readers and other technologies that assist the blind or visually impaired have considerable difficulty rendering such sites in a way that can easily be understood. The new […]

The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University will use a five-year, $15 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create a research center focused on developing technologies to help the elderly and people with disabilities. The Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center will work to develop technologies that can improve the quality […]

Microsoft and Nortel Networks have announced a partnership aimed at strengthening the idea of unified communications, in which all of a business’s communications–phone, e-mail, instant messaging, and so forth–run on a single platform. Microsoft has been supporting this idea for a long time and has taken steps toward such a scenario, including merging its Exchange […]