Why Google Bought Motorola?--it was a bargain, and a smart defensive acquisition

The real question should be: Why doesn't the Verge get it? As pointed out by Forbes in the article link below, after deducting the sale of the set top box business ($2.35bn) and tax benefits--the Motorola deal only cost Google about $1.5 billion net--quite a bargain considering not only the patent portfolio, but the defensive strategy of keeping Microsoft or Apple from buying those same patents but also having an established maker of Android phones after Samsung and everyone else forks Android--

Why Google Bought Motorola - Forbes: " . . . Adding all of that up and Google will actually, in the end, pay around $1.5 billion for Motorola as a handset maker and that great stack of patents. . . ."

more news links:

Google Now coming to iPhone and iPad - USA Today
USA TODAY
For example, on Android devices, Google Now can show you your boarding pass when you're at the airport, but that's something Apple is pushing as part of its own Passbook feature. On AndroidGoogle Now can reveal Fandango ticket information, info on ...

Apple, Samsung's next critical play: Affordable smartphones
CNET
But a look at both of their most recent financial results show that dominating the high-end smartphone market is no longer enough to satiate the ever-increasing demand for more growth. IfApple and Samsung are going to keep their stellar runs going ...

Google Glass kernel software goes public
CNET
Google Glass kernel software goes public. Continuing a string of revelations about its high-tech spectacles, Google makes the software kernel underlying the devices -- and the things they'll eventually let you do -- available for download. Jonathan ...

Yield issues to keep Apple from building Retina iPad mini until October - report
Apple Insider
Because of those rumored production issues, Kuo suggested that Apple might introduce a more affordable iPad mini in the interim to help boost sales and fend off low-priced tablet competitors. He sees a low-cost iPad mini being priced between $199 and ...

Google backs off redesign of Chrome's New Tab Page
Computerworld
Computerworld - Google has apparently rethought a change to its Chrome browser that had users up in arms and has restored an older design of its popular New Tab Page in the newest beta of Chrome 27. Users were overwhelmingly against a revision of...

Computerworld

Google axes Meebo toolbar to instead promote Google+
PCWorld
Google plans to shut down in June the Meebo Bar for receiving and sharing personalized content from websites in favor of Google+ tools for interaction between websites and users. The Internet giant acquired Meebo in June 2012. Besides offering a ...

Virgin Galactic's spaceship makes 1st powered flight, goes supersonic in test ...
Washington Post
MOJAVE, Calif. — Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo made its first powered flight Monday, breaking the sound barrier in a test over the Mojave Desert that moves the company closer to its goal of flying paying passengers on brief hops into space. “It couldn't ...

Microsoft Pays Higher Rate to Beat Apple Sale: Corporate Finance
Businessweek
“Microsoft paid a little more than they otherwise would, given the looming Apple issuance,” said Noel Hebert, the chief investment officer at Concannon Wealth Management, which oversees about $250 million of assets from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Apple Makes the Best Windows Laptop: Soluto - eWeek
eWeek
Since Apple switched to Intel processors, "dual-boot" scenarios became a popular way of running Windows software—in fact, the entire Windows OS—on Mac hardware.Apple's Boot Camp utility makes it relatively simple for developers and enthusiasts to...

eWeek

Apple lays groundwork for first debt sale ever
Economic Times
Any bond offer from the makers of the iconic iPhone and iPad would be highly sought after by investors, and it is believed the company could raise funds at a cheaper rate than even Triple A rated Microsoft. Apple was not immediately available for comment.

Economic Times

Google Will Sunset The Meebo Bar On June 6 To Focus On ...
By Catherine Shu
Google has announced that it is bidding adieu to the Meebo Bar publishing tool in order to focus on projects like Google+ Sign-In and plug-ins. The Meebo Bar..
TechCrunch

Rethinking Apple: Growth Stock, Value Play -- Or Both? - Brett ...
By Brett Arends
If you're an Apple AAPL stockholder, there's good news and bad news. ... From Google, the Toughest Challenger to the iPad. Walt Mossberg in Personal Technology. Apple Unleashes Its New Mountain Lion System. Katherine Boehret in The ...
AllThingsD

Switched On: Microsoft's small tablet trap - Engadget
By Ross Rubin
Now, Microsoft appears to be chasing industry trends again by encouraging smaller, less expensive tablets, although price points will likely be more along the lines of the iPad mini or Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 than Amazon's Kindle Fire HD. In doing ... Tags: apple, column, hp, ipad mini, IpadMini,microsoft, surface rt, SurfaceRt, switchedon, windows 8, Windows8 .... Behind The Man Behind The Largest Cyberattack In History · A Hilarious Conversation Between Siri And Google Voice ...
Engadget RSS Feed

