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Things are looking better and better for Michael Dell's proposed US$24.4 billion leveraged buyout offer for the company he founded. Following hard on the heels of repeated disapprovals of a competing offer from billionaire investor Carl Icahn, a special committee of Dell's board of directors announced on Monday that independent proxy advisory firm...

Don't be surprised if this becomes a thing Twitter's "retained profits" last year in the UK came to just Pounds 92,408 -- about US$137,500. Some in Britain speculate that the piddly amount reflects some clever accounting, namely routing revenue through Ireland, where tax rates are much lower.

Fighter pilots have long had "head-up" displays for navigating advanced aircraft, but on Monday Garmin announced a new HUD offering that aims to bring the technology to drivers of virtually any automobile Designed to reduce distractions by providing driving information within the driver's line of sight, Garmin's HUD is the company's first portable ...

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to exercise authority over the surveillance activities of the United States government, has been issuing rulings that assess broad constitutional questions and establish judicial precedents, all without oversight, The New York Times has reported...

Encryption combined with cloud storage has been hailed as a highly secure way for organizations to protect their data from Net marauders, but their value may be overstated, contend two security pros While encrypting data is better than not encrypting it, where it's decrypted can be an important security consideration, said Steve Weis, CTO and cofou...

After launching Graph Search into beta earlier this year, Facebook on Monday announced that it is now beginning to roll the feature out to everyone who uses the social network's U.S. English version Billed as "a new way to find people, photos, places and interests on Facebook," Graph Search lets users perform searches on the social network that com...

In the U.S., we spent last week celebrating Independence Day -- the day we split from a government that our ancestors didn't trust because it was disconnected from the people. It is fascinating to watch the leaks coming out lately, which suggest our government is acting against the best interests of the people, given that the focus is to neutralize the leakers rather than refocus government attention on the people's needs. ...

Millions of people have created avatars that live in Internet virtual worlds. Those virtual worlds include Second Life and Maple Story, as well as video games. Although these virtual worlds and games are used regularly by individuals around the world, few consider the ownership and other legal rights associated with their virtual activities. Th...

The UK and Germany have become the latest European countries to demand that Google amend the privacy policy revamp it launched in April 2012, which consolidated user data across all its services The Information Commissioner's Office in the UK announced that it has sent a letter to Google notifying it that its changes raise "serious questions" about...

This story was originally published on Jan. 22, 2013, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series Browse any mobile app store and you'll find a number of apps relating to monitoring activity and tracking fitness while you work out and train. Shelf space is increasingly dedicated to fitness-related gadgets including activity m...

This story was originally published on March 1, 2013, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series When Richard Rygg, the cofounder of HipGeo, sailed with his family last year through the islands of French Polynesia, he used his company's app to document the experience. The result is a multimedia blog complete with a GPS track...

Canon took a step forward Tuesday in solving a problem that's been plaguing DSLR videographers for a long time: maintaining smooth video with a camera's autofocusing system ...

Google Glass has generated a more or less steady stream of privacy criticisms and concerns since it was first announced, but the company's latest effort to satisfy critics has apparently fallen short Specifically, Google's recent response to a letter sent in May by eight members of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus drew further criticism ...

There's no question that books have gone digital. Sure, there are still paper books aplenty in a smattering of brick-and-mortar bookstores -- and available online as well -- but there's no escaping the proverbial writing on the wall that book-selling behemoth Amazon now sells more electronic books than hardcovers Newspaper publishers' efforts to st...

I think I have used this title before, but this is in a whole different context. Also, this is a short piece because I know you are likely out contributing to the leisure economy as you should be. This will be here when you get back. I couldn't help but make one more comment on the Oracle-Salesforce announcements of last week because I see them as an important watershed...

This story was originally published on March 5, 2013, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series There is a long-standing debate in the email marketing community about timing -- that is, whether time of day makes a difference in open and click-through rates. In other words, will an email marketing message sent early Monday m...

Music management programs for Linux often leave me wanting more -- more flexibility, more file type options, more friendliness towards large song collections, etc. Guayadeque, on the other hand, is a music player that proves that less can be more....

A flashlight that ditches the batteries in favor of body heat is one of the finalists in Google's 2013 Science Fair Ann Makosinski, 15-year-old Canadian student, created what she calls the "Hollow Flashlight," a device that harvests energy from the human hand to power itself.

Remember Bebo? In its heyday, five or six years ago, the social networking site showed enough promise to be considered a possible rival to then-dominant MySpace -- and to pull in an US$850 million purchase price when it was acquired by AOL What a difference a few years make. Fast forward to 2013, and Bebo is back on the social media map -- this tim...

Pocket Spacecraft is offering ordinary people the opportunity to personalize and track their own tiny spacecrafts on a journey to the moon. Pocket Spacecraft is hoping to raise Pounds 290,000 (about US$440,000) via its Kickstarter campaign to finance a mission that would send small polyimide discs called "Scouts" aboard a larger spacecraft, the In...