Archive

In recent months I have been asked many times whether the brand new BlackBerry 10 operating system and new handsets like the Z10 and Q10 are hits or misses. The answer is simple: It depends. It's a matter of what you want and expect. The new BlackBerry handsets do satisfy a segment of the user base,...

Internet streaming TV service Aereo may face ongoing legal battles, but on Thursday it pushed ahead apparently undaunted and announced the upcoming launch of its service in Chicago. The news comes just a month after the company kicked off its Atlanta launch, adding to its existing base of New York C...

A U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner is urging consumers to take more control over their data. The call to action comes as revelations that the NSA is spying on Americans to an unprecedented degree continue to shake the country. Unease has been mounting over the amount of data companies are handing ove...

The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection on Monday issued a letter to search engines including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, advising them to provide better labeling and notification of advertising that appears alongside search results. The letter is an update to guidelines issued...

If you've been looking at your watch to read your emails today, there's a good chance that you're a Kickstarter backer. Kickstarter is a Web-based crowdfunding platform that's designed for raising money from the public. Project creators pick a deadline and required funding level. Donors pledge money...

If you own an iPhone or Android mobile phone and work at a BlackBerry shop, it will be simpler from now on to keep the personal information and apps on your device segregated from those you use for work. That's thanks to BlackBerry's Tuesday release of Secure Work Space, an iOS and Android solution ...

In a drive to reduce government computing costs, federal agencies have been required to cut and consolidate data centers. So far, agencies have reduced hundreds of operational centers -- but they still have fallen short of a five-year target set when the consolidation program was launched in Februar...

Microsoft is accelerating its push into the education market with new initiatives including a school-friendly version of its Bing search engine and discount prices for its Surface RT tablets. Bing for Schools, which will be available later this year, is an optional Bing experience for K-12 students ...

"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer," as the old saying goes, and this week Oracle took steps to do just that. Specifically, the database giant inked partnership deals with longtime competitors Microsoft and Salesforce.com in a bid to expand its reach in cloud computing. Announced on Mo...

AOL has joined the throng of companies launching RSS readers in the hope of attracting the users who will be without their Google Reader feed come July 1. AOL is positioning its entry as the single online spot readers can turn to for content from all their favorite websites. AOL Reader will be avail...

Samsung on Monday announced pricing and other details for its 7-, 8- and 10.1-inch Galaxy Tab 3 family. All three are WiFi-enabled and will be available in the U.S. on July 7. Samsung began taking preorders on Tuesday. Pricing ranges from $200 to $400. They will come with hundreds of dollars' worth ...

There's no denying that Bitcoins have caused considerable controversy since their appearance on the financial scene back in 2009, but recently the virtual currency encountered a new kind of obstacle. Specifically, the Bitcoin Foundation received a letter from the California Department of Financial I...

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been nothing if not persistent in his efforts to keep Michael Dell from rebuilding his computer business as a private company, but on Monday Icahn's stock repurchase proposal got the thumbs-down again. A special committee of Dell's board of directors, formed to we...

U.S. residential broadband Internet penetration has grown more than 400 percent since 2002, when just 16.5 million U.S. households had fast Internet service. The increased presence of these high-speed connections has implications for a variety of devices, which increasingly are arriving in the home ...

Anyone who has flown in the past two decades knows the drill: Electronic devices including mobile phones, tablets and handheld game systems must be turned off when the airplane doors are closed. Soon, however, those rules may change, the FAA announced this week. "The FAA recognizes consumers are int...