Apple to release OS X 10.9 with new power-user features, more from ...
By Mark Gurman
The shake-up at the top of Apple's overall software group shifted around multiple iOS and OS X projects, so anything on the roadmap prior to this shakeup could have been altered, according to a person familiar with the situation.
9to5Mac

Google Is Retiring Its Meebo Bar On June 6 To Focus On Google+
By Ken Yeung
Google has announced it is retiring its Meebo Bar on June 6 in order to focus on its Google+ Sign In service.
The Next Web

Official Blog: Google Now on your iPhone and iPad, with the Google ...
Google Now is about giving you just the right information at just the right time. It can show you the day's weather as you get dressed in the morning, or alert you ...
googleblog.blogspot.com/.../google-now-on-your-iphone-and...

Bringing people together in Drive | Google Drive Blog
More often than not, you need to work with others to get things done. Today, working together in Drive is getting even easier with new profile pictures and ...
googledrive.blogspot.com/.../bringing-people-together-in-driv...

Google Chrome Blog: A speedy, more secure way to view Microsoft ...
If you use a Chromebook, you've already been enjoying the ability to open Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files directly in your browser. Starting today ...
chrome.blogspot.com/.../a-speedy-more-secure-way-to-view.h...

Iron Man 3 - The Official Game - Android Apps on Google Play
Become billionaire Tony Stark as Iron Man in the official game of the 3rd movie Become billionaire Tony Stark as Iron Man in this free, fast-paced, endless runner ...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gameloft...

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Consumer shift to old iPhones concerns Wall Street

Consumers' shift to older iPhones raises concerns on Wall Street - latimes.com: "When Macchiavello went shopping recently for a new phone, she wasn't thinking about the bigger screen size of the iPhone 5, its faster processor, or the fact it could come with 32 gigabytes of memory. What she did think about was its price, ranging from $199 to $399. So instead, she gravitated to the iPhone 4, which to some may border on heresy in the gadget-obsessed Bay Area. Macchiavello got the iPhone with a mere 8 gigabytes of memory for practically free from AT&T in exchange for signing a two-year service contract."

Google acquires news stream service Wavii
BBC News
Yahoo subsequently added the facility to its iPhone app earlier this week. NeitherGoogle or Wavii have revealed the price of the deal, but most reports say it was about $30m. Wavii was created by engineers who previously worked for Amazon and ...

BBC News

iTunes is 10 years old today. Was it the best idea Apple ever had?
The Guardian
... Apple be rated as a hardware company struggling with commoditisation (like Dell or Nokia), or a software company able to extract monopoly rents (like Microsoft), or a services company that grows stronger the more users it has (like Google orAmazon)?

The Guardian

Gallaga: Microsoft, ignored in tech chatter, putting out bolder products
Austin American-Statesman
Apple's iOS (the software on iPhones and iPads) versus Google's Android system. Samsung's phone designs versus Apple or HTC. Facebook versus Twitter and every other social network. It's almost as if many are willfully ignoring the King Kong still in ...

Microsoft teases launch of Xbox
Sky News Australia
Microsoft invites journalists to see the 'beginning of a new generation of games' as the company tries to keep up with rival Sony. The new Xbox console looks likely to be unveiled on May 21 after Microsoft put out an invitation to see 'a new generation ...

Sky News Australia

Google removes some content, but shady 'defamation' requests denied
NBCNews.com (blog)
The report covers the last six months of 2012, during which Google received 2,285 government requests to remove a total of 24,179 pieces of content. That's about a 20 percent increase over the previous six months. Interestingly, much of that increase ...

After WWDC tickets vanish, Apple touts 'Tech Talks,' videos
CNET
Programmers who waited more than two minutes to try to get tickets for Apple's 2013 Worldwide Developer's Conference -- and thus missed the boat -- will be happy to know they now have some other options. In the briefest of announcements, Apple said ...

Amazon Creeping Up On Google and Apple in Key Markets
Forbes
Apple brings in at least $20 billion in revenue from its App Store and iTunes, and the figure is likely to be closer to $23 billion. Google is thought to draw in about a quarter of Apple apps revenues, and is catching up. How is Amazon.com doing with ...

