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The U.S. government's program to consolidate federal data centers presents an opportunity for improving IT management that goes well beyond the objective of just trying to tidy up data center operations and save a little money. As a result of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI), the number of government data centers will shri...

I was doing some research in the Time Magazine archives (the best ones I have seen, by the way) the other day and came across this nugget from 1962: "Despite the discouraging results so far, many scientists argue that military-space research will ultimately produce an overflowing cornucopia of marketable consumer products, from supersonic planes to...

Unless you are an atypical Linux user, you tend to accept the default apps featured in your distro of choice. After all, if what you use works just fine, why scavenge around for a replacement? If saying yes to that question means you miss out on adding the Listen audio player to your desktop tools, you might change your answer after trying it Liste...

Google has a lot of star power in its executive ranks and certainly a wealth of intellectual horsepower among its rank-and-file engineers and technologists. However, the search engine giant is getting a twofer with its latest hire: Ray Kurzweil, a brilliant engineer who also has name recognition A famed inventor, entrepreneur, author and futurist,...

Google announced Tuesday that it is extending its Scan and Match feature for its online locker service to the U.S. Users with Google Play accounts will get a message asking if they would like Google to scan their hard drives for music. If it finds a match in its own library, Google will add the song to the user's online music collection. The user ...

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday announced that it has demanded nine data brokerage companies explain how they collect and use consumer data The nine are Acxiom, Corelogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, Peekyou, Rapleaf and Recorded Future....

Samsung said Tuesday that it will drop its pursuit of injunctions against the sale of some Apple products in Europe. Samsung wants to compete "fairly in the marketplace, rather than in the court," according to its official statement, but the move is an odd twist in the ongoing legal saga between the two consumer electronics giants With a series of...

Both Apple and Samsung, which have been locked in lawsuits in the United States and abroad, won a little and lost a little in their hearing before Judge Lucy H. Koh in San Jose, Calif On Monday, the judge denied Samsung's request for a retrial seeking to reduce the US$1.05 billion in damages a jury had awarded Apple in August for infringement of so...

Google is expected to agree to changes in the way it displays search results, a move that will likely allow it to skirt an antitrust investigation in the U.S. However, things are still unresolved between Google and the European Commission The Guardian reports that the Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce a deal this week that will end t...

Instagram is rolling out an update of its terms of service that gives it more control over users' photos. The changes have unleashed a storm of criticism on various social networks The new policies are privacy measures that will help Instagram integrate more easily with its parent company, Facebook. The terms will also allow the site to more effec...

IBM listed technologies based on the five human senses in its 2012"5 in 5" -- five innovations that will change lives within five years. The predictions include advances in cognitive systems to unlock the door to touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell ...

YouTube on Monday launched Capture, an app for iPhone and iPod touch that lets people share their videos instantaneously The new app is Google's first foray into instant video sharing from mobile devices and an effort to bring more homemade video content into its ecosystem by streamlining the sharing process....

We in IT love inflection points -- events that somehow amalgamate past events and/or indicate how and why the future will be significantly different. The world of personal computing is entering, if not an inflection point, then an inflection process. This is due to the confluence of two converging technologies -- Intel's Ultrabook initiative and Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system.

A year or so ago, digital marketers were head over heels, breathlessly in love with QR codes. Bearing a close resemblance to Rorschach inkblot tests, QR codes quickly became ubiquitous on labels, posters, signs, magazine ads, billboards -- pretty much any ad space a consumer might conceivably want to scan with a smartphone to download more information about a product or service...

The Raspberry Pi project launched an app store Monday to support its eponymous US$35 Linux PC, which hit the market in February. The store will carry both free and paid apps....

You're not imagining things if you're noticing more mobile network brands than everbefore. The newcomers are MVNOs, or mobile virtual network operators -- companiesthat lease spectrum from major networks and resell it to end-users It's easier than ever to escape the clutches of a cellphone contract by taking advantage of some of the contract-less d...

A two-year FTC probe into Google could be coming to an end. The Federal Trade Commission may close its investigation into the search giant as early as this week, and it appears that Google will avoid a consent decree, according to reports. This would mean Google would not have to agree to any formal FTC settlement or specific terms. However, it do...

A new security flaw has been discovered in Samsung's vulnerability-plagued Galaxy S III. This time, the problem lies in the company's Exynos 4 series of chips The flaw was discovered by a hacker with the handle "Alephzain," who posted the information on the XDA Developers Forum....

Gary McKinnon, the British man who hacked into U.S. government files to search for evidence of UFOs, will not face prosecution in the United Kingdom In October, UK officials rejected the United States' extradition request in the decade-old case....

Google avoided about US$2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting close to $10 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company, Bloomberg reported last week. The information was included in a regulatory filing made by a subsidiary in the Netherlands Bermuda, along with a handful of other locales, is notorious for providing offshore ...