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An historic name in software will effectively pass into history in February as AOL discontinues development and active support for the Netscape browser, according to an official blog. AOL will keep delivering security patches for the current version of Netscape until Feb. 1, 2008, after which it will no longer provide active support for any version of the software, according to a Friday entry on The Netscape Blog by Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com. The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose portal. Netscape was the original mass-market Web browser and helped to popularize the Internet in the...

Just got alerted to this from a buddy in Germany. Time Warner subsidiary AOL is running a "dating" website through AOL Germany which offers AOL users the opportunity to cheat on their spouses. It's like a dating site but the gist of it is that AOL users can register discreetly to find other, interested cheaters. It offers "Affairs" and "Seitensprünge" which is the German term for a quick, one night stand outside of marriage. Now if it wasn't sick enough for Time Warner to stoop this low, they're advertising that a portion of the proceeds go to needy children in...

Current Results Republicans 138,270 Ron Paul 44,805 32% Rudy Guliani 22,520 16% Mike Huckabee 21,768 16% John McCain 18,996 14% Mitt Romney 17,640 13% Fred Thompson 11,169 11% Duncan Hunter 1,372 1% Democrats 123,492 Hillary Clinton 55,172 45% Barak Obama 33,786 27% John Edwards 19,810 16% Joe Biden 4,940 4% Dennis Kucinich 4,825 4% Bill Richardson 3,479 2% Chris Dodd 762 1% Mike Gravel 718 1%

NEW YORK (AP) — AOL is reducing its global work force by 2,000 employees, or 20 percent, as it continues a transition from Internet access provider to online advertising company.The latest round of job cuts comes on top of 5,000 positions eliminated last fall, after AOL said it would begin giving away AOL.com e-mail accounts, software and other features once reserved for paying subscribers to boost traffic to ad-supported Web sites."This realignment will allow us to increase investment in high-growth areas of the company — as an example, we added hundreds of people this year through acquisitions — while scaling...

Not confirmed, but we are hearing that Time Warner's AOL (TWX) is considering firing 20%-25% of all employees worldwide.  The logic: Last quarter's advertising weakness was not an aberration, and the only way the company can preserve its operating income is to drastically cut expenses.  AOL declined to comment. Whatever the exact percentage, these cuts would go way beyond the oft-discussed shuttering of the new iteration of Netscape, kids' sites, etc.  Key employees have reportedly been summoned to important meetings in Dulles this week without being told the subject of the meetings.  Know more?  Please tell us (hblodget@alleyinsider.com). UPDATE:...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Averting a looming court battle over how it has been handling the exodus from its Internet dial-up service, AOL has agreed to make it easier for its remaining customers to leave as part of a $3 million settlement with 48 states, including North Carolina, and the District of Columbia. The resolution announced Wednesday was driven by a deluge of complaints from AOL customers who said they tried to close their accounts, only to be thwarted in their attempts or discover they were still being billed for services that they thought had been canceled. The outcry triggered...

Google's privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users. In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." None of the 22 other surveyed companies - a group that included Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and AOL - sunk to that level, according to Privacy International. While a number of other Internet companies have...

What do you think of O'Donnell? I love her I hate her I love and hate her No strong opinion And three other polls!

What are the motives of Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton? Help resolve situation Help themselves

The long time rumor that several major media organizations were going to start a YouTube rival are apparently coming true. Word from NBC Universal and News Corporation that they are about to start such a service. AOL, MSN, MySpace and Yahoo! will be the new site’s initial distribution partners. Their users, who represent 96 percent of the monthly U.S. unique users on the Internet, will have unlimited access to the site’s vast library of content. This media alliance will offer consumers free long- and short-form video and create a compelling platform for advertisers, targeting the rapidly growing audience of online...

March 20, 2007 Giuliani Top Choice Among Both Moderate, Conservative Republicans Gingrich, Romney do better among conservatives than moderates by Jeffrey M. Jones GALLUP NEWS SERVICEPRINCETON, NJ -- With the 2008 Republican presidential field beginning to come into shape, there are still questions and apparent opportunities for a favorite "conservative" candidate to emerge. The three leading announced contenders -- Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney -- have taken stances in the past that are out of step, if not unpopular, with conservative voters, although all have taken recent steps to try to reassure conservatives. The key question is...

NEW YORK - AOL is offering users of its AIM instant messaging service new capabilities to see where people on their buddy lists are physically located. The first phase of this push is with an unusual software plug-in developed by Skyhook Wireless, whose backers include Intel Corp. Skyhook tracks locations by using the continuous wireless pulses emitted by all Wi-Fi transmitters and Wi-Fi-enabled computers, rather than more common satellite-based approach. The Skyhook plug-in, available as a free download, adds a new grouping to AIM's buddy list window called "Near Me." That group will feature the names of any buddies who...