Microsoft wins Google's Xbox $4 bn patent claim - Zee News
Zee News
In 2012, Google subsidiary Motorola had sued Microsoft, claiming it was owed royalties for technologies used in the Xbox console. It sought damages of about four billion dollars a year, but Microsoft said it would pay about one million dollars. James...

Zee News

Apple unveils world's most lucrative dividend as blockbuster gadget awaited
Financial Post
If Wall Street follows Apple's famous advertising slogan of old, it may relieve some of the pressure on Apple's chief executive, quiet investors' grumbling about its recent share price slide, and buy the company time to do what it says it does best ...

Skip Google+ Sharing And Tweet Photos Directly From Google ...
By Drew Olanoff
The excitement about developing for Glass reminds me of the early days on Apple's App Store. Gottfried explained: “It's a great platform and being able to create all of the fundamental apps for people is a tremendous opportunity.” ...
TechCrunch

Google releases Glass kernel GPL source, lets developers have at it
By Joe Pollicino
While our own Tim Stevens is currently adapting to life through Google Glass, developers are going beyond scratching the surface to fiddle with what's.
Engadget RSS Feed

Look Out Google Fiber, $35-A-Month Gigabit Internet Comes to ...
By Shalini Ramachandran
Heads up Google Fiber: A rural Vermont telephone company might just have your $70 gigabit Internet offer beat. ... Apple Shares Take a Wild Ride as Analysts Recalibrate. John Paczkowski in News. How Netflix CEO Reed Hastings Sees the ...
AllThingsD

'Arms Dealers' Win Apple-Samsung Fight - Business Insider
By Justin Menza
"The smartphone market is not saturated but Apple now finds itself losing out to more diverse and better-priced (Google) Android alternatives," he told CNBC. Gauna has a "market perform" rating on the stock. UBS's Steve Milunovich is a more ...
Business Insider

Google Buys Startup Wavii in Move to Boost Knowledge Graph ...
By Rosalie Marshall
Google has acquired news summarization start-up Wavii for more than $30 million. Wavii, which uses natural language processing ... According to reports, Apple had been interesting in acquiring with Wavii to integrate it with its Siri division, thereby forcing Google's hand. Google's purchase of the startup follows a ... Wavvii was founded by former Microsoft employee Adrian Aoun in 2009 and has raised around $2 million in seed funding so far. The original TechCrunch report suggested ...
Search Engine Watch - Latest

Spain arrests suspect in massive cyberattack
CNN
(CNN) -- Spanish police say they've arrested the man behind what's been called the biggest cyberattack in history. The suspect, a 35-year-old Dutch citizen, traveled around Spain in a van he used as a mobile office, Spain's National Police said in a statement ...

LivingSocial's breach draws advice from security experts
PCWorld
The cyber attack Friday on the Internet deal site LivingSocial that forced it to reset the passwords of some 50 million users has elements of what's becoming an all too familiar storyline. Along with the names, birth dates, and email addresses of some of the ...

The smartphone revolution is complete! Sales top feature phones for first time
TechRadar UK
In our tech-focused minds its sometimes easy to forget that not everyone is packing a cutting edge, top of the range smartphone in their jeans pocket. So when IDC announced on Friday that sales of smartphones had overtaken feature phones for the first time ...

Bing, Skype, and Xbox rebranding revealed in Microsoft design presentation

The Verge
At a recent design day event in Norway, Windows Phone design studio general manager Albert Shum and Todd Simmons, creative director at Wolff Olins, held a talk about "re-imagining" Microsoft. After switching its Windows, Office, and Microsoft brand logos ...

'Wintel' on the wane: Intel goes Google
CNET
Intel has been synonymous with Windows PCs seemingly forever. But it's trying to change that in a hurry. Enter Google. A sign of things to come? A $99 Craig Android...

Iterations: How Six Technology Investors Size Up The Google Glass ...
By Semil Shah
People won't stop talking about Google Glass, and rightfully so. Ever since the epic parachute-hangout demo, the Valley has been buzzing about the future co..
TechCrunch

Technology isn't Magic: Why Clarke's Third Law always bugged me
By Esther Inglis-Arkell
Arthur C Clarke was a brilliant futurist and writer, but he is probably most widely known for the third of his famous three laws, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." As much as I like the idea, I have to say it's ...
io9

Why Los Angeles could become the next technology ... - The Next Web
By Ilya Pozin
That's what made the city's longtime status as a second or third tier technology hub perplexing. The emerging tech scene in the area comes nowhere close to Silicon Valley's technological prominence. Other U.S. cities — including New York, ...
The Next Web

Separation technology can stem nuclear waste threat | The Augusta ...
By Rose O. Hayes, Ph.D.
Nuclear pundits use far-reaching extrapolations on coal and oil data to create a mirage in the public's mind of a power source that makes a safe, clean and cheap contribution to the environment and America's needs. Photos ...

