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AOL on Monday launched a limited version of Gathr, which aggregates online services for subscription at discounts of up to 60 percent of what they would cost on their own. Monthly subscriptions to prebundled packages start at $15, and some come with a bonus $10 Amazon gift card. Alternatively, con...

In a paperless society, office file cabinets may become an endangered species. However, the need to store documents will remain. The U.S. government is struggling to develop efficient means to retain billions of electronic messages. NARA is playing a central role in the government-wide effort to ret...

In AMC's Breaking Bad, high school chemistry teacher Walter White, although starting out as a protagonist, descends into depravity and ruin. Clearly, not all high school chemistry teachers are Walter Whites. Similarly, not all scientists, innovators and patent owners are evil. Yet Congress, at the u...

As the prolific trend of adoption would suggest, the case for cloud is compelling from both a business and technology perspective. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the more compelling reasons from a technologist's point of view has to do with the ability to abstract lower levels of...

Apple has displaced Coca-Cola as the leading global brand in Interbrand's 14th annual Best Global Brands report, ending the soda maker's 13-year rule. Google took second place, pushing Coke into third. Overall, tech companies grabbed five of the top 10 slots. "It surprised me because Apple doesn't h...

Silicon Valley loves an underdog. That's partly because such tales feed the industry's self-mythologizing and the IPO culture that attracts fresh money and new investors. To be honest, IT can boast more than its fair share of such successes: Hewlett and Packard, Jobs and Wozniak, and Page and Brin a...

Ford has announced the acquisition of Livio Connect, a 5-year-old Michigan company that wields influence in the car connectivity field out of proportion to its size. That's partly because Livio's technology is used by some major players and partly because Livio's Keys marketplace is a B2B exchange w...

Google may have breached federal and California wiretapping laws by machine-scanning Gmail messages in order to deliver targeted advertising, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh ruled on Thursday. As a result of the ruling, a class-action suit against Google over the issue can now proceed. The suit, whi...

Google on Thursday introduced a new search algorithm called "Hummingbird." The company actually started rolling out the algorithm about a month ago, but it formally unveiled it on Thursday, the 15-year anniversary of Google Search's launch. At the heart of the new algorithm is a new, better ranking ...

An ever-increasing proportion of the world's communications and activity occurs online, but that doesn't mean everyone has bought into the concept. In fact, a full 15 percent of American adults remain offline, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Proje...

Google announced Wednesday that it is opening its Google Shopping Express service to shoppers in the entire San Francisco Bay Area, marking the official launch and first big expansion of the company's same-day delivery service. Google began testing the retail delivery service earlier this year among...

eBay on Thursday announced that it is acquiring payment startup Braintree for $800 million in cash. eBay will combine Braintree, which provides technology for processing payments on the Web and mobile devices, with its PayPal payments division. Braintree expects to process some $12 billion in paymen...

Amazon on Wednesday announced the Kindle Fire HDX, the third generation of its line of tablets. It comes in 7-inch and 8.9-inch versions and has an HDX display, a quad-core 2.2 GHz processor, more memory and dual stereo speakers. It includes free 24x7x365 tech support and a host of new features. Ama...

The BlackBerry news of last Friday was bleak, with a billion-dollar loss and the cutting of 40 percent of its workforce. It looked as though BlackBerry was crashing and burning. Even though this was terrible news, I knew it had several different options. It was up to the company to decide which dire...

RealNetworks on Tuesday announced RealPlayer Cloud, a new service that allows users to upload video files to the company's servers and then view and share them across devices. Billed by the company as the first integrated video player and cloud service, RealPlayer Cloud automatically transforms vide...