The Web consulting firm Blue State Digital helped the Obama campaign raise some $500 million online, catapulting a relative political novice into the Oval Office. Its next challenge: Help fashion bible Vogue magazine cash in on its far-reaching influence at a time when advertising dollars are bleeding out of print. Read More »

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.) Read More »

In the furthest reaches of India’s rural heartland, the cellphone is bringing something that television, radio and even newspapers couldn’t deliver: Instant access to music, information, entertainment, news and even worship. Read More »

After market close Monday, Hewlett-Packard reported fourth-quarter earnings that were in line with the forecast the company gave earlier this month when it acquired networking equipment maker 3Com. Read More »

International Business Machines and a handful of other major marketers, including casino operator Harrah’s Entertainment and software giant Microsoft, are experimenting with developing ad campaigns based in part on what consumers are chatting about on the Web. For decades, advertisers have relied heavily on sometimes-dated consumer surveys and focus groups to provide grist for their ads. Read More »

Verizon’s merciless razzing of AT&T has finally elicited a reaction from Apple. Peeved at seeing its marquee product banished to the “Island of Misfit Toys” in one of Big Red’s new holiday ads, Apple is launching a pair of new iPhone commericals that tout the smartphone and the network on which it runs. Read More »

Videogames are serious business in China. The country’s online game market will reach 41 billion yuan ($6 billion) by 2010, accounting for half the global market, according to newly released data from Cnzz.com, a Beijing-based data analysis firm. The Cnzz.com report says that almost two-thirds of China’s 338 million Web users are now online gamers. The online-game industry, which currently accounts for more than half of the total Internet economy, will see strong annual growth at a rate of 20 percent in future years, the report says. Read More »

Google’s acquisition spree continues: The company has bought Teracent, a start-up that customizes online ads on the fly. BoomTown reported in September that Google was interested in the San Mateo, Calif.-based company, which is filled with veterans of…Yahoo. No purchase price disclosed, but I’m fairly confident this was in the sub-$50 million category. Read More »

German entertainment conglomerate Bertelsmann, which made a move into the online kids/education market earlier this year, appears to be having second thoughts. Bertelsmann is looking for an investor to buy some or all of Scoyo, which it launched in Germany in January of this year and previewed in the U.S. in September. Read More »

Wikipedia.org is the fifth-most-popular Web site in the world, with roughly 325 million monthly visitors. But unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting. That could have significant implications for the brand of democratization that Wikipedia helped to unleash over the Internet — the empowerment of the amateur. Read More »

June 2010. That’s when AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity contract with Apple expires–according to Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall, anyway. In an interview with Bloomberg, Marshall said once again that he believes Apple will bring the iPhone to Verizon in the second half of 2010. Read More »

The people who own EMI Music Group may regret the purchase, but here’s a tiny bit of good news: Sales crept up last year. And next year’s numbers, aided by the Beatles, may be better yet. Read More »

As we head into the holidays, smartphone prices are dropping to points that belie their advanced feature sets. While this is great news for consumers, it may well be problematic for smartphone manufacturers. Read More »

Former VP and full-time envirogod Al Gore, who appeared at the fourth D: All Things Digital in May 2006, turned out to be a very funny guy onstage. And he’s funny on television too, as you can see from his appearance this past weekend on “Saturday Night Live.” In the bit, Gore talks about getting his crazy on to get folks to not forget about global warming. Read More »

Another expansion for Spotify, the much hyped European streaming music service: It’s now going to be available on Nokia phones and other handsets that run the Symbian platform. That’s good, because the service is supposed to work best as a mobile play. But Spotify has yet to make a key expansion: To the U.S., where the big music labels worry that consumers will love everything about the site except paying for it. Read More »