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The story of Square mobile-payments may surprise you. Imagine swiping customer credit cards on your iPhone, iPad or Android. We have all heard the magical stories about a brilliant idea sketched on a napkin that turned into the next big success in business. While these things do happen, more often t...

Ninety-two percent of more than 100,000 incidents reported by 50 companies over the past 10 years fall into nine basic patterns, according to Verizon's 2014 data breach investigations report. An advance copy was released to the media Tuesday. Point-of-sale intrusions, Web app attacks, cyberespionage...

Microsoft's ambitious $7.4 billion acquisition of Nokia's mobile business is set to close Friday. There have been some minor changes to the deal since its announcement, said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith. The original deal did not address the management of online assets, for example. The two ...

Longevity doesn't get much respect in the tech industry, partly due to new technologies regularly entering and dominating industries and commercial markets. However, cultural factors play a part, too. Much of IT's vibrancy results from the startup mindset and youthful employees who willingly embrace...

The Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL has sent just about everyone who uses the Web for fun or profit gibbering madly in search of a solution, creating fertile ground for spammers, scammers and marketing types. Canada is in an uproar following a disclosure by the Canada Revenue Agency that a hacke...

With the emergence of the Big Data era, technology developers see major benefits in the ability to manage huge volumes of information. However, with an onslaught of data breaches such as the recent hacking of the Target retail chain, consumers and their representatives in government are increasingly...

Sony's PlayStation 4 remains top dog among the latest generation of consoles after March sales figures showed it continuing to outpace Microsoft's Xbox One. Sony revealed earlier this week it had sold more than 7 million PS4 units worldwide, while Microsoft said it had shipped 5 million Xbox Ones to...

Have you ever heard a song you never heard before while you were out and about and wished you knew its title and artist? iOS soon may be able to tell you. The next version is expected to be unveiled at the Apple Developers Conference in San Francisco in June. Apple reportedly is working with Shazam ...

Last week marked the 224th anniversary of the U.S. patent system, an institution designed to promote progress in the fledgling nation. Despite its value for more than two centuries, that system is under attack. Until the late 18th Century, innovative colonists in the Americas relied on British-based...

Twitter has announced new ways for advertisers to connect with targets both on and off the site. The new ad offering is the first integration between Twitter and MoPub, the mobile advertising exchange that Twitter acquired last year. With the partnership, advertisers will be able to launch ad campai...

Want to watch a new tech race? Keep your eyes on the new 1 Gbps ultra high-speed Internet race. Over the next few years, this will continue to grow and become one of the hottest races around. So who will the leaders be? Today, entrants like Google, AT&T, C Spire and CenturyLink already have star...

Whether Alibaba launches its IPO on April 21 or in the following days, it clearly will be a major event for Wall Street. By any measure, it will be a blockbuster. The company will raise up to $15 billion in the offering, which would place its value at $200 billion, based on investor community scuttl...

A picture may be worth a thousand words but the photo of what might be a smartphone in development by Amazon has produced many more words than that. The photo shows a black smartphone that looks like any number of mobiles on the market, save for the number of cameras on the front of the phone. In ad...

Google this week updated its terms of service with new language that more clearly spells out how it scans and analyzes user content, such as emails, to match it with targeted ads. "Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such...

Google has acquired Titan Aerospace, a drone maker that could help its efforts to improve Internet access worldwide. Facebook reportedly was interested in buying the company itself. Titan makes high altitude drones that Google could use in a variety of ways as it works to increase Internet connectiv...