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Twitter posted healthy revenue for the second quarter -- US$312 million, up 124 percent year-over-year. Its profit? Not there yet. However, even though the company reported a net loss of $145 million, investors are likely to overlook the lack of profit for some time. Financials aside, what Twitter really wants everyone to know is that it is big --...

Government snooping on Americans would be curtailed under a bill introduced Tuesday in the U.S. Senate The measure, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., would ban bulk collection of domestic information, limit the scope of searches by government agencies, and add transparency and reporting requirements. Further, it would ref...

Samsung has delayed the launch of its Samsung Z smartphone running the Tizen OS, which was scheduled for Q3 release in Russia The move, just short of two months after the Samsung Z's launch at the Tizen Developers Conference, sparked a death watch for the device....

An Android vulnerability that exists in every version from v2.1 Eclair to v. 4.3 Jelly Bean could expose millions of users, Bluebox Security has warned The flaw lets attackers fake the certificates of specially privileged parties, such as Adobe and Google Wallet, and serve them up with malware that bypasses detection by Android....

The TV game show The Price is Right may be an entertaining diversion, but for federal information technology vendors, getting the price right in government contracts is serious business. Two major software providers recently found out how serious it can be as a result of separate U.S. Department of Justice investigations The DoJ last week announced...

As Amazon's Fire Phone finds its way into consumers' hands, brick-and-mortar retailers are on guard. Amazon's new device is equipped with technology that seems to have been designed to take showrooming to new heights -- or depths, depending on one's perspective. The Fire Phone, in brief, has functionality that lets users scan an item they see in f...

OkCupid has admitted carrying out psychological experiments on its users Because OkCupid doesn't really know what it's doing, it needs to experiment to see what works and what doesn't, cofounder Christian Rudder wrote in a blog post.

BlackBerry on Tuesday announced plans to acquire Secusmart, a developer of high-security voice and data encryption and anti-eavesdropping technologies Mobile devices increasingly are being used for more critical tasks and to store more critical information, noted John Chen, BlackBerry's executive chairman and CEO.

China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce on Tuesday announced it has launched an investigation into Microsoft under the country's antimonopoly laws, according to press reports The announcement comes days after SAIC officials reportedly raided Microsoft offices in four cities, seizing documents, emails and other data from servers and com...

Bubblews, a social media platform that offers to pay users for their posts, last week moved out of its testing phase, which began in 2012. It emerged with a new look designed to attract users who might be dissatisfied with other social media offerings Bubblews is attempting to build a self-sustaining ecosystem in which users who create engaging pos...

Let's get one thing straight: E-commerce will not kill the physical retail store. Hold on, I hear you object, the digital world has utterly disrupted our shopping habits. We rarely enter a store without having researched the big-ticket items we want to buy. Much of our holiday shopping is done with the click of a mouse. When we do venture into a ...

A new way to extend battery life would allow smartphones to last three to four times longer on a single charge, Stanford University researchers have found A team led by Yi Cui, professor of materials science and engineering, has developed pure metal anode prototypes, which differ from the lithium-ion batteries seen in most devices. The anode is the...

It appears Apple is close to acquiring talk radio app Swell for US$30 million.Much of Swell's development team will be joining Apple, and the app will be shut down sometime this week, Re/code reported Although Swell managed to raise $7.2 million from the likes of DFJ, Google Ventures and InterWest Partners, it hasn't been able to get much traction ...

Tellwise, a two-and-a-half year old startup, has introduced a new collaboration platform for sales reps to target prospects. Called "Smart Messages," the multichannel platform comes equipped with such tools as intelligent notifications, behavioral analytics and mobile functionality. Smart Messages is the culmination of the vision of Tellwise's cof...

China is ramping up its campaign against Microsoft, following its ban in May on the installation of Windows 8 on government computers Officials of China's State Administration for Industry & Commerce reportedly have made unannounced visits to Microsoft offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu. They apparently questioned staff in at leas...

Looking for evidence of disability fraud, the district attorney for Manhattan (New York County), in July 2013 obtained 381 search warrants, supported by a 93-page affidavit, and served them on Facebook as part of a long-term investigation into a massive scheme The search warrants were "sealed," which means they were not made public. The grounds for...

Another Yahoo acquisition hit the news last week -- Flurry Analytics, and it was widely seen as a bid to raise the company's profile in the hot mobile ad market Mobile advertising will exceed US$31 billion this year, eMarketerhas predicted....

Skully had its coming-out party last week, and while the name unfortunately sounds like the nickname for any number of comic book villains -- from Skeletor to the Red Skull -- it is actually a firm that makes a pretty incredible high-technology motorcycle helmet, with technology similar to Google Glass. Motorcycles have lagged cars in technology ...

Google is seeking 175 volunteers from whom it will collect bodily samples in an effort to create their biochemical fingerprints and establish the baseline for a healthy body The Baseline study, to be run by Google X labs, will seek to connect traditional clinical observations of health, such as diet -- or habits, such as smoking -- with molecular-l...

Google apparently is adding another prominent streaming video service to nestle alongside YouTube in its stable. It reportedly has acquired Twitch for around US$1 billion When the deal will be announced and the official purchase price are not yet clear, VentureBeat reported, though Twitch investors are said to be pleased with the return on their eq...