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Dutch Man Arrested in DDoS Attack

Distributed Denial of Service attack leads to arrest--

Dutch Man Said to Be Held in Powerful Internet Attack
New York Times
Dutch authorities say they have arrested a man in connection with an online attack on a spam-fighting site that ensnarled the Internet last month, causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world. . . . His arrest followed an investigation by authorities in the Netherlands and other European countries into Mr. Kamphuis’s involvement in one of the largest attacks on the Internet. Mr. Kamphuis has been suspected of starting a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack against Spamhaus, the antispam group. Such attacks are a criminal offense under Dutch law. . . "

Swype (for Android)
PC Magazine
Highly customizable. Cloud syncing dictionary. Voice dictation. Handwriting recognition. Clever short cuts. Learns as you type. Cons Handwriting recognition is finicky. Some learning curve. Speech to text isn't perfect. Slow cloud syncing. Bottom Line ...

Smartphones Overtake 'Dumb' Phones Worldwide
ABC News
Research firm IDC said more smartphones than "dumb" phones are being made this year, a milestone in a shift that's putting computing power and Internet access in millions of hands worldwide. Manufacturers shipped 216 million smartphones worldwide in ...

Waters off Northeast US coast unusually warm, says NOAA
Christian Science Monitor
From North Carolina to Maine, the waters have been unusually warm lately. . . Global warming mystery: Are North and South really polar opposites?

Christian Science Monitor

AT&T lets people control homes using smartphones
AFP
SAN FRANCISCO — US telecom titan AT&T launched a service Friday to use smartphones or tablets to activate home alarm systems and perform other duties like open doors for guests or adjust the temperature. A Digital Life home security and management ...

AFP

Tesla offers idiot-proof battery warranty
CNNMoney
Tesla Motors is offering a new "no fault" warranty on the batteries in its Model S sedans in a bid to entice more buyers to try its all-electric luxury car. The battery is covered even if an owner fails to follow charging guidelines laid out in the owners' manual.

Heard on the Street: Growth River Silts Up At Amazon
Wall Street Journal
As it gets more massive, revenue growth at the e-commerce giant is slowing down. Amazon grew its top line by 22% in the first quarter, compared with growth of 34% a year earlier, falling slightly short of forecasts. That continued a trend of deceleration that...

Monkeys do as the Romans do too, scientists find
Telegraph.co.uk
It is advice that all good travellers will know: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” Scientists, however, have found that humans are not the only species to adapt to different cultures and food in an attempt to fit in – monkeys also copy new hosts by switching ...

Telegraph.co.uk

Marco Arment on Instapaper's sale and the “big” market for read-it-later apps
paidContent.org
Marco Arment sees a bright future for read-it-later services, and says that Instapaper's acquisition by Betaworks will allow it to get some new features that he hasn't had time to add. Marco Arment, Instapaper founder and the former CTO of Tumblr, announced ...

Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen on What's Next for the World
Wired
Four years ago, I accompanied a State Department delegation of tech executives visiting the war zone of Baghdad in an attempt to introduce Silicon Valley ideas to a barely recovering Iraq. The trip was organized by Jared Cohen, then a sharp young policy ...

Amazon may introduce a Kindle TV accessory
Washington Post
Some Prime customers can already watch Amazon content on their televisions, through Internet hookups or hookups with Microsoft's Xbox, Nintendo's Wii U , Sony's PlayStation 3, as well as through set-top boxes such as the Roku or on some smart ...

Washington Post

Google makes concessions in EU antitrust case, to change display of search ...
Washington Post
A group of 17 companies competing with Google — including tech giants and internet companies such as Microsoft, Nokia Expedia and TripAdvisor — vowed to carefully study the concessions proposed by Google. “The most important remedy to Google's...

Washington Post

Microsoft Raises Nearly $3 Billion in Bond Sales
Wall Street Journal
Microsoft Corp. shopped nearly $3 billion in debt in the U.S. and euro markets Thursday, getting some of the year's lowest rates and tapping bond investors before rival Apple Inc. issues its expected bond. The software giant sold $1.95 billion in the U ...

