Why did so many companies dump HD DVD?
One reason is the approaching era of Internet movie downloads, but that era is more distant than pundits think.

'Coworking,' a cooperative for the modern age
The coworkers, armed with Wi-Fi laptops and cellphones, are in some ways offering a techie twist on the age-old practice of artists or writers who team up to rent studio space.

Microsoft makes more code public
Microsoft published 30,000 pages of code for Windows on its Web site. The European Commission, which is considering a pair of complaints against the company, reacted coolly.

Reed Elsevier to acquire ChoicePoint for $3.6 billion
The purchase price represents a major premium for a company that has weathered an embarrassing breach of its database, U.S. government investigations and an inquiry into stock trading by its top two executives.

Google plans to sell ads in Web videos in U.S.
Google wants to capitalize on the explosion in online video and the scale of its advertising network, which analysts say includes a vast majority of Web advertisers and hundreds of thousands of Web sites.

DVD code cracker goes legitimate
Jon Lech Johansen, the Norwegian teenager who helped crack the code on copying DVDs almost a decade ago, has started a business whose goal is software that manages digital media and lets consumers move their files among any kind of hardware.

Security concerns sidetrack Bain deal for 3Com
Huawei Technologies, which has strong ties to the Chinese government, would have received 16.5 percent of the company.

NBC abandons fall debuts for year-round schedule
NBC Universal took a big step toward undoing one of the television industry's oldest traditions by announcing Tuesday that it would move to a year-round schedule of staggered program introductions. The change is intended to appeal to advertisers, who crave fresh content to keep viewers tuned in.
- Back to work, writers search for new plots

After strike, 'Saturday Night Live' works to retrieve audience
The comedy show returns to NBC this weekend with the first of four consecutive new shows, the first time that breakneck schedule has been tried since 1976.

Cellphones are bringing Pakistanis together
About 65 million people are using mobile phones each day in Pakistan. For most Pakistanis, the wireless devices are the first phones they have ever had.

Toshiba saw the tide running against it in DVD fight
A growing number of movie studies had started to choose Blu-ray, the rival high-definition DVD technology from Sony.

European privacy advocates to issue report in April
Data protection officials from 30 European countries ended a two-day meeting and agreed that search engines needed to make changes.