First Shots of Microsoft's Secret Project Pink Phone
These are the first photos of Microsoft's Project Pink phones, snatched from deep within the bowels of the Microsoft/Verizon industrio-complex —not the Turtle, but the larger, Sidekick-like Pure. Thi...
Microsoft talks Windows Phone 7 Series development ahead of GDC: Silverlight, XNA, and no backward compatibility
Microsoft is keen on unveiling the meat of its developer story around Windows Phone 7 Series at MIX10 in less than two weeks, but with GDC coming up next week …
Different Day, Different Lawyer, Same Meritless Claim: A Classic Race to the Courthouse
As many folks know, a lawsuit was filed against Yelp last week alleging we move reviews around to reward advertisers and punish non-advertisers. Of course, we don't.
Sony Gadgets Take Aim at Apple
Threatened by Apple Inc.'s growing stable of portable devices, Sony Corp. is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smart phone capable of downloading and playing videogames, accord...
Ballmer: Microsoft ‘Betting Our Company’ On The Cloud
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is still most closely associated with its desktop software (Windows, Office etc.), but on Thursday CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft was “betting our company” on the cloud. Abou...
YouTube Launches Auto-Captions For All Videos
I'm here at YouTube's office in San Bruno, where the company is holding a press conference to discuss the launch of auto-captions. YouTube Director of Product Management Hunter Walk kicked off the ev...
Google adds free cloud “backup” to Apps, feature that reduces risk of data loss
Google, in its continued quest to lure enterprise customers to switch to the cloud-based Google Apps suite, is upping its offering with a free feature called synchronous replication.
Mac Developer license falls to $99/year, Mac App Store coming?
We're running on pure Ultra 94 Octane Speculation here but might Apple be readying a Mac App Store? — Before you hit the Flame button, hear us out. Today, after that long outage, the App Store came...
Fired ‘Call of Duty’ developers sue Activision for more than $36 million [Updated]
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has led to legal warfare at Activision. — Jason West and Vince Zampella, the former heads of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare development studio Infinity Ward, who were fire...
Facebook Friends: Meet Yahoo! Contacts
You might have heard that Yahoo! announced plans in December to integrate Facebook Connect across a variety of our popular sites and services. While we're still early in the partnership, we wanted to...
Google and the Tor Project
When it comes to code, Google's support has made a big difference to the Tor Project. Providing privacy and helping to circumvent censorship online is a challenge that keeps our software developers a...
The bigger picture
Video on the internet: Why are public broadcasters experimenting with the “peer-to-peer” technology beloved of online pirates? — From The Economist print edition — LAST year Norway's public broadc...
Eye Tracking Study: Users Largely Blind To Real-Time Results In Search
Online marketing firm OneUpWeb recently conducted an eye-tracking study about the impact of integrating real-time data into search results. The study involved 44 people divided into two groups: “cons...
U.S. Mobile Market: Highly Competitive, and the iPhone Still Rocks
Pretty much everything you've read about the U.S. mobile industry is true: The networks suck — some more than others — and the iPhone is still a king-maker. Yet according to data collected by Wireles...
New Potato's FLPR IR dongle gives your iPhone home automation capabilities
It's hard to say why we've seen a glut of these adapters hit all within the same week, but hey, the more the merrier! North Carolina's own New Potato Technologies (yes, we're serious) has followed up...
Working with Zuck
I get asked often what it is like to work with Zuck ("Zuck" is our nickname for Mark Zuckerberg) because they want to know how to do it themselves. I don't claim to be an expert at it myself, but I'v...
MOG preps a mobile app for SXSW showdown with Spotify
Be prepared for a music startup showdown in Austin. MOG, a Berkeley-based music streaming startup, will debut its mobile app a day before its European rival Spotify takes the stage at the SXSW festiv...
In three years desktops will be irrelevant - Google sales chief
Google believes that in three or so years desktops will give way to mobile as the primary screen from which most people will consume information and entertainment. That's according to Google Europe b...
Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from iTunes
Pretends they were never there — Wi-Fi hotspot detecting applications are the latest on Apple's list of verboten apps, and even developers are being left in the dark as to why. — Wi-Fi detection i...
