Online retailer Amazon.com Inc. is trying to beef up its user-driven research site, just weeks after Google Inc. abandoned its 4-year-old effort.

Amazon’s Askville.com site, like others in the online answer service niche, allows visitors to post questions to be answered by other users.

Askville has been in testing for a few months and opened to the general public in December. Like leader Yahoo Answers, Askville is free, and participants can earn points based on the quality of answers they provide.

Source: AP

Foreign-born entrepreneurs were behind one in four U.S. technology startups over the past decade, according to a study to be published Thursday.

A team of researchers at Duke University estimated that 25 percent of technology and engineering companies started from 1995 to 2005 had at least one senior executive - a founder, chief executive, president or chief technology officer - born outside the United States.

Immigrant entrepreneurs’ companies employed 450,000 workers and generated $52 billion in sales in 2005, according to the survey.

Source: AP

A defunct online movie service has sued Apple Computer Inc., Google Inc. and Napster Inc. claiming patent infringement over the distribution of video over the Internet.

The patent in question, filed in 2001 and granted in 2005, outlines the business model for offering video content from various providers to consumers over the TV and the Internet, Intertainer Inc. said in its lawsuit.

Intertainer claims Apple, Google and Napster are using the patent without permission. The lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas, seeks damages and a permanent injunction.

Apple recently started selling movies through its popular iTunes online store, while Google offers a mix of free and for-pay video content and recently bought the highly trafficked video-sharing site YouTube. Napster runs an Internet music service.

Source: AP

A patent filed by Sony shows the company may have its eye on building the younger, hipper version of the Segway scooter.

In November, the company filed patent No. 20060260862 for a skateboard, “which can travel in the front and back direction and which can turn by right and left wheels rotated when a rider riding on a step-board moves the position of rider’s balance from the center of a vehicle base.”

Like the Segway, Sony’s futuristic skateboard would be steered by riders shifting their weight. The patent also says the board’s electric motors would turn off automatically when the rider steps off, or, perhaps more realistically, falls off.

Source: News.com

E-mail scammers will be left with “nowhere to hide” following moves to tighten up European consumer protection, according to the U.K. government.

By establishing a network of national enforcement bodies with powers to work together across the European Union, the Consumer Protection Cooperation regulation, which comes into force this month, will help tackle rogue traders who prey on consumers across European borders.

Previously, wide differences in the structures of law enforcement agencies and the methods they use have hampered prosecutions. The new regulations require enforcement authorities to help each other by exchanging information and cooperating on cross-border cases.

The U.K.’s coordinating enforcement body will be the Office of Fair Trading.

The new measures will tackle cross-border scams, including those using e-mail and those that offer phony prizes, distribute misleading advertising and use pressure selling. Also targeted are phone scams based in other EU countries and rogue traders of time-share and vacation club properties.

Source: News.com

Toyota Motor Corp. is developing a fail-safe system for cars that detects drunken drivers and automatically shuts the vehicle down if sensors pick up signs of excessive alcohol consumption, a news report said Wednesday.

Cars fitted with the detection system will not start if sweat sensors in the driving wheel detect high levels of alcohol in the driver’s bloodstream, according to a report carried by the mass-circulation daily, Asahi Shimbun.

The system could also kick in if the sensors detect abnormal steering, or if a special camera shows that the driver’s pupils are not in focus. The car is then slowed to a halt, the report said.

The world’s No. 2 automaker hopes to fit cars with the system by the end of 2009, according to the report. Calls to Toyota’s headquarters in Nagoya rang unanswered on Wednesday, a public holiday.

Source: AP