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A group of senators known as the "Gang of Eight" on Tuesday introduced a bipartisan immigration bill that could permit an increase in H-1B visas for high-tech workers. The group is led by Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz. Another notable member is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the GO...

Intel released a quarterly earnings report Tuesday that fell slightly short of already low expectations, thanks to weak worldwide PC sales. The world's largest computer chip manufacturer reported first quarter revenue of $12.6 billion, a 2 percent drop from the same time a year ago. Net income w...

The U.S. Department of the Interior has big plans to implement a major cloud-based information technology program, with a potential investment of $1 billion over 10 years. However, those plans will have to be put on hold a little longer. One of the potential contractors for the project, CenturyLink,...

Electronic Arts will shut down three of its less popular games on Facebook, citing waning interest in some of the company's social network offerings. Starting June 14, The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society will not be available to Facebook users. It was a difficult decision to kill the gam...

Dish Network set up a battle with SoftBank for ownership of Sprint after it bid $25.5 billion for the company on Monday. The bid consists of $17.3 billion in cash and $8.2 billion in stock. That works out to a combined premium of 13 percent over what SoftBank is offering. The merger will create an i...

Google has engaged the Behavio team in a "hiring exercise." The startup uses mobile sensors to collect data and predict behavior. Its technology recognizes data such as location, contacts, nearby destinations, recent phone activity, daily movement, and even surrounding physical information such as t...

Twitter has officially announced its forthcoming push into the digital music space. After weeks of rumors, including one that promised such a service would officially launch over the weekend, Twitter has announced that something, indeed, is coming. On Friday, Twitter made public its music website. T...

If we take a page out of our not-so-distant past, we can see that on the web, both commerce applications and functionality have contributed to the demise or success of mobile apps. The success of business models, return on investment and viability of mobile initiatives all depend on how well m-comme...

Foursquare, the poster child for check-in tech when the trend was hot, announced this week that it has raised $41 million in a new financing round. The funding was provided by private-equity firm Silver Lake and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Spark Capital, and ...

LinkedIn on Thursday announced the $90 million acquisition of newsreader app Pulse, as the professional social networking site looks to add to its content and mobile strategies. Pulse, launched in 2010 by two Stanford University students, allows users to browse multiple media sources, including soci...

Google has submitted a formal set of remedies to the EU Competition Commissioner, which will be shared with competing companies and customers as part of the settlement negotiations. The remedies that Google has suggested have not yet been made public, but reading between the lines of Commissioner ...

Strategic Big Data and Actionable Analytics are two of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013, according to Gartner. Yet only 12 percent have a big data strategy that governs their daily operations, a recent survey of 339 data management professionals by SAS and SourceMedia found. In my vie...

Worldwide PC sales plunged during the first three months of the year, the worst quarterly decline since 1994, according to research firm IDC. PC shipments have been declining recently thanks largely to the rise of mobile devices, but the first quarter of 2013 was as bad as it's been since IDC starte...

Thanks to its agreements with big data providers, including Acxiom, Epsilon, and Dialogix, ads on Facebook should become more relevant, if not personal. Advertisers and agencies can now drill down into more than 500 groups to target an audience for their ads.

The wireless industry is in the middle of a transformation. That means there are many new opportunities going forward, but there are many new challenges as well. Which ideas, companies and sectors will win is the question. I have been a wireless and technology industry analyst for more than 25 years...