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If you were to administer truth serum and ask a retailer how it really felt about Amazon Prime, chances are the response would be that it's pure genius -- or pure evil genius, perhaps. Why? Because Amazon Prime encourages shoppers to come back and back again to browse and buy, and it's all based on an incentive that online consumers hold very dear...

Security pros weren't very kind to mobile applications last week. A number of firms knocked apps produced for the smartphone market for all kinds of risky behaviors that could lead to trouble not only for mobile device owners, but also for their employers While Android has been a poster child for misbehaving apps in the past, competitor Apple's app...

Nokia on Monday confirmed months of speculation with the unveiling of its X family of smartphones running Android The X, X+ and XL smartphones are priced at US$123, $136 and $150, respectively....

Netflix users who subscribe to Comcast Internet services soon may enjoy much smoother streaming video The companies have agreed to a "mutually beneficial interconnection agreement" with the goal of giving Comcast's U.S. broadband customers a high-quality experience when using Netflix's streaming video service....

Apple earlier this month dropped the Bitcoin app Blockchain from its mobile marketplace without giving any explanation. Bitcoin holders obviously were upset with this development. In fact, I recently saw a Web video in which a Bitcoin holder actually shot at and destroyed his iPhone because he was so angry and wanted to make a dramatic statement Bl...

Google on Friday announced its purchase of online ad fraud fighter Spider.io It initially will include Spider's fraud detection technology in its video and display ad products.

It's not often I see news that surprises me, but Facebook paying nearly US$20 billion for an instant messaging app had me scratching my head. People have been paying too much for properties for some time, but this is crazy money for a class of product that stopped being trendy nearly a decade ago. I've come up with three reasons, none of which a...

Not every buyer-seller experience starts with a customer expecting to be delighted. There are lots of purchases we make because we're forced to make them -- something we need breaks, or an outside entity requires us to buy something. We're not buying because we want to, or even because the purchase will make our business run better -- we have to buy or we're stuck...

Of all the Samsung Galaxy S5 rumors to hit this week, the one that hadme sit up straight and pay close attention is the rumor that the newGalaxy S5 may be both waterproof and dustproof This is a big deal, because it would be the first major flagshipsmartphone with wide and popular distribution to be waterproof....

A new space observatory expected to launch by 2024 will seek out Earth-sized planets and super-Earths orbiting distant stars, the European Space Agency announced Wednesday Dubbed "PLATO," for "PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars," it will use 34 small telescopes and cameras to search for planets around as many as a million stars spread ove...

Google is making an increased push into the 3D imaging sphere with the announcement of its Project Tango technology The project is aimed at helping mobile devices fully map a 3D space to give them the same type of understanding of space and motion that humans have through a blend of robotics and computer vision tools....

What's in a name? Microsoft is hoping more traffic to two of its online properties The company has renamed its cloud storage service because of legal entanglements and the website for free versions of its Office productivity apps because of consumer confusion....

A French teen faces charges of "endangering the lives of others" over his use of a drone, which he sent skyward to capture impressive (and seemingly harmless) footage of the city Nancy Eighteen-year-old Nans Thomas affixed an Internet-bought drone with a GoPro camera and then sent the contraption skyward. The ensuing video has been viewed more than...

Amazon and Apple just can'tseem to catch a break with the advertising elite on Madison Avenue. Infact, advertising sales are a "tough slog" forboth companies, mourns a feature in the latest Advertising Age. The problem? Apple and Amazon won't reveal enoughinformation about their customers This is the best news I've heard all year. In fact, it just ...

Etm, an acronym for "Event and Task Manager," is a very useful calendar and planning tool. However, it is a bit cumbersome to learn and far less convenient to use than alternatives.It has an intuitive task-entry format, once you learn its plain text shorthand. Etm stores events, tasks and other user-generated notes and data in text files. You can ...

The World Resources Institute on Thursday launched Global Forest Watch, a dynamic online forest monitoring and alert system to help fight the massive deforestation of the planet ...

Google has revealed plans to expand its Google Fiber Internet service to as many as 34 new cities Google Fiber offers connection speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps -- around 100 times faster than the average U.S. speeds of 9.8 Mb/sec, according to Akamai -- by providing service through fiber-optic cables instead of copper wiring.

Facebook on Wednesday announced the acquisition of WhatsApp in a US$19 billion deal geared toward increasing its global connectivity The company paid $4 billion in cash, $12 billion worth of Facebook shares and an additional $3 billion in restricted stock to acquire WhatsApp. Facebook was drawn to the company's ability not only to connect mobile us...

Facebook's US$19 billion purchase of mobile-messaging service WhatsApp appears to have buoyed the value of BlackBerry Messenger -- and by extension, BlackBerry BlackBerry shares went up nearly 10 percent in after-hours trading because, in the words of Reuters, Facebook's purchase "put a rough valuation metric around the smartphone maker's own Black...

What's most unexpected about the acquisition of Time Warner Cable is that the buyer is Comcast. Will the regulators give their blessing or block the deal? If approved, what changes can we expect as investors, customers and workers? If it is not approved, then what comes next? The cable television industry is completely different today from 10 years...