It's better than having some jerk walk back in with a gun, but it's sure not good: The journalspace.com blog site has shut down after a "disgruntled" former IT employee used his own data-backup choice to obliterate its entire data store.

Computer security fuels many excellent conferences. CES is not typically one of them, but the current state of the economy is compelling conference goers to refocus on their core priorities...and security is one of them.

The broadband-connected television market will be in full bloom at CES 2009, with Samsung announcing that its newest lineup of HDTVs will sport "Internet@TV", a Yahoo-powered widget interface.

As regular as tax season itself, phishers pretending to offer information on an IRS "stimulus payment" are targeting thrifty (or is that greedy?) taxpayers.

In the second "deflation" of a Wall Street Journal story in as many months, an RIAA spokesperson confirmed to BetaNews this morning that the termination of its use of the MediaSentry service had already happened.

At Macworld today, Apple's FileMaker, Inc. subsidiary will launch a major overhaul of its flagship database for Mac and Windows desktops and servers, a product used by 70 of the world's Fortune 100 corporations.

Amazon today announced that owners of the formerly Netflix-exclusive Roku set-top box will be able to access Amazon Video On Demand, and LG announced it's building Netflix instant streaming directly into some of its upcoming HDTVs.

Addressing the recent announcement that he will not deliver the Macworld keynote this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs released a statement this morning about his mysterious health condition.

A phisher or phishers operating over the holiday weekend deluged Twitter users with direct messages luring the unwary to a page designed to steal their sign-in information.

Here's a very familiar theme for us every year: Despite not only manufacturers' own best efforts but also certain governments' own regulatory bodies to drive and even enforce industry standards, there's no one way to do digital mobile TV.

With the consumer economy changing radically and rapidly, Microsoft and others are experimenting once again with applying the pay-as-you-go model to computing, since it seems to work well enough for other industries.

Vendors at CES 2009 will be displaying some interesting new workarounds to the persistent issue of short battery life, ranging from an "ECO On Mode" in MSI's Wind U115 netbook to a solar battery charging gadget from Energizer.

Every so often, the Web provides a form of entertainment that almost everyone can enjoy -- a punching bag. Enter Andy Burnham, the UK Culture Minister, and his recent musings on a movie-style ratings system for the Internet.

What were the stories that gathered BetaNews readers' attention, got them talking, made them think more about the meaning behind the technology? Our space-age statistics generator has provided us with the final tally.

In the early morning hours of the final day of the year, many Zune users found their devices frozen on the logo screen, totally unresponsive.

Before CES 2008, BetaNews debuted our "Better Questions" contest, where we asked you, the reader, what questions you wanted answered from the CES floor. This year, we're asking you again.

If you don't own a media PC yet, do you actually want one? Now would be a good time for anyone who makes media PCs to step up to the plate and deliver an updated value proposition...Any volunteers?

CES rollouts will run the gamut from MSI's Wind "hybrid" netbook -- with a mix of SSD and HDD drives in a single machine -- to a high-end notebook with a secondary display. And Windows 7 could be closer than anyone thinks.

While other manufacturers are pulling back on chip development because of the bleak economy, Samsung is now stepping up its work on WiMAX and LTE so as to bring down its royalty payments -- and quite possibly, its financial risk.

Video search engine Blinkx has taken a new approach to video advertising with its "un-roll" format, in a move which leverages its technology for sorting videos for a project with a potentially much higher rate of return.

The numbers of mobile users who can watch their TVs remotely has just grown larger, with an expansion by Sling Media in Motorola, Samsung, and other Windows Mobile devices supported by SlingPlayer Mobile.

The proof of concept for a Windows Media Player exploit does exist, and it has been shared. But it's not a vulnerability, Microsoft said, because it would need to trigger remote code execution...and this one doesn't.

During the summer, Korean CE maker LG debuted the first streaming Netflix-enabled Blu-ray player. Today, the company announced its Blu-ray players will receive content from more streaming partners.

In an SEC filing yesterday, the CPU maker disclosed that it will incur a slightly larger restructuring charge than earlier estimates, due to its need to trim about 600 employees from its roster starting this quarter, rather than 500.

Worlds.com, which launched its first 3D avatar environment back in the mid-90s, has retained an intellectual property law firm and has filed patent infringement suits. Its first, against game developer NCsoft, was filed on Christmas Eve.