Comcast, the second largest broadband ISP in U.S., is in talks to use Microsoft’s search services on its broadband portal, a sign the cable titan isn’t happy about its current search deal with Google, reports WSJ, citing sources. The Comcast-Google deal is till the end of this year. Comcast thinks it should get a larger search ad rev share, and is also is unhappy about other terms of the deal. The company gets about $70 million in shared revenues through the Google deal, but wants $100 million, the story says. The site gets about 15 million visitors a month, and...

Another new search engine, which offers local search service, will soon boost to the Internet market industry. AOL LLC had started to test it new local search service engine, which finally adds up to the many competitors in the Internet industry for years. According to AOL LLC if the internet users are interested and curious on giving a service test drive all they have to do is try to look at the main page of the AOL’s main portal page and there they will find a local tab in the search box. Then just click that on, and that tab...

How would you rate Cheney's performance overall? Excellent Good Fair Poor

WASHINGTON (Jan. 24) - A disputed report on the Web site of a conservative magazine about Senator Barack Obama’s childhood schooling kicked off a pointed exchange this week between the rival cable news networks CNN and Fox News, when CNN seemed to make an overt effort both to debunk the report and to question the quality of Fox News’s journalism.

On the AOL home page right now...Which President Was a 'Disaster?' Was? As in past tense? Why is Bush's photo included when he's STILL President? Also interesting that his photo is in the center. This display tells me that the MSM believes it's really Nancy Pelosi running the country right now.

NEW YORK - AOL's chief executive announced yet another restructuring of the online company's corporate structure Monday, creating a senior position to market its brand while naming several executives who will report to a newly appointed deputy. Randy Falco, recently hired from NBC as AOL LLC's chairman and chief executive, acknowledged in a memo to employees that much work remained "in such crucial areas as our speed to market and innovating new products." Although AOL once was the dominant Internet brand, the company has seen its paying subscribers leave for free offerings from Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s...

AOL laid off more than 450 employees at its corporate headquarters yesterday as part of plans announced earlier this year to cut costs and change the company's business strategy. The Dulles company said it was not cutting as many jobs locally as originally anticipated. In August, AOL executives said that about 1,000 of the 5,000 jobs to be cut worldwide would be local. Including yesterday's cuts, AOL has eliminated fewer than 600 positions in Northern Virginia. "In August, we were making a preliminary estimate based on very early information about how the company's new strategy would affect our structure," said...

1. "We're making a mint on your 401(k) — even if you're not." The number of 401(k) investors has soared in the past decade, to nearly 50 million from 28 million, according to Cerulli Associates. That torrid growth has created impressive efficiencies for the folks who run your plan. But it doesn't mean those savings show up in your account; in fact, they could be coming straight out of it. In a practice known as revenue sharing, providers get a cut of the expense ratio on the funds in your 401(k) to cover day-to-day "administrative costs." Since the fee is...

Do you agree with McCain's criticism of the former president? No 52% Yes 48% Total Votes: 188,313 Note on Poll Results

Let's tally up the poll at AOL News ...

RICHMOND (AP) -- The Virginia Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the nation's first felony conviction of illegal spamming. Jeremy Jaynes, of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the top 10 spammers in the world at the time of his arrest, used the Internet to peddle pornography and sham products and services, prosecutors said. Thousands of people fell for his scam, grossing Jaynes' operations up to $750,000 per month, investigators said. In its unanimous ruling, the appeals court wrote that Virginia has a "legitimate public interest" in policing unsolicited e-mail and that the state anti-spamming law's effect on interstate commerce "is incidental and...

Do Bush's policies make you feel more or less safe? Will his policies help or hurt Republicans in the midterm elections? ''[Our enemies] are successors to fascists, to Nazis, to communists and other totalitarians of the 20th century.'' Do you agree?

Although he was alarmed by AOL's haphazard release of its subscribers' online search requests, Google Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt said Wednesday the privacy concerns raised by that breach won't change his company's practice of storing the inquiries made by its users. "We are reasonably satisfied ... that this sort of thing would not happen at Google, although you can never say never," Schmidt said during an appearance at a major search engine conference in San Jose. The security breakdown, disclosed earlier this week, publicly exposed about 19 million search requests made by more than 658,000 AOL subscribers during the three...

For all of the hand-wringing that has occurred, and is occurring regarding the use of surveillance schemes by the NSA to uncover terrorists communications, the loss of personal privacy has been a recurring theme in the press, as well as the left blogsphere. More than anything, I think, it boils down to a distrust of the Republican administration. Not unlike the right's distrust of the previous Democrat administration. Remember the FBI files? Unless you conduct all of your transactions in cash, use shielded and encrypted internet connections, and stay away from telephones, you have no privacy. I'm not even sure...

