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MeteoEarth is available for US$3.99 in the Google Play store.You know those fancy, animated weather visualizations that you get on the local television news broadcasts -- the ones with the 3D drill-down dynamic graphics that make it appear as if the meteorologist is directing the clouds?...

Battery managers, task killers, analyzers and monitoring apps make up the basis of a solid Android mobile tool kit This week's All Things Appy takes a look at the must-have, free apps in this genre that will keep your device operating swimmingly....

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 a limited set of invited consumers in a few areas ...

eBay on Thursday announced that it is acquiring payment startup Braintree for US$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 payments this year for thousands of online and mobile c...

Departing from the normal routine of chiding Google over taxes, British parliament is trying its hand at chiding Google over piracy A select committee accused Google of apathetically failing to curb piracy. The chairman of the committee, John Whittingdale, said that MPs were "unimpressed by Google's continued failure to stop" displaying search resu...

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.

I write quite a few columns every week and every once in a while something changes and I have to rewrite. That happened Monday. 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...

Oracle has upgraded its Customer Experience cloud-based application with enhancements throughout the platform, including the sales, marketing and service modules, the company announced on Wednesday at its Oracle OpenWorld event From a 30,000-foot view, the Oracle CX improvements can be summed up as offering deeper social integrations, more mobility...

Valve Software will later this year beta test 300 hardware boxes running its Linux-based SteamOS, a standalone operating system for entertainment appliances in consumers' living rooms The prototype box for the Steam platform, which is optimized for gaming in the living room, is completely upgradable and open....

With a 3 GB bucket of wireless data from your cellphone company often costing more than US$50, it makes sense to take advantage of the often unlimited or at least generous nature of a cheap, wired home Internet connection when you can. Netflix reckons that its movie and TV streaming service, using its Best Quality setting in High Definition, uses ...

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 video formats in the cloud to give viewers the highest-...

Google on Monday announced the winners of its Science Fair, awarding three students for their innovative ideas in public health, alternative energy and app development The company's third annual competition drew contestants between 13 and 18 years of age from more than 120 countries. Google this summer announced 15 finalists, all of whom were invit...

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff gave a speech in which she -- well, maybe it's best to just let her say it "What we have before us, Mr. President, is a serious case of violation of human rights and civil liberties," Rousseff said, addressing the UN General Assembly mere moments before President Obama was to speak....

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday unveiled a plan to identify existing Park-n-Ride facilities, rest stops and parking areas on the state's highways as "Texting Zones." There's nothing now -- other than impatience -- preventing drivers from pulling off the road into those areas to read and send text messages, but with the new initiative, appropr...

Facebook this week began testing a new feature dubbed "Autofill with Facebook" that aims to simplify mobile purchases by filling in customers' credit card information for them, thus eliminating the need to type it in each time "Autofill with Facebook gives people the option to use their payment information already stored on Facebook to populate the...

Google on Tuesday rolled out a feature for its recently launched Android Device Manager that lets users lock down a stolen Android device from anywhere, via the Web "This is something that should be built into the OS and the platform because it's an inherent security feature," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told LinuxInsider....

Google reportedly is developing its own anonymous identifier for advertising, AdID, that will replace third-party cookies as a way for advertisers to track consumers' online browsing activity AdID will give consumers more privacy and control over their Web browsing, an anonymous source at Google told USA Today last week.

If you are looking for a really decent, snappy and lightweight KDE distro that installs easily onto a flash drive, check out ZevenOS' Neptune. LinuxInsider's Picks and Pans column has been devoting considerable time lately to playing with countless Linux distros. Rarely have I found truly bad distros -- after all, Linux is Linux -- but more times ...

Vendors seeking to obtain federal information technology contracts are regularly challenged to deal with a variety of complex factors. These include negotiating special IT security requirements, tricky service level agreements, and a growing number of government contracting vehicles that have been developed over the past few years to facilitate IT contracting...

Like any major trade show, OpenWorld has been in planning for a long time. However, this OpenWorld might be the most planned show of its kind ever, because in addition to the extravaganza taking place in the Moscone Center, many of the hotels in the area and even in closed-off streets, an important sideshow and object lesson -- America's Cup -- is taking place in San Francisco Bay...