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Bitcoin has had quite a ride this year. In late November, the virtual currency was valued at around $675. When you compare that to its price of about a year ago, you'll find that the currency has risen about 50 times its year-ago value. Does this make sense? I don't think so. Though I now think that...

Hard on the heels of Amazon's recent announcement that it's planning deliveries by drone, Google this week acknowledged that it has embarked on a new robotics effort under the leadership of former Android head Andy Rubin. "I am excited about Andy Rubin's next project," said Google cofounder and CEO ...

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...

In the waning days of the current session of Congress, patent reform is one issue that's very much alive. Major IT companies and business associations are making sure their voices are heard in what has become a typical end-of-year legislative scramble. Their efforts may not result in passage of a bi...

The Google Compute Engine became generally available on Tuesday, almost 18 months after its introduction at last year's Google I/O. "We have been taking time and doing careful work to ensure that as we open Compute Engine to developers, they have a great experience with things like billing and suppo...

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 ...

Akamai Technologies is buying Prolexic, which offers protection against distributed denial of service attacks. The deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2014, will cost Akamai about $370 million in cash plus the assumption of outstanding unvested options to purchase Prolexic stock. "...

Sony's PlayStation 4 may have had a weeklong head start in building sales momentum, but on Black Friday, Microsoft's competing Xbox One appears to have edged out its rival -- at least in the United States. The new Xbox One -- along with the previous-generation Xbox 360 -- together accounted for 61 p...

More than 131 million shoppers -- or 54.8 percent of the shopping population -- are planning to hit the online deals this Cyber Monday. That is one finding of a National Retail Federation survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics over the weekend. For comparison, the corresponding figure ...

2014 may be the year when tablets muscle into dominance in the computer marketplace. Next year, tablets will account for almost 50 percent of total client personal computer shipments globally, according to estimates by Canalys. Desktops, notebooks and tablets having a diagonal screen size of at leas...

For e-commerce companies, the time has finally arrived. After months of extensive preparations, the holidays are here and the top business priority is to drive conversions. Many of these companies have applied valuable lessons from 2012 and previous years by implementing basic Web performance-optimi...

Shopping for groceries might not be top of mind for many rail commuters -- at least, not until they see one of Peapod's virtual supermarkets in a train station. Peapod, which has long been at the forefront of online grocery sales, has pushed its virtual offerings into the real world, and its strateg...

The United States National Security Agency reportedly has seeded 50,000 networks worldwide with malware designed to steal sensitive information. The report -- the latest in a series of published disclosures based on documents released by Snowden -- is likely to fuel the controversy raging around cyb...

Retailers have been trying for years to expand Black Friday shopping with extended hours and prolonged sales, and this year that trend appears to be reaching new heights, with some stores even planning to be open early on Thanksgiving Day. That's not a universal rule, however. Glenview, Ill.-based A...