AOL's publication of the search histories of more than 650,000 of its users has yielded more than just one of the year's bigger privacy scandals. The 21 million search queries also have exposed an innumerable number of life stories ranging from the mundane to the illicit and bizarre. For its part, AOL has apologized for a researcher's disclosure of the massive database and has yanked the file from its Web site. It was too late: The database already had been mirrored. That database does not include names or user identities. Instead, it lists only a unique ID number for each...

AOL criticized for spilling search data Internet division of Time Warner acknowledges 'screw-up' for releasing information on 20 million AOL searches. August 7 2006: 11:57 AM EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) -- AOL on Monday said it released a small portion of keyword search information for about 658,000 anonymous AOL users in a move that ignited a firestorm of criticism on the Internet amid calls for tighter protection of the privacy of users' Web searches. The Internet division of media conglomerate Time Warner (down $0.20 to $16.36, Charts) released information on about 20 million searches done from its AOL software over...

"AOL must have missed the uproar over the DOJ’s demand for “anonymized” search data last year that caused all sorts of pain for Microsoft and Google. That’s the only way to explain their release of data that includes 20 million web queries from 650,000 AOL users.The data includes all searches from those users for a three month period this year, as well as whether they clicked on a result, what that result was and where it appeared on the result page.... While the AOL username has been changed to a random ID number, the abilitiy to analyze all searches by...

Maxine Gauthier doesn't own a computer. She doesn't know the first thing about Web browsing or sending e-mail. She's not even sure where to find a computer's "on" button, as she describes it. Yet for the past nine months, she has been fighting one of the most persistent and some say irritating institutions in cyberspace: AOL, formerly known as America Online. "An AOL service guy told me to stop complaining and learn to use a computer," she said. "Then he hung up." Most of AOL's $1 billion in profits continues to come from subscriptions to dial-up service, a market it...

NEW YORK -- AOL said Thursday it expects to drop as many as 5,000 employees, or a quarter of its global work force, within six months as the company restructures its business to draw more online advertising dollars. The announcement came a day after the Time Warner Inc. unit said it would no longer charge high-speed Internet customers for e-mail and other services in hopes of preventing their defection to rivals like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which long have offered free, ad-supported e-mail. An unknown number of European employees will still have jobs, but with a different...

The announcement of free storage follows AOL's huge plans to re-invent itself fully with mostly free services. A key feature will be a major, free video service, where users can see on-demand TV shows from a wide variety of providers, upload their own videos, and search the Web for clips.

NEW YORK, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc.'s (TWX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) AOL online division on Thursday said about 5,000, or about 26 percent of its 19,000 employees, will not be employed by the company within six months as a result of its retructuring. "At a company meeting this morning, Jon Miller (AOL CEO) told AOL's worldwide work force of 19,000 people that within six months, it was likely that around 5,000 employees would no longer be with the company," the company said in a statement. AOL, which is in the process of selling its European Internet access business,...

Time Warner Inc. swung to a $1 billion profit in the second quarter and released details Wednesday of a long-anticipated plan to offer many AOL services such as e-mail for free. Time Warner lost $409 million in the same period a year ago, when the company recorded a $3 billion charge for settling securities litigation. The loss amounted to 9 cents per share a year ago.

John Murtha said the Haditha civilians were killed "in cold blood." What's your reaction? He's right He's wrong It's too early to say What do you think of the Marine sergeant's lawsuit against Murtha? It's justified It's not justified It's too early to say

Disappointment remains Wall Street's watchword on Time Warner (TWX) . The media behemoth overcame a challenge by restive shareholders earlier this year and is preparing to roll out a new plan for its torpid AOL unit. But as Time Warner prepares to post second-quarter earnings Wednesday morning, its stagnant share price continues to flummox investors. The New York media company, which owns cable systems, TV networks and movie studios, along with publishing and online properties, has seen its shares fall 7% in 2006. That lags behind the big-cap S&P 500, which is up 2%, and trails hard-charging peers Disney (DIS)...

Years ago after the installation of my first high-speed Internet-access line, I wrote a column that ended with the line, "Will the last person to leave America Online please shut off the router?" My comment then was a jab at the dial-up users and how they were silly to keep paying $24 a month for slow dial-up when broadband obviously was going to take over the world. After I wrote that, I noticed AOL actually grew by 2 million subscribers, hitting a peak of 27 million in 2002. Turns out I was correct, of course, but about five years too...

