Physical media such as CD and DVD is very slowly but surely being replaced by digital formats. Whether it’s streaming or downloads, physical is the past, digital is the present and future. As if to prove that, Linn Products is ceasing manufacture of all CD players, instead concentrating on its hard drive-based streaming players. Surely the first of many companies to take this decision.

If you were hoping to purchase the nook ereader from Barnes & Noble for the holiday gift giving season, hopefully you did it before now.

YouTube has announced it will offer automated video captioning for clips. It will serve as an accessibility tool for hard-of-hearing viewers, but could also make clips easier to find.

Skype has finally been sold off from beleaguered auction house eBay, though they will retain a 30 percent stake in the company.

Sony unveiled plans for a digital download store to sell music, videos and books just like Apple’s iTunes. What the company forgot to mention is that the digital download space is already too crowded.

City-wide Wi-Fi networks which offer wireless Internet connectivity for free to all residents who want it have pretty much failed to succeed across the United States so far. However, Swindon, a large town in England, is about to get a mesh Wi-Fi network built, and the plans and technology could be rolled out to other towns and cities across the U.K.

The launch of popular music streaming service Spotify has already been delayed once in the U.S.A., and now it may be delayed even more due to the record labels not liking the business model.

The rumors of the Apple Tablet have now reached a level of surrealism that makes you think someone from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks is running the show. At any moment the Little Man from Another Place is going to come out, snap his fingers, talk backwards and do a little dance.  Make sure to enjoy some coffee with the show.

A problem with the Federal Aviation Authority’s computer system has caused widespread delays and cancellations. The agency stresses there is no security or safety risk stemming from the glitch.

In the last month, Facebook has overtaken sites like ESPN, ABC and CBS to become the number three video site on the Web.

Email is currently one of the key elements of the Internet. And sending and receiving email is usually one of the first things we learn to do when going online for the first time. But its life could be coming to an end with new research predicting the demise of email within a decade. Its killers? Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and instant messaging apps such as Skype and MSN Live Messenger.

Microsoft announced today that it has officially begun work on Internet Explorer 9.

In a completely unsurprising announcement, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Live division, today announced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC), that development began three weeks ago on Internet Explorer 9.

It seems some big name online retailers thought it would be okay to trick consumers into giving their credit card information to third-party vendors. The United States Senate is letting them know they thought wrong.

Google is scheduled to give the first public demonstration of its forthcoming Chrome operating system tomorrow. Here are some of the questions which could be answered by the event:

Twitter is a massively popular social networking and micro-blogging site that has gained an inordinate amount of headlines and copy over the past year or so. But what is the nature of Twitter? Is it for people to converse and share ideas, or is it for companies to try and connect with their customers and ultimately sell stuff? Stephen Fry, unsurprisingly, has an opinion on the matter.

A new update has gone out for Palm’s webOS, and for once it does not include iTunes syncing.

At least one of the newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has begun to outline how it expects readers to begin paying for the news.