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Last week, Microsoft effectively ended the model that created it. This shouldn't have been a surprise,as the model hasn't been working well for years and, as a result, Microsoft has been getting its butt kicked all over themarket by Apple. Well Microsoft apparently has had enough, and it decided to make afundamental change and go into hardware. L...

2012 is not shaping up to be a good year for Facebook. There was its disaster of an IPO, of course. Also, a number of reports have been turning out that illustrate one or another of Facebook's weaknesses. The latest is from comScore, which reported Facebook's U.S. user numbers for May. Compared to its traffic in the previous two months, the site ...

Nintendo has long been known for surprises, but it caught the gaming world off guard on Thursday, when North American COO Reggie Fils-Aime revealed the 3DS XL during a Nintendo Direct video post. ...

The United States is battling over proposed United Nations regulations that could place new burdens and restrictions on Internet companies and users The trouble is rooted in the decision of the UN's International Telecommunication Union to overhaul International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that outline the principles governing the way inte...

Twitter was unavailable to users for significant portions of the day on Thursday. Contrary to speculation, it wasn't due to a hack attack, despite attempts by some groups to claim responsibility. Rather, a "cascading bug" in one of its infrastructure components was the cause for the upheaval, Twitter said....

Facebook is shelling out US$10 million in a settlement that will allow it to keep its Sponsored Stories advertising program on the site but will saddle it with new restrictions The Sponsored Stories system on Facebook is meant to help ads get more exposure. When a user checks into a location or "likes" a brand on Facebook, the notification often ap...

A brewing patent dispute between Yahoo and Facebook may wind up being settled outside of the courtroom, according to court filings made this week by Yahoo's attorneys in the U.S. court for the Northern District of California, in which they also sought extensions to other filing deadlines The two companies are engaged in settlement negotiations, the...

As a young entrepreneur, Andrew Angus owned an alternative fuel business. As part of his marketing efforts, he made a brief video explaining the process of making fuel from agricultural residues. The experience made him aware of the usefulness of video in explaining and selling products -- so much so that he decided to ditch alternative fuel and devote himself instead to the burgeoning business of video marketing, founding a company called Switch Video...

Several months ago Constant Contact, an email marketer, became aware that much of its customer base was intrigued by the daily deal model. However, it also noticed that once those companies actually tried out the model, their enthusiasm for it diminished considerably "Daily deals just don't work for a lot of companies, especially small businesses,...

HD Widgets, an app from Cloud TV, is available for US$1.99 at Google Play If you've ever used HTC's Sense graphical user interface, you've been spoiled. I hadit factory-loaded on my first Android phone back in 2010, the Sprint HTC EVO 4G....

Eager Windows Phone adopters with WinPho 7 devices will be out of luck when WinPho 8 rolls out. Existing phones won't be upgradable to the upcoming operating system Microsoft will throw a sop to WinPho 7 device owners by issuing an update, WinPho 7.8. It will include some user interface features from Windows Phone 8, but it won't be nearly as deep ...

Latin may be the most famous "dead" language, at least in that it isn't widely spoken beyond its use by the Catholic Church, but it is not lost to the ages. Linguists have been warning that nearly all human languages -- save for the most commonly spoken tongues -- could become extinct within the next 200 years Of the 7,000 languages currently spok...

Online commerce giant eBay on Thursday announced that it will expand its flagship data center in Utah and use renewable energy to power the addition This expansion will use 30 Bloom Energy fuel cells and will be the largest non-utility fuel cell installation in the United States....

Facebook shares are rallying after their post-IPO slump, climbing 22 percent over the past two weeks. Besides a slight downturn on Wednesday, the stock has slowly climbed closer to its initial value of US$38 on May 17. After its botched opening, the stock had fallen by as much as 32 percent to $25.52.

This summer, Tesla is rolling out its luxury electric car, the Model S, amid much acclaim "The design and efficiency of the Model S are unparalleled," electric vehicle consultant Shannon Arvizu told TechNewsWorld. "It's a stunningly beautiful car that is incredibly affordable to operate and has 'oh-my-god' wow performance. It's everything you could...

Google and Apple are bent on a mission to provide the world -- or at least users of their respective technologies -- with digital images of every place on this planet. Using their systems is the only way many people can see for themselves what everyday life is like in faraway places. However, as these companies set about mapping local communities,...

How many of us still remember John Maynard Keynes? Keynes, also called "1st Baron Keynes," was a British Economist who lived from 1883 to 1946. He has had a profound influence upon macroeconomics, including the economic policies of various governments. Keynes believed in applying monetary and fiscal policies to lessen the deleterious effects of bo...

Microsoft has introduced another new product. This one is a tablet called the "Surface." If Microsoft is not careful, it could actually be successful with this one -- if it plays its cards right, anyway. The Surface will let Microsoft compete head-to-head with Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, and many more. Will the Surface be a hit or a flop? That depends on Microsoft.

One would almost think we have entered a stage of customer service nirvana: Two industry categories not ordinarily associated with high levels of customer service satisfaction -- airlines and fast food -- have garnered relatively good scores in a new American Customer Satisfaction Index report The operative word here is "relative," though. The airl...

Bombarded by ads for cable and satellite TV packages, or seductive programmingbundles offered by Internet service providers and phone companies, it may be easy toforget that it's possible to pick up much of that programming via a sub-hundred dollarindoor antenna reminiscent of the rabbit-ear days If you live in a town, conurbation, or a rural area ...