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BlackBerry is preparing to lay off 40 percent of its workforce in an effort to slash costs, according to a Wednesday report. The news came on the same day that BlackBerry launched its Z30 smartphone, a 5-inch, all-touch smartphone that the company said is its biggest, fastest and most advanced smart...

Google on Wednesday launched Calico, a company that will focus on health and well-being, with a particular emphasis on aging and associated diseases. At the helm of this new endeavor will sit founding investor Arthur Levinson, chairman and former CEO of Genentech, chairman of Apple, director of Hoff...

ANALYSIS

Aio Wireless Hits the Ground Running

Last week, I met with Aio Wireless, a subsidiary of AT&T. As an industry analyst for almost 30 years, I have met with my share of companies -- new and old, growing and struggling. They all want to put on a good front so I'll say nice things about them. Each has its own special set of opportuniti...

Adobe will pair hardware devices with its creative software suite next year when it launches a cloud pen and a digital ruler that work with tablets. The company plans to release its Mighty digital pen, a thin-tipped stylus designed to help digital artists have more control over their creativity whil...

GOVERNMENT IT REPORT

Federal Networks Can't Handle Planned IT Upgrades

Ambitious plans to improve federal information technology systems could easily founder on the shoals of deficient networks. Government agencies currently are striving to meet the challenges associated with initiatives in five major areas: cloud technology; Big Data management; cybersecurity requirem...

Netflix on Monday updated its "long-term view" of the industry to include a far wider range of competitive factors than it has ever had in the past. The company also adjusted its competitive focus accordingly, taking into account a number of players that it had previously ignored. In a nutshell, the...

Tumblr has teamed up with social analytics company DataSift to provide users with information about consumer engagement and sentiment. As of Monday, DataSift subscribers gained access to both historic and real-time data about what consumers were posting about their brands in Tumblr's 5.5 billion mon...

Turn-by-turn directions have become a common technological enhancement to the automotive world thanks to a set of satellites dedicated to the task. To date, these radio positioning signals have been supplied to consumers primarily by the U.S. military through a satellite constellation called "GPS," ...

Google has acquired Bump -- a move that could fundamentally change the way people and devices interact, suggested Bump cofounder and CEO David Lieb. Bump's mobile file-sharing app allows users to exchange files such as contact information or photos with a tap, or "bump," of their phones or other dev...

ANALYSIS

The Connected TV Device Landscape

Almost all entertainment devices entering the home now have connectivity capabilities. These connected TV devices include smart TVs, gaming consoles, streaming video media devices such as a Roku or Apple TV, and Blu-ray players. Currently, more than 50 percent of U.S. broadband households have at le...

Samsung's next Galaxy smartphones will have 64-bit processors, J.K. Shin, head of Samsung Mobile Communications, reportedly has promised. Samsung is apparently taking its cue from Apple's launch of the iPhone 5s, the first 64-bit-processor smartphone, earlier this week. A 64-bit processor can grab l...

Video game sales showed their first increase in almost two years last month, NPD Group reported on Thursday. Gaming hardware sales weren't so fortunate -- they were down 40 percent compared with August 2012, according NPD's August report on sales in the physical retail sector of the video game indus...

Twitter is moving forward with its long-awaited initial public offering, and it announced the news in a particularly fitting manner: "We've confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO," it said in a tweet sent on Thursday. For more details, stay tuned. Normally that's not quite the ...

OPINION

E-Media Continue to Erode Print Media

Whatever happened to that venerable weekly magazine we all knew as Newsweek? The magazine was published in the United States from 1933 to Dec. 31, 2012. The cause of its demise was the continued and ever-growing encroachment of e-media into its readership base. Many of us saw this coming. In an art...

I'm not a religious guy, but I've been preaching about the virtues of moving to the cloud. Well before the idea became popular, I saw the potential cost savings offered by the cloud, as well as the opportunities to leverage it to generate new innovations. Now, nearly every industry is recognizing th...

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