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Microsoft has officially acknowledged that its new Xbox SmartGlass companion app will be available with the launch of the Windows 8 operating system later this week. The application will be a new addition to the Games section of Windows 8, and will also be supported on devices running Windows RT. The free-to-download app is designed not only for W...

Yahoo on Monday reported quarterly earnings that beat expectations, owing largely to the sale of its Chinese assets and modest growth in some of its core business areas. The quarterly report was the first for new CEO Marissa Mayer. She left Google to lead Yahoo in July after the sudden departure of former CEO Scott Thompson in May.

Voters in Iceland have responded favorably to the government's offer to let them participate in drafting the nation's new constitution According to GigaOm, the idea to let citizens chime in online, namely via Facebook and Twitter, was hatched by 25 people on the Constitutional Council, which was tasked with devising a new constitution. The council ...

To say that Microsoft has a lot riding on its imminent Windows 8 launch is to have a magnificentgrasp of the obvious. By now, most of us have heard the reports that Microsoft will spend a whopping US$1.5 to $1.8billion in an all-out Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT Surface tablet marketing blitz. Microsoftdeclined to confirm the figure, saying it never comments on such matters. Just this week, however, thecompany did release two pertinent numbers: $39.99 and $499; that is the introductory list priceof Windows 8 and the retail price of the Windows 8 Surface Tablet, respectively...

Increasingly, CRM vendors are incorporating geofunctionality into their offerings. It is a must-have marketing technique for brick-and-mortar retailers competing with e-commerce providers While that use is indeed still a big driver, vendors are also beginning to view it as a technology that has multiple CRM-related uses, such as a complementary te...

The tide of software piracy in China may be ebbing. With the clear support of the Chinese government, several software organizations and computer firms based in Europe and the U.S. are conducting events focusing on growing open source in China The push toward China's active participation in the open source community signals a maturing of the countr...

Many people know it's a bad idea to open attachments in email received from strangers, but relatively few know they need to take the same precautions when clicking links on social media sites and even VoIP (Voice Over IP) service Skype. In recent weeks, cybercriminals have been targeting individuals through Skype, and the criminals have been picking up their game and increasingly utilizing so-called ransomware or scareware...

Google could be poised to roll out new Nexus tablet offerings at next Monday's press event in New York City. The search giant is also likely to introduce a new smartphone, the LG Nexus 4, powered by Android 4.2 The timing of the event is certainly interesting, as it comes later on the same day that Microsoft is holding a Windows Phone 8 event in S...

Isis, a joint venture of AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, has debuted its long-awaited mobile wallet initiative in Austin and Salt Lake City. It joins a number of other initiatives -- Square and Google Wallet, to cite just two examples -- competing in the nascent mobile payments industry. Whether Isis will gain more traction than they have, however, re...

The Center for Copyright Information and major Internet service providers are preparing to roll out within weeks the Copyright Alert System, designed to cut down on online piracy AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision volunteered to work with the CCI to develop a system of electronic messages to users suspected of illegally downl...

British media outlets have pounced on Amazon and eBay for how much the companies pay -- or don't pay -- in UK taxes According to an article from The Guardian, Amazon forces British publishers to cover a 20 percent VAT -- value added tax -- charge on ebook sales. This is seen as problematic because Amazon's European headquarters is in the tiny natio...

Social media, already part and parcel of many Americans' lives, has also become a channel through which they participate in politics. Sixty-six percent of social media users -- or 39 percent of all American adults -- have engaged in some form of civic or political activity via social media, suggests a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

There is probably no battle we will see that will better define the futures of the new post Steve JobsApple and Steve Ballmer's revitalized Microsoft than this week's dueling launches. Apple is defined asthe company that focuses tightly and drives people to its products, while Microsoft's strength is in thebreadth of partners that collectively have the power to obliterate all challengers.

Android is one of the most popular mobile operating systems in the world. As a result, it's also one of the most popular mobile operating systems to be targeted by malware writers Malware aimed at Google's Android platform increased sixfold during the quarter that ended in September, according to a report released Monday by Trend Micro....

It is difficult to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and consumers, academics, companies, and the government are all aware of this fact. The Affordable Care Act carries many provisions to promote healthy behaviors, in many cases following initiatives already independently implemented by insurance companies. The difficulty is often implementing top-level policies that filter down successfully to the individual level.

Technology professionals who work in and around SMBs know that sometimes bringing up information security in a smaller IT shop can be a tough sell. In many cases, SMBs feel that they don't present an attractive or large enough target for hackers to be interested in them For example, a small community bank or credit union might believe that only a l...

Google unveiled a new Samsung Chromebook on Thursday, available for pre-order at US$249. The new model is more streamlined and far cheaper than its predecessors ...

Count Microsoft among the tech companies that posted blah earnings for the three months ending Sept. 30 -- in Microsoft's case its first quarter for fiscal year 2013 It posted revenue of US$16.01 billion for the quarter, down from $17.37 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share were $5.31 ...

AOL is rolling out a cloud-based service, Alto, designed to help email users de-clutter their messy in-boxes AOL, which offered one of the first email clients adopted by the mainstream, isn't trying to draw customers away from popular services like Gmail or Yahoo Mail. Instead, it is offering an application that focuses on organization by design, i...

In a letter to several French ministerial offices, Google has warned that it could exclude French media sites from its search results if the country implements a proposed law that would force search engines to pay for content, according to AFP The letter reportedly said that such a move -- which would force Google to fork over money simply for link...