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Tired of Facebook? You're not alone More than half (61 percent) of the members of the social network have taken a break from it from time to time, and more than a quarter (27 percent) told researchers they planned to spend less time there in the future, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Internet Project....

Facebook, which already has a long history of skirmishes with privacy advocates, may be heading toward another fight following reports that the company is working on a mobile location-tracking app The app, set for release in mid-March, would reportedly run in the background even when other apps are running on a smartphone or when the smartphone is ...

A court in Australiahas ruled in favor of Google in its lengthy legal fight with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, according to The Sydney Morning Herald The case, which lasted six years, concerned search results from 2006-07....

Amazon announced Wednesday that it will be offering a virtual currency, called "Amazon Coins," for purchasing apps, games and in-app items on Kindle Fire. The new currency will become available in the U.S. this May. At launch, Amazon plans to give Kindle Fire users tens of millions of dollars' worth of free Amazon Coins to spend on apps in the Amazon Appstore.

The tweets were flying this week, and not just about Beyonce and blackouts at the Super Bowl. Twitter was itself the subject of tweets following the announcement late Monday that it had inked a deal to buy social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs. Terms were not disclosed. Bluefin Labs, founded in 2008, has received funding from Time Warner Investmen...

The new Congress is now tackling a flurry of general proposals for comprehensive immigration reform, but only one specific, narrowly focused piece of legislation has already been introduced in the Senate: a plan to vastly increase the number of non-citizens who can pursue jobs and education in the U.S. technology sector The bill, titled the "Immigr...

I have been known to do things for money. I bet you have too, but doesn't it sound funny to put it that way? I just got off a phone briefing with Freshdesk, an Indian company with a subscription customer service and support system that it refers to as a "helpdesk."

Wink, developed by Satish Kuma, is a software package for creating tutorial and presentation screen shots. It works reasonably well -- when it works at all. However, getting it to run may not be worth the bother, given the better alternatives available. Wink's premise is a good one for anyone who needs to create a show-and-explain presentation on...

One of the ways apps and plug-ins contribute to our computer-driven lives is in providingutilities that streamline the optimization and configuration necessary to get thebest out of our machines. Firefox, the Mozilla browser, has a formidable set of utilities This week, All Things Appy takes a look at the five best, must-have utility add-ons availa...

Microsoft announced Monday that it is teaming up with Chinese telecom Huawei to sell a low-cost, Windows-powered smartphone in Africa, which according to The New York Times is the world's fastest-growing smartphone market The phone, which will initially cost around $150, is called the "Huawei 4Afrika" and will be sold in seven countries, including ...

After years of diminishing returns amid a slumping PC market, Dell announced Tuesday that it would take itself private in a leveraged buyout estimated at US$24.4 billion Chairman and CEO Michael Dell will buy back the company he founded in a University of Texas dorm room in 1984. Dell, partnering with global technology investment firm Silver Lake, ...

President Obama can order a preemptive strike if there's credible evidence of a pending major cyberattack from abroad, a secret legal review has found, according to The New York Times New policies will dictate how intelligence agencies can monitor remote computer networks elsewhere for signs of potential attacks on the U.S., the newspaper said. The...

After years of being one of Microsoft's biggest supporters in the Windows-based laptop market, HP on Monday officially released its first Chromebook: the Pavilion 14 running Google's Chrome OS. ...

Twitter has joined a rapidly growing list of U.S. companies to report a major cybersecurity incident. The social network admitted late last week that it was able to shut down a live attack, but not before hackers may have been able to access personal information on 250,000 users The social network said in a Friday blog post that the usernames, emai...

Apple has launched an investigation into Qihoo, a giant Chinese software company and search engine, based on concerns the app maker is violating terms of service, according to Tech In Asia Citing a Chinese-language article, the website reports that Qihoo apps were removed from Apple's App Store. Apple is also concerned that Qihoo is encouraging jai...

After The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal revealed last week that their computer systems had been compromised by Chinese hackers, the Journal reported that the FBI has been probing attacks on U.S. media outlets for more than a year The newspaper said the attacks are part of a long-running pattern by a "foreign entity" to compromise secur...

Most companies tend to relegate information and technology security concerns to the IT department. After all, aren't they the ones who make sure you change your password every few months? It might seem like IT staff are the only ones who care about such matters, and security measures might seem like a necessary evil in today's business environment ...

Customers expect call centers to know everything about them -- their order history, what they've posted about the brand on Facebook, and how long they've bought from the company. Increasingly, companies are beginning to keep up with that expectation, and the more they do, the better customer service they can provide "A real-time 360-degree view of ...

What folks who haven't read any of the early Steve Jobs biographies don't know is that Steve Jobs -- atleast, the way he was seen in public -- wasn't any more real than Ronald McDonald. He was a creationof Apple's advertising agency that successfully reformed Steve, a slovenly guy who didn't like toshower, flush the toilet, or wear shoes -- and ha...

Netflix on Friday made the premiere episode of House of Cards, its in-house political drama, available free for one month to the public with no membership requirement It is also offering subscribers the entire 13 episodes of the first season at one time instead of parceling out each episode weekly....