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Google and its hardware partners are revamping their approach to Chromebooks with a series of changes. Perhaps most interesting among these, from the consumer perspective at least, is a price cut to the current Samsung and Acer models of roughly $50 or so. Specifically, the WiFi Acer Chromebook dropped to US$299 from $349 and the Samsung WiFi fro...

A small water utility in Illinois has been hacked, reportedly leading the FBI and the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to look into the matter The attack came from Russia, according to control systems cybersecurity expert Joseph Weiss, whose blog first publicized the matter. He suggested the hack might have been linked to a break...

User forums are lit up with complaints about Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which was released in the UK late last week. It seems that the handset's volume control goes haywire when the connection shifts to a 2G band. Unfortunately, 2G is widespread in Europe. The Galaxy Nexus is the first phone to ship with Android 4.0, also known as "Ice Cre...

More than 200 labels held by content distributor ST Holdings have decamped Spotify, Simfy, Rdio and Napster recently over concerns the digital music streaming services' business models are detrimental to sales Most of the labels involved are relatively small. ST Holdings was bowing to pressure from its labels, it said, stating that only four of its...

The Facebook IPO guessing game has moved into high gear. The latest rumor puts the big event within several weeks, possibly as soon as December. This new timeline was reported by Business Insider, which cited an email from a source it said was close to Facebook employees Statements from CEO Mark Zuckerberg have put the rumor mill at the social net...

What's the future for Flash devs now that Adobe has turned its back on Flash Player for mobile devices and has shifted focus to HTML 5? Will Flash for the desktop survive or will it die out too?...

The big number always seems to be there. The big number is the amount of money the U.S. federal government invests in information technology. In constant dollars, that number has hovered slightly above or slightly below US$80 billion per year since 2007, according to TechAmerica That funding level is an inviting target for vendors and is frequently...

Next year is an election year, and there is no doubt we will have plenty of examples of politicians who should have had their hormones either surgically removed or had someone wiser make their decisions for them. On the other hand, the technology market has certainly had its fill of scandals over the last 12 months, many of which centered on HP ...

The existing model for daily deals is broken. The biggest issue: It's simply not making merchants money. In just a few quick years, daily deals have shifted the concept of local marketing from traditional advertising to blanket discounts aimed at driving first-time customers en masse. While the new marketing practice has transformed today's shopp...

The international research team that found neutrinos traveling faster than light has done it again It conducted another set of experiments and again found neutrinos that exceeded the speed of light....

A team of researchers led by Tobias Schaedler of HRL Labs has developed an ultralight metallic microlattice that's 10,000 times lighter than ultralight aerogels and carbon nanotube foams Ultralight cellular materials weigh less than 10 milligrams per cubic centimeter....

It looks like the Kindle Fire is a loss leader for Amazon product sales. IHS iSuppli tore apart a Kindle Fire to assess the cost of the tablet's bill of materials (BOM). The research firm announced on Friday that the Fire's BOM adds up to US$185.60. The cost drifts up to $201.70 when manufacturing services are added. Amazon sells the Fire for $199...

Yelp filed for an initial public offering Thursday, joining a cadre of social websites that have either made the leap into public trading recently or are aiming for it in the near future. In going public, Yelp hopes to raise as much as US$100 million....

Results Software has rolled out the latest iteration of its longstanding CRM business suite product. In this version, it builds on its recent three-way integration with QuickBooks, Outlook and SmartVault That integration with three applications widely used by small- and medium-sized companies is what President and Founder Naseem Saab calls the appl...

TextFree, an app from Pinger, is available for free at theAndroid Market....

Android malware has increased 472 percent since July, a new report from Juniper Networks warned earlier this week, with the months of October and November shaping up to see the fastest jump in Android malware ever discovered, the company stated The number of Android malware samples identified in September increased by 28 percent over the number of ...

On the heels of the apparent success of Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet, which one analyst estimates will sell more than 5 million units in three months, comes speculation that the online retail giant might come up with its own smartphone next Citigroup analysts Mark Mahaney and Kevin Chang have reportedly stated that Amazon will unleash a smartphone o...

The Microsoft Surface 2.0, a coffee-table-sized, tablet-like touchscreen computer, is ready for preorder in 23 countries, including the United States. The Surface first emerged in 2007 and used cameras and its touchscreen to interact with people and objects. The model available for preorder is called the "SUR40" and is manufactured by Samsung. Mic...

AOL has updated its longstanding AIM instant messaging service and rolled out a preview for the public The new AIM automatically displays photos, videos and tweets even when users are writing or reading IMs....

In an effort to compete in the digital music market against giants Apple and Amazon, Google debuted its online music store Wednesday, where users can purchase and stream songs through the search giant's Android market. It also opened its free online music locker service to all users....