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By now, you've seen the "Kony 2012" video, or at least heard of it, and you've heard the criticisms. And whether you are a supporter or a detractor, you likely think the story's done, a passing fad lost already to shortened news cycles, fickle Twitter trends, and Facebook app archives. But that is not the case Whether the newest chapters to the "K...

Intel on Tuesday announced the Studybook, a purpose-built tablet for kids The tablet runs the Intel Learning Series software suite as well as the chip giant's Teacher PC Criteria for Ultrabook and Notebook systems....

It's still too early for official sales figures, but it seems Nokia, Microsoft and AT&T just might have something of a hit on their hands with the Lumia 900 smartphone A check at press time of ...

Google can claim the title as the most popular tech brand over competitors Apple, Facebook and Twitter, according to a new poll from ABC and The Washington Post. Eighty-two percent of Americans said they have an overall favorable opinion of the search engine giant. Apple didn't come in far behind -- 74 percent of those polled said they see it favo...

Facebook has snagged the highly popular photo-sharing application Instagram for $1 billion in cash and stock. It is among the biggest acquisitions in the social media space, second only to Google's $1.65 billion stock-for-stock purchase of YouTube in 2006 The deal, both in size and intent, is very much a departure for Facebook. Until now, its acqui...

In the years since thin client computing arrived on the IT scene, it has been pronounced dead, only to arise again more often than Jason in the "Friday the 13th" film franchise. That's not due to any quality of its underlying architecture. In fact, thin client engineering is often elegant in the extreme and makes clever use of au courant mainstream technologies. But the two main benefits of thin clients tend to be counterbalanced by essential challenges: Cost -- The long-term costs associated with thin clients, especially operational and facilities expenditures (OPEX), are extremely attractive. But that is typically offset both by thin client infrastructure acquisition costs (CAPEX) and by the radical erosion of traditional desktop prices over time. When Windows NT-based thin clients made their commercial appearance in 1995, individual PCs cost about US$2,000 each. Today, the price of a standard PC is below $500 and still falling, placing steady pressure on thin client CAPEX and margins.

Federal agencies will be moving significant portions of their annual IT spending to "commodity" type procurement vehicles by the end of 2012. As part of continuing reforms in IT acquisition and management, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has directed agencies to immediately begin the process of consolidating IT procurement, with a focus on shared service arrangements...

Canonical, the commercial developer of the Ubuntu Linux operating system, seems at times to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Some testers and industry watchers alike have praised the company's innovative Unity desktop shell and the Heads Up Display (HUD) bolted on top of it in this month's release of Ubuntu 12.04, the Precise Pangolin But ...

Turbochargers once were associated more with high performance than with efficiency. New turbocharging systems, however, tell a different story. By using otherwise wasted exhaust to provide a power boost, they allow car manufacturers to create smaller engines that act more like larger ones "Turbocharging used to be a technology that was widely assoc...

Sony will lay off 10,000 workers, or about 6 percent of its global workforce, as part of an overall corporate restructuring plan, according to a report from Japan's Nikkei newspaper The cutbacks are set to take place over the next two fiscal years, according to the report. It's unclear when the Japanese company will start slashing jobs or which div...

Research In Motion is planning to restrict consumers and app developers from sideloading Android apps onto its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet, according to Alec Saunders, company vice president of developer relations "We're removing sideloading for consumers. Pretty sure we've got a solution for devs," reads a message posted on Saunders' Twitter feed....

Microsoft has agreed to buy more than 800 patents from AOL for over US$1 billion The deal gives AOL a cross-license to the patents it's selling to Microsoft, a source close to Microsoft confirmed. Further, Microsoft will get a non-exclusive license for the remaining 300+ patents and patent applications that AOL continues to hold....

Twitter has taken its battle against spammers to the courtroom. It's sued groups it says are responsible for dumping fast numbers of junk tweets into its network The suit goes after five of what Twitter called the network's "most aggressive tool providers and spammers." Defendants include the makers of apps like TweetBuddy and TweetAdder. Both inte...

In what could be the largest mass infection of Mac computers to date, the Flashback Trojan was estimated to have reached some 700,000 Macs by the end of last week The Trojan is being planted on the Macs by owners who've been lured to infected Web pages that send a malware downloader to their computers as soon as they land on the page....

Cloud contact center provider inContact has released the first of what will be three major upgrades to its flagship product this year New features in the release touch upon many areas, from agent scripting to a Web-connect module, new unified agent desktop tools and an expanded blended dialer....

The top technology company of the 80s was IBM, 90s was Microsoft, last decade Apple. No company made it across more than one decade as the top company and the trend was away from IT (IBM) and toward the consumer/buyer, suggesting that RIM's refocus on IT is clearly pushing upstream. What is also interesting is that the 80s' IBM and last decade's...

Riding the wave of technology change these days is a bit like surfing. The ocean and waves often change much faster than our ability to stay out in front of the transformation. Now another current is approaching the wireless world as mobile commerce curls to challenge conventional e-commerce. This ascendance of mobile devices -- smartphones, table...

An international group of scientists led by researchers from the University of California in Santa Barbara have taken the first steps toward creating a quantum computer -- in a diamond ...

Google CEO Larry Page issued a public dispatch on the state of the company Thursday, enthusiastically promoting the Android platform and next-generation search techniques. Page took over as CEO of the company about a year ago. His open letter Thursday, a "2012 Update From the CEO," revealed few surprises about what's in store for the company, but ...

If your friendly sock puppet is made of recyclable materials, use it now to write a check! The Internet boom is back, but in an interesting new-millennium twist, it is followed closely by the clean technology sector. Earlier this year, the National Venture Capital Association reported that Internet storage company Dropbox received the largest s...