What Apple's stock buyback shows about corporate tax games
Washington Post
Reuters published a wonderful series last year detailing the efforts by European subsidiaries of such U.S. multinationals as Starbucks, Amazon and eBay to move taxable income out of countries such as England, Germany and France, which have corporate ...

Microsoft wins first round in Google fight
Financial Times
A US judge has sided with Microsoft in the first round of a patent dispute against Google that is seen as having far-reaching implications for how technology companies put a price on innovations used by the rest of the industry. At issue in the case is ...

Google searches predict market moves
BBC News
The volume of Google searches for finance-related terms may predict moves in markets, research suggests. As the search volume on generic terms such as "debt", "portfolio" and "stocks" fell, the Dow Jones average tended to go up - and vice versa.

BBC News

Google Reports Censorship Surge
InformationWeek
Google's seventh semi-annual Transparency Report arrives much like its previous one and the one before that, with word of growing government demands for user data and for the removal of content posted online. The company began releasing figures about ...

Apple's Smartphone Market Share Falls
Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc.'s iPhone saw its share of the global smartphone market decline in the January-March quarter, as its shipment grew at the lowest rate in its history, research firm Strategy Analytics said in its quarterly industry report. Apple's market share ...

Wall Street Journal

Apple versus Microsoft: the ticker tape tells the tale
ZDNet
The conventional wisdom is that Microsoft is flailing and Apple is a productivity machine. Apple'sproducts are uniformly loved and Microsoft's are unable to get any traction. Apple's cool,Microsoft's not. And yet the company's stock prices have gone ...

Apple's Acquisition Aspirations: Think Again
Forbes
But Apple Apple has historically been unusual and when polling bankers I find people who expect so little M&A from the iPhone maker they tell me not to bother wondering about potential targets. “Apple's banker has traditionally been Morgan Stanley ...

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Microsoft Windows just a "niche player" in tablets

Microsoft a distant third in tablets--

Windows tablets no more than 'niche' player in Q1, research firm says
Computerworld
Computerworld - Microsoft garnered just a "niche" in the global tablet market in the first quarter of 2013, following a period of user confusion after the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets, analysts say. According to Strategy Analytics, Windows 8- and ...

EU Nears Antitrust Deal With Google Over Web Searches
New York Times
BRUSSELS — European Union regulators took another step Thursday toward reaching an antitrust settlement with Google, asking its competitors to review remedies the company has proposed to resolve concerns with its Internet search and advertising ...

Einstein Proved Right on Gravity—Again
Wall Street Journal
Scientists have subjected Albert Einstein's famous theory of gravity to its toughest real-world test so far—and it has prevailed. Einstein's general theory of relativity states that objects with mass cause a curvature in space-time, which we perceive as gravity.

Google report shows record rise in government takedown requests
Register
Google's latest transparency report has shown requests for content removal by governments around the world rose 26 per cent in the last six months of 2012, with complaints about defamation being by far the most common reason. "As we've gathered and ...

Cell Phone Service, Free Wi-Fi Arrive at 30 More NYC Subway Stations
PC Magazine
Subway riders will no longer have to put away their cell phones at some of the Manhattan's busiest subway stations. City officials on Thursday announced that 30 additional subway stations and platforms are now equipped with wireless voice and data service, ...

Ancient Maya civilization's roots deepen - USA Today
USA TODAY
Soaring pyramids, ceremonial plazas and ritual plazas, signatures of the ancient Maya, owe their origin to a broad cultural shift in Central America around 1,000 B.C., the ruins of Ceibal suggest. Maya. A carved stone head excavated from the lowland Maya ...

LinkedIn wants to be your personal assistant with new Contacts app
Los Angeles Times
LinkedIn, the business-centric online social network, is rolling out an iPhone app and website feature that combines users' address books, calendars and email accounts in one location. Like a virtual personal assistant, the new app, dubbed LinkedIn Contacts ...

WWDC Sells Out in Less Than 2 Minutes - Mashable
Mashable
Want to go to Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference, often referred to as WWDC? Hopefully you got in early because the event sold out in just two minutes. Cult of Mac reports tickets were gone in just 120 seconds and that many would-be ticket buyers ...

Typing, Made Easy
New York Times (blog)
When I reviewed the BlackBerry Z10 in January, I wrote that it was a surprisingly complete, elegant, attractive phone, considering that the company was on its deathbed. (The BlackBerry's share of the smartphone market was a dismal 2.9 percent, down from...

