Newspaper editors and staff from over 60 countries met in Athens to explore ways of using the Internet and innovative tactics in their quest to lure back readers.
 
Daily papers worldwide face growing competition from broadcast and online media.

"These are very tough times for newspapers across the world,"

Microsoft Corp. and Cable Television Laboratories Inc., a cable industry consortium, said Wednesday they have reached an agreement that's expected to lead to Windows Media Center-based PCs that are digital-cable ready.

As a result of the deal, cable programming could be fed directly into a PC, eliminating the need for a set-top

Skype, the Internet-calling phenomenon that eBay Inc. acquired for $4.1 billion, is set to break into the U.S. consumer mainstream by selling its telephone kits in RadioShack stores.
 
Skype Technologies SA, which counts 66 million users of its free- and low-cost Web-based telephone services, mainly in Europe and Asia, said

Xbox 360, Apple iPod Nanos, Star Wars action figures, American Girl items and decorative collectibles are the sizzling hot selling items this year, says a new eBay sales-tracking service that forecasts trends in online sales.
 
With less than a week until the official holiday shopping frenzy begins, eBay Inc. on

After agreeing to settle a class action lawsuit brought by customers of its iPod music player, Apple Computer confirmed the settlement is being appealed. The lawsuit claimed Apple misrepresented the capabilities of the iPod’s rechargeable battery
 
While Apple representatives did say that they were not appealing the settlement, they declined

Consumers are unhappy with buying a cellular phone from carriers, giving higher ratings to retailers, a research firm said Friday.

Only 24 percent of the more than 2,100 consumers surveyed by The NPD Group said buying a mobile phone from a carrier-owned story was an "excellent or good experience." Mass merchants,

HP, which revamped its EVA midrange SAN system and added a slew of other storage products primarily through partnerships with startups, reported late Thursday that its storage revenues increased 17 percent both year-over-year and from the previous quarter.

Storage, which floundered under previous HP CEO Carly Fiorina, has rebounded since Mark Hurd

US software titan Microsoft takes the computer game wars to the Japanese enemy with the North American launch of its next-generation     Xbox 360 console.
 
Unlike with its first foray into the competitive world of games hardware, Microsoft is stealing a march on arch-foes Sony and Nintendo by releasing the most

Microsoft this week released a plug-in for the rival Firefox browser so that users can validate their Windows systems prior to downloading software from the Redmond, Wash.-based developer's Web site.
 
Before the plug-in's release, customers were forced to use Microsoft's own Internet Explorer to run the ActiveX control required by

Sony's controversial copy-protection scheme had been in use for seven months before its cloaking rootkit was discovered, leading one analyst to question the effectiveness of the security industry.

"[For] at least for seven months, Sony BMG Music CD buyers have been installing rootkits on their PCs. Why then did no security software