Ben Charny

Internet search giant Google Inc. has unveiled a new feature for planning trips via public transit, which some see as yet another clue of Googles intent to take on online travel giants like Mapquest.com Inc. or Expedia Inc. Google Transit, available by pointing a Web browser to www.google.com/transit, was launched quietly Wednesday night. For now, […]

The University of Chicago Press recently shut down certain facets of its online book project, seeing no need now that Internet search giants include the content of books in their search results. Its a relatively insignificant move for the universitys Bibliovault; the 5-year-old project is still functioning as a wholesaler for university presses. But taken […]

CHICAGO—Finding out that virtually everyone is using their product usually scares the stuffing out of most industries. At worst, the dreaded “s” word—saturation—can trigger cataclysmic shifts in the business world because theres simply no new customers to gain. One glaring recent example is the U.S. cell phone industry, which went through a spasm of consolidation […]

CHICAGO –At the most, there was maybe 10 feet separating executives from the worlds three leading Internet search engines as each shared the same stage here at an Internet search conference. But as each exec spoke of their companys respective online book projects, they put on display the huge divide that separates Google Inc. from […]

CHICAGO—Imagine if librarians organized book collections based on a 14-word description of each title. The results, no doubt, would leave much room for improvement. Thats loosely the case for the growing number of features for finding Podcasts, which are very much in the vein of radio shows, but are downloaded any time from the Internet. […]

Robert James Petrick, 51, didnt exactly point a Web browser to the Internet search engine Google and type in “how do you kill your wife?” But he came pretty close, say prosecutors in Durham County, North Carolina. Petrick used Google to search the Internet for references to “body decomposition,” “rigor mortis,” “neck” and “break” in […]

America Online Inc. on Thursday released an updated version of its Internet search engine for cell phones. Improvements are mainly to the Web browsing capabilities. Thanks to technology from Israel-based InfoGin Ltd., Web pages automatically adapt for viewing on the phones small screen. /zimages/2/28571.gifClick here to read more about the convergence of Internet search and […]

The company distributing many of the worlds Internet addresses is taking more steps this week to fend off criticism that it gives the U.S. government too much control over its operations. But it remains to be seen if critics will be mollified by the initiatives coming from this weeks meetings of ICANN (the International Corporation […]

Internet telephone providers love to flaunt subscriber mobility as a selling point. Dialing from any broadband connection is a key benefit their service has over traditional telephony, they say. But their ace in the hole appears to now be an endangered feature. And its thanks to a new set of federal regulations. VOIP (voice over […]

Net phone operators recently provided federal regulators with a bleak assessment of their industrys chances of meeting an important emergency calling milestone anytime soon. The Federal Communications Commission now demands that every U.S. Net phone operator make 911 calls a standard feature with every calling plan, and that every 911 call be accompanied the callers […]

Microsoft Corp. said it is readying an online marketplace, code-named Fremont, which is apparently in response to a similar feature that rival Google Inc. introduced a few weeks ago. Fremont is a free service in which people contribute listings, whether its about a couch for sale or someone looking for a commuting partner. Microsoft plans […]

Technology provider UnifiedRoot, based in Amsterdam, has begun leasing Internet addresses that can end in any word, rather than in .com, .org, .net or other top-level domains. For instance, Brinks Home Security could replace its collection of different Web addresses with just one: home.brinks, according to an example the company cites on its Web site. […]