Articles by David Jones

Apple stunned the wider development community on Monday with an emailed announcement that it has decided to slash commissions for App Store affiliates from 7 percent to 2.5 percent, starting May 1 The cuts apply to all apps and in-app content, Apple said. However, they do not apply to commissions for movies, music, books and TV, which will remain a...

Salesforce has entered an alliance with QuintilesIMS aimed at helping life sciences companies move treatments from clinical phases to commercial applications more effectively QuintilesIMS, formed last year through the merger of healthcare data provider IMS Health and medical research firm Quintiles Transnational, is one of the world's largest inte...

Google has been working on a plan to install an ad blocker onto its Chrome browser for both desktop and mobile versions, The Wall Street Journal reported this week It also has been considering a collaboration with Microsoft, Facebook and other firms to develop a set of standards that would determine which types of advertising to block from websites...

Healthgrades, an online resource to provide consumers with information about physicians and hospitals, on Wednesday launched CareChats, a tool that allows encrypted text and email conversations between patients and their healthcare providers Developed in partnership withConversa, CareChats enables doctors and hospitals to communicate with patients...

Microsoft on Tuesday announced the general availability of its phone sign-in for customers with Microsoft accounts -- a system that could be the beginning of the end for passwords The new system requires that customers add their accounts to the Microsoft Authenticator app, which comes in both iOS and Android versions, noted Alex Simons, director of...

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a long-anticipated executive order that addresses a campaign promise to begin shifting the country toward the "Buy American, Hire American" strategy that appealed to much of the industrial working class population in the Rust Belt states. The order calls on the U.S. government to shift purchasing toward dom...

Video footage of a senseless murder in Cleveland, posted after the fact on Facebook Live, has attracted national attention to the role of the platform in criminals' minds. Authorities Tuesday morning announced that Steve Stephens -- the 37-year-old suspect wanted for the cold-blooded shooting of Robert Godwin Sr. -- shot himself to death after a ...

Apple is working on a secret project to develop wearable devices that can monitor the blood sugar of diabetics without using invasive finger sticks, part of a vision that originated with company founder Steve Jobs, CNBC reported earlier this week. Apple has assembled a team of biomedical engineers from various companies to work on the project, acc...

The ability to run Android apps natively in a Linux desktop environment is a step closer to realization, thanks to Anbox, a new open-source project Simon Fels, who is the lead software engineer at Canonical, last week debuted a pre-alpha release of the Anbox platform, which he has been working on independently since 2015....

Qualcomm on Monday fired back with a response and counterclaim to Apple's US$1 billion federal patent suit filed earlier this year Apple breached agreements and encouraged regulatory attacks in a scheme to coerce unfair licensing terms, Qualcomm claimed.

Google has made a practice of paying female employees less than their male counterparts, a Department of Labor official alleged in court testimony last week. The agency found "systemic compensation disparities," regional director Janette Wipper said at a hearing in San Francisco, according to reports.

Canonical's long and winding quest for a unified user experience came to a sudden halt on Wednesday, as founder Mark Shuttleworth announced the firm's decision to stop investing in its struggling Unity8 shell and revert to Gnome for its Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop OS release The 6-year-old Unity plan was to create a user interface that would work acro...

Twitch, the Amazon-owned live-streaming video platform, on Tuesday launched its highly anticipated online game store. It includes goodie bags and other incentives, both for gamers who take the plunge and streamers who provide the content. Twitch earlier this year announced that it would be selling games and in-game content directly through the onl...

Verizon on Monday confirmed reports that it will rebrand its AOL and Yahoo businesses under a new entity called "Oath." AOL CEO Tim Armstrong delivered the message via a tweet. Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017. pic.twitter.com/tM3Ac1Wi36...

In a move that caps off its gradual embrace of open source in a bear hug, Microsoft last week announced that it would shutter its nearly 11-year-old CodePlex project site and migrate its library of work to GitHub. Microsoft has invested in Visual Studio Team Services as its "One Engineering Project" for proprietary projects and exposed many key op...

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has entered more rarefied air, having leapfrogged billionaires Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the second wealthiest person in the world Bezos -- chief executive of the e-commerce retailer and cloud services provider -- last week enjoyed a jump of US$1.5 billion to $75.6 billion net worth, according to Bloombe...

Samsung on Wednesday launched the Galaxy S8 and S8+, its next generation of smartphones. They feature major improvements in design and security processing power, as well as new digital assistant technology that may challenge the best devices on the market The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are available with 5.8 inch and 6.2 inch screens respectively. Both spor...

Amazon on Tuesday confirmed that it has agreed to buy Souq.com, the leading online retailer in the Middle East, reportedly edging out rival Emaar Malls' US$800 million offer Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Amazon reportedly agreed to pay less for Souq than Emaar had offered....

Red Hat on Monday announced a new Application Platform Partner Initiative at its North America Partner Conference in Las Vegas. The goal is to provide a more robust ecosystem for companies engaging in digital transformation. The company has started conducting tests in a pilot program with a small number of solutions-oriented consulting partners in...

Apple has received a ransom threat from a hacking group claiming to have access to data for up to 800 million iCloud accounts. The hackers, said to be a London-based group called the "Turkish Crime Family," have threatened to reset passwords and remotely wipe the iPhones of millions of iCloud users if Apple fails to hand over a total of US$700,000...