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The two largest phone companies in Canada are in talks for a possible merger that could fend off U.S.-backed private equity buyers as the wave of consolidation that reshaped the U.S. telecommunications landscape appears poised to hit north of the border. BCE, the largest phone provider in Canada, confirmed Thursday that it was in talks with the country’s No. 2 firm Telus about a transaction in which Telus would buy BCE. BCE did not disclose terms of the proposed deal.

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Regulators in Europe have given the green light to a planned Internet joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.: a Web video repository seen as a competitor to Google’s YouTube. The yet-to-be-named venture — first announced in March following weeks of speculation — is expected to launch sometime this summer and, at least at first, will be an outlet mainly for video content from the two media companies. European Commission regulators had been reviewing the proposed plan for possible antitrust issues since shortly after it was announced.

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Earlier this month, it looked for a while as though there might be another wave of multi-jurisdictional investigations against Microsoft reminiscent of the antitrust saga that began in 1998. Google had been complaining — first behind the scenes, then publicly — about the lack of access for third-party search engines in Microsoft’s latest operating system, Vista. Antitrust authorities on the state level were starting to sniff around. On Wednesday, though, Microsoft announced it would make changes to Vista that would satisfy Google’s concerns.

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It goes without saying that most IT shops operate in a high-stress, high-workload environment. As technologists, we have limited budgets, limited staff, and dozens of projects on our plate — it often feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day just to keep up with today’s workload, never mind planning for tomorrow’s. Just ask yourself when the last time was that you heard someone complain about too much work or not enough time. For most of us, the answer to that will be measured in hours rather than days or weeks.

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Have you ever walked into a big box store and seen scores of half-full shopping carts scattered throughout the aisles? It would seem unlikely, but for e-commerce retailers, abandoned carts are more common than you think. Shopping cart abandonment has existed since the dawn of the e-cart, but how can retailers determine why customers leave? What can they do to reduce shopping cart abandonment and ultimately increase online sales? Customers leave for various reasons, the most common being high shipping costs and requests for registration.

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