Rick Perera

A chapter of online history is closing, as CompuServe Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG shuts down its long-standing user forums, one of the oldest online-communities, in existence since CompuServe was founded in Ohio in 1969.

Electronic commerce operators that adequately protect their customers' and employees' personal information should be awarded a "seal of approval," the German official charged with data privacy has suggested.

Deutsche Telekom AG (DT) is "considering further legal steps" to stop regulators from forcing it to offer its competitors a wholesale flat rate for Internet access, spokesman Frank Domagala said Thursday. The move comes after a Cologne court rejected the company's bid for a temporary order blocking the required tariffs.

Slowing consumer demand and a softening business climate in the United States have led to disappointing PC sales, according to a report released Monday by research and consulting company International Data Corp (IDC).

Barcelona is putting microprocessors in the trash. The Spanish city has announced a plan to outfit its public litter bins with memory chips designed to store data such as how full the containers are and when they were last emptied, according to a statement.

Online recruiting company StepStone ASA has obtained a court injunction in Germany preventing a competitor from providing hypertext links to StepStone's online job advertisements. The lawsuit is expected to provide an important test of the legality of "deep links," which bypass home pages and go directly to information deep within a site.

Troubled satellite-phone operator Globalstar Telecommunications Ltd. announced Tuesday it is indefinitely suspending payment on its debt, as it attempts to develop a new plan to salvage the business.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of the world's advanced economies, is continuing work to untangle the thorny questions surrounding taxation of cross-border electronic commerce transactions.