Amazon Debuts International Kindle; Cuts U.S Price to $259

Seattle - Amazon.com on Wednesday introduced an international version of its Kindle e-book reader device, the which will come bundled with AT&T 3G network coverage available in 100 countries, and retail for $279 when its ships on Oct. 19. Over 85 U.S. and international newspapers will be available in the Kindle Store, including La Stampa (Italy); El PaĆ­s (Spain); El Universal (Mexico); O Globo (Brazil); The Daily Telegraph (UK); Le Monde (France); and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany).more

Google Health Adds Two More Insurers, Only Has 267 To Go

Google announced today the addition of two new health insurance companies to its Google Health platform at the Health 2.0 – original naming FTW – event in San Francisco. The fact that the company is touting this addition on its main blog is telling because it cuts to the heart of the product's main challenge. With today's addition of both Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and the American Postal Workers Union Health Plan to the program, the current count of participating insurers is three (Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA joined late last year). Needless to say, there are hundreds more health insurance providers in the United States, so it's going to be a long haul for Google to include the majority of them in the program.  more

Microsoft launches Windows phones

The first Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphones go on sale on Tuesday, alongside an application store and cloud backup service. Microsoft is also formally launching its application store, known as Windows Marketplace for Mobile. more

Google targeted in e-mail scam

Google's web-based e-mail system, Gmail, has been targeted as part of an "industry-wide phishing scheme".

The firm said that it had immediately safeguarded the affected accounts. BBC News has seen two lists that detail more than 30,000 names and passwords from e-mail providers, including Yahoo and AOL, which were posted online.

The lists also include details of thousands of Microsoft Hotmail users. Google said fewer than 500 of its accounts had been affected by the scam.  more

Google announces View-through conversion reporting

Google has added a feature on the Google Content Network called View-through conversion reporting. The tool lets people better measure the impact of display ad campaigns where ads are seen, but not immediately clicked on, according to Amanda Kelly. She provides examples of how to use the tool, as well as the benefits. Some of those benefits include how to determine the best ways and places to advertise, how best to optimize display ad campaigns, and how to spend advertising dollars more effectively more

IBM taking on Google email platform

IBM is hoping to garner a share the corporate-mail market by introducing an inexpensive web-based corporate email service to compete with Google Inc's Google Apps and Microsoft.

The new web-based system, to be unveiled today will let users pick their domain name and will cost $3 per month, a price aimed directly at undercutting Google's $50 per year and the $10 to $12 per month that Microsoft charges for its webmail services. IBM also says it will offer 1 gigabyte of storage, twice the amount of Microsoft. It also hopes to move into the new territory as Google is encountering technical problems--some recent outages that have left business users in the dark for hours. more

Amazon Pays $150K to Settle Suit Over Kindle E-book Deletions

Amazon.com has paid $150,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by two Kindle e-book reader device owners over the company's remote deletion of their copies of George Orwell's "1984."

One of the plaintiffs was a high school student who claimed that, along with the copy of "1984," all of his annotations done for coursework had also been wiped out when Amazon deleted the book from his Kindle. more 

U.S. Internet Advertising Revenue Drops 5.3% in First Half

U.S. Internet advertising revenue dipped 5.3% to $10.9 billion in the first half of this year, according to new figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Search-related advertising amounted to more than $5.1 billion of the figure, up slightly from the same period in 2008, while spending on display ads fell 1.1% to $3.8 billion.more