An Explosion of Mobile Patent Lawsuits
At first glance, it looks as if we're in the middle of a patent lawsuit Super Bowl party. Nearly every large mobile phone player — with the exception of Microsoft, Palm and, so far, Google — has rec...
Confirmed: Microsoft's Project Pink Lives, and It's Coming to Verizon
After the Windows Phone 7 launch passed without so much as a mention of Project Pink, Microsoft's other new phone project started to fade into memory. Today, we can confirm: Pink is coming, and Veriz...
Microsoft Launches Its First Android App. Yes, Google's Platform.
In December 2008, Microsoft surprised a lot of people by releasing an iPhone app — Seadragon Mobile. A month later, they ensured the move wasn't taken as a joke or gimmick by launching another app, T...
Sony's Comeback Plan Includes PlayStation Smartphone
The long-rumored Sony (NYSE: SNE) Playstation phone is now becoming a reality. — Sony is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smartphone that would be capable of downloading and...
Apple's iPad expected to be part of 10.5M tablets shipped in 2010
The buzz kickstarted by Apple with its long-awaited iPad is expected to produce a total of 10.5 million shipped tablet devices in 2010, representing a new and significant change for the PC market.
TiVo: Appeals Court Upholds Contempt Finding In DISH Case (Updated)
TiVo (TIVO) shares are rocketing higher after a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling which found found DISH Network (DISH) and Echostar (SATS) in contempt of a previous ruling which found...
Google and the Tor Project
When it comes to code, Google's support has made a big difference to the Tor Project. Providing privacy and helping to circumvent censorship online is a challenge that keeps our software developers a...
Facebook Ads Strike Some as Off-Key
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, the world's biggest social network, is selling more ad spots to big companies like Wal-Mart Stores, Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo. — But the site's pages are also home to co...
The AOL Executive Shuffle Continues: Entertainment Chief Mike Rich Departs
There's been a lot of churn in AOL's executive and employee ranks since Tim Armstrong became CEO. The latest exec to head for the door is 9-year veteran Mike Rich, who is the senior VP in charge of A...
Lords copyright change ‘could block YouTube’
One of the most contentious parts of the controversial digital economy bill was voted down by the House of Lords last night - only to be replaced by a clause that campaigners say is even more draconia...
In Mobile, Fragmentation is Forever. Deal With It.
Editor's note: Richard Wong is a venture capitalist with Accel Partners, an investor in AdMob, GetJar, and SunRun, and a former mobile industry executive. In this guest post he argues that the fragme...
Nearly 300M VoIP Subscribers Seen By 2013
There will be 288 million users of Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) by 2013, according to market research firm In-Stat. While so far, VoIP has been driven largely by the likes of cable companies t...
ASUS CEO talks tablets, smartbooks and Windows Phone 7 Series phones
Ever wonder about the man behind the insane amount of ASUS products we cover? We do too, which is why we jumped at the chance to sit down with ASUS CEO Jerry Shen here at CeBIT. Our lengthy discussi...
TripIt Receives $7M Third Round of Funding
Accelerates Investment in Mobile Applications and Enterprise Collaboration — TripIt, the trip management company, has closed a third round of funding, receiving $7 million from a group of investors ...
Bing's Facebook Page Gets 400,000 New Fans in a Day Through Ad Offer in Farmville
In the latest example of brand advertising integrated into social games, Microsoft ran an advertising offer for Bing within Zynga's hit game FarmVille on Tuesday. If users became a fan of Bing's Face...
Android marketshare growing, iPhone shrinking, says Quantcast
IT TOPICS:Macintosh & Apple, Mobile & Wireless, Open Source, Operating Systems, Personal Technology — Apple, if they needed a reason to go after HTC, and by proxy Google, may have had it in marketsh...
Google admits its SEO could use a little work
Google has published a detailed, 49-page report that rates the search engine optimization (SEO) on its various properties including the Google search home page. The result? It's failing in a number ...
Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA
Related Issues: DMCA, DMCA Rulemaking, Innovation, Intellectual Property — This document collects reported cases where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been invoked not against pir...
Feds weigh expansion of Internet monitoring
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who said that Einstein 3 could only be discussed in a classified setting, speaks at the RSA conference on Wednesday. — SAN FRANCISCO—Homeland Security a...