If President Bush looked at his approval ratings, would he smile or frown? It's hard to say. In fact, it's hard to say in which direction those ratings are headed. Two recent polls show slight upticks while another shows a slight dip. One thing's for sure, however: He is facing serious challenges all over the globe, from the Middle East to North Korea. How's he handling it? Tell us below.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Steve Case, co-founder of the one-time biggest online service AOL, apologized for the company's merger with media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. in an interview with U.S. journalist Charlie Rose. In an interview broadcast on Friday, Case, who was shoved aside as chairman in 2003 and who left the board entirely in 2005, said, "Yes, I'm sorry I did it," referring to the 2001 merger of Time Warner and AOL. The deal, known as one of the worst corporate mergers in history, destroyed some $200 billion in shareholder value. Last October, Case argued in a Washington Post...

In August of 2005, America Online settled with the office of NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer over complaints about how arduous AOL made it to cancel service. In addition to a $1.25 million fine, AOL agreed to streamline the cancellation process and submit all calls for third-party review. On June 13, 2006, Vincent Ferrari posted a recording he made of his attempt to leave America Online. It shot to national TV and revealed AOL hadn't learned the error of its ways. For "John," the call center employee heard on the tape, to deploy the kind of mental warfare heard on...

Ad Showing Troop Coffins Causes Clash of the Parties By ANNE E. KORNBLUT, The New York Times WASHINGTON, July 13 — In an echo of the last election cycle, political operatives are at odds over a Democratic advertisement featuring coffins coming home from war. The advertisement, a short film posted on the Web site of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is being attacked by Republicans as tasteless and disrespectful of American troops in Iraq. In 2004, President Bush’s campaign released an advertisement showing a flag-draped body being removed from the site of the World Trade Center after the terrorist attack...

AOL might have a new message for the Internet: You've got Dan. The Time Warner-owned Internet company is in negotiations with representatives for veteran CBS anchor Dan Rather to play a role in original programming for its online video offerings, sources said. If a deal is struck, AOL will be just one of several projects Rather has lined up for his post-CBS career. In addition to an announcement he is expected to make Tuesday at the Television Critics Assn. press tour regarding a programming venture with cable network HDNet, he also will make at least two appearances on NBC Universal's...

Can't post due to not having permission.

With just a handful of months to go before the midterm elections, the parties are drawing battle lines on Iraq. Witness Thursday's showdown in the Senate. Democrats fought -- and lost -- on two vigorously contested measures that called for withdrawing troops. What's your take? Which party has it right on the war?

An incredible video from CNBC shows an AOL customer trying to cancel his account, but a phone rep won't let him do it. What customer Vincent Ferrari got when he tried to cancel his account was a lot of frustration. It took him 15 minutes waiting on the phone just to reach a real, live person. And, what happened next was recorded by Ferrari on audio and lasted about four minutes:

Who Will Never Get Your Vote? Forget About Naming Favorites Rank Candidates You Oppose

Ted Turner Bids Media Conglomerate Adieu Without Usual Flare ATLANTA (AP) -- Ted Turner was uncharacteristically understated Friday as he departed Time Warner Inc., the media conglomerate that swallowed his cable network company and slowly sidelined him as a mover and shaker in the businesses that he helped to create. The CNN founder told Time Warner shareholders at their annual meeting he regrets not being able to do more for them. "I just wish the last five years I could have made a bigger contribution," Turner said. "I hung in there as long as I could. I've done my best."...

If I didn't know better, I'd almost think Time Warner's America Online does not like our twice-elected President, and that they want him to fail and the US to lose the war in Iraq.But undoubtedly I'm imagining things. And just to show it isn't personal, AOL also gives us front pages like this: Maybe they think it's good for business: Then again, maybe they'd rather push their agenda than make money.

AOL is laying off about 1,300 employees, or 7 percent of its worldwide work force, and is closing its call center in Jacksonville, Fla. Other cuts will come from call centers in Ogden, Utah, and Tucson, Ariz. The layoffs announced Tuesday represent the first major cuts since the Time Warner Inc. Internet unit cut about 700 positions last fall. Although AOL's subscription has been declining, spokesman Nicholas Graham attributed the layoffs to more savvy customers and better tools for them to help themselves. "The Internet world of 2006 is very different from the world of 1996 when AOL first established...

NASA and AOL Team Up to Give Kids a Virtual Ride into Space NASA and AOL have joined forces to bring the excitement and adventure of space exploration to young people. Through a Space Act Agreement, NASA's Office of Education and Space Operations Mission Directorate will collaborate with AOL to create "KOL-Expeditions NASA Earth Crew Missions", a series of live webcasts. To kick off this new partnership, AOL’s Kids Online service, KOL, will present a webcast from 10 to 11 a.m. EDT Thursday, May 4, during National Space Day at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The event will...