E-Commerce

Facebook this week announced the rollout of video ads in the mobile and desktop News Feeds of some of its members. The video will begin playing in silent mode when it appears onscreen. Clicking or tapping on it will turn on the sound. Users who don't want to watch the videos can scroll or swipe past...

China has delivered Bitcoin the second half of a one-two punch that could be the beginning of the end for the virtual currency. BTC China, China's largest Bitcoin exchange, on Wednesday said it could no longer accept deposits of renminbi -- the local currency -- to purchase bitcoin. BTC China's anno...

The Obama administration has reached into Microsoft's ranks for the tech talent it needs to fix the Affordable Care Act cock-up. The White House on Tuesday named Kurt DelBene, who started at Microsoft in 1992 and most recently served as president of its lucrative Office Division, to oversee HealthCa...

For IT industry analysts, autumn is a migratory time filled with trips to vendor conferences and summits. While their forms and locations tend to differ, most vendors use the time to delineate how their strategies, solutions and sales have progressed during the past calendar year and to discuss wher...

Facebook has announced a new feature that allows users to donate money to nonprofit organizations through the site, a move designed to help raise both funds and global awareness for the charitable causes. Facebook was inspired to launch the donation feature following last month's successful partners...

Twitter reportedly is testing Nearby, a new timeline feature for its mobile app that displays tweets from people who are geographically close. Both the users viewing the tweets and those tweeting must have their location tagging option enabled for the feature to work. The Nearby service will display...

Innovation often comes slowly to the U.S. government. It has taken several years, for example, for federal agencies to get used to cloud technology -- and it will likely be several more before that technology is fully embraced at the federal level. That pace also seems to be the case for the federal...

Amazon on Wednesday announced the expansion of its experimental grocery delivery service to San Francisco. It launched AmazonFresh in 2007 as a test in one Seattle neighborhood, gradually expanding in that area. This summer, it made its debut in Los Angeles. With the addition of San Francisco, it ap...

Spotify announced Wednesday that it is offering a new free mobile streaming option to listeners, a move that could help it compete in the evolving digital entertainment space. Mobile users previously were limited to the Spotify Premium plan, which provides streaming access on phones or tablets for $...

Nothing stirs up speculation like success, and right now questions about Bitcoin are on everyone's lips. Is it headed for the moon after once again breaking the $1,000 mark on Wednesday? Or is it, as former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said, overpriced, lacking in intrinsic value and, ess...

The Obama administration's support of Big Data technology for more efficient and effective government operations was highlighted at a recent White House sponsored conference that featured presentations on more than 30 successful public and private sector projects. "Realizing the enormous potential o...

This Cyber Monday, retailers of every stripe ran countless ads proclaiming the big shopping day's special deals -- including this one: A Nikon D3200 Two Lens Zoom Kit, originally priced at $799.95, marked down to $499.95. Sounds good, right? We thought so too, but try as we might, we couldn't secure...

Yahoo has purchased SkyPhrase with the intention of enabling computers to deeply understand natural language and intentions. "Yahoo uses Bing for their search engine, so it's unclear why they would buy a natural language technology for search because they can use Microsoft's technology," said Rob En...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday announced it would not hear an appeal by Amazon and Overstock.com challenging a New York law that requires e-commerce companies to collect taxes from shoppers in the state even if the retailers don't have facilities there. The decision is the latest twist in an incre...

My regular job involves writing and talking almost exclusively about business IT, but every once in a while I like to consider how personal technology impacts my day-to-day life. Three acquisitions have come my way in the past couple of months: the Nexus 5; the Mohu Curve 30; and a 2013 Toyota RAV4 ...