Kindle TV? Amazon reportedly working on its own set-top box
Los Angeles Times
Apple and Roku's dominance in the Internet-streaming TV set-top box market might be about to get interrupted by Amazon.com, which is reportedly working on a box of its own. The giant online retailer is working on a device due later this year that would ...

Yahoo! Japan Injects $20M Into Softbank Capital's Early-Stage ...
By Jordan Crook
Today SoftBank Capital, the NY-based venture arm of Japan's largest wireless provider Softbank Corp., has strengthened its ties to Japan even further, an..
TechCrunch

Some of the Technology That Could Have Helped Prevent the ...
By Liz Klimas
Last week, TheBlaze talked with security experts about the technology used to help identify and then track down suspects in the Boston bombing and also sort through evidence that could help bring them to justice. Now, experts are discussing ...
TheBlaze.com - Stories

Pentagon's research agency developing next generation of ...
By Agence France-Presse
The US army is working to limit its dependence on GPS by developing the next generation of navigation technology, including a tiny autonomous chip, the director of the Pentagon's research agency said Wednesday. DARPA, the research ...
The Raw Story

Technology finds the right bike for you | WGN-TV
By elyserussowgntv
Using a laser pointer and a few tracking balls, a computer fitting can enhance the ride for bikers and reduce pain. It starts with an interview, and a few body measurements. Then a cleat check: A simple adjustment can help relieve pressure on ...
WGN-TV

'Innovation Zones' in Minnesota Focus on Technology, Workforce ...
By Sean Cavanagh
A coalition of Minnesota districts are using a state-designated "innovation zone" to experiment with online learning.
Digital Education - Education Week

EC details Google's proposed search concessions
CNET
Thomas Vinje, counsel and spokesman for FairSearch Europe, a coalition of critics includingMicrosoft, TripAdvisor, Foundem, Oracle, Nokia, and others, requested more time to evaluateGoogle's proposal. "Google has taken a year to develop the proposal ...

Amazon Said to Plan TV Set-Top Box for Streaming Video
Bloomberg
Amazon would move into closer competition with Apple Inc. (AAPL), which sells its own set-top box called Apple TV. The device would also compete with products from Roku Inc. and Boxee Inc., as well as gaming consoles from Microsoft Corp. and Sony Corp.

Apple CEO Wary Of Phablets
InformationWeek
During the company's phone call with media and analysts on Tuesday, Cook expressed doubt thatApple would offer such a device anytime soon. Cook's comments came in response to a direct question about his thoughts on phablets, or phones with large ...

Microsoft to Unveil New Xbox on May 21
Wall Street Journal
The videogame industry is facing increasing pressure as mobile devices, such as Apple Inc.'s iPad, not only continue growing in raw sales but also become more technically capable of powering immersive titles that consoles are known for. The ...

Google Pays CEO a Buck, 4 Other Execs Get $124M
ABC News
Page and Brin, who co-founded Google in 1998, have capped their salaries to $1 since the company went public in 2004. It's a symbolic gesture that other top Silicon Valley executives such as AppleInc.'s late CEO Steve Jobs, and Yahoo Inc. co-founder ...

Hey Eddy Cue, Apple, its time to fix the App Store
Computerworld (blog)
Apple [AAPL] is pretty proud of the App Store, which has generated billions of dollars for third party developers -- but past success is no reason to be complacent today. Improve App discovery. Take app discovery: Developers spend money building their ...

Google buys Wavii for $30 million, mirroring Yahoo's deal
Economic Times
Google's successful bid came after Apple Inc had expressed interest in buying Wavii to incorporate the startup's natural language technology into Siri, Apple's voice-activated personal assistant feature, said the person, who declined to be named ...

Economic Times

Apple iTunes Turns 10, Faces New Challenges
Indiatimes.com
At first only available to Mac users, iTunes debuted two years after Apple's groundbreaking iPod. With a catalog of 200,000 songs - compared with tens and tens of millions of songs available today - iTunes entered an industry being upended by illegal ...

Apple confident about iPad Mini despite low margins
PCWorld
The low-priced iPad mini was one of the reasons Apple reported a drop in profits for its second quarter of 2013 on Tuesday. Apple's profit was $9.5 billion, down from $11.6 billion from the same quarter last year, while revenue was $43.6 billion, up ...

Google Tests Search Without Instant Previews - TechCrunch
By Frederic Lardinois
Back in 2010, Google launched Instant Preview to provide users with a quick way to get a graphic preview of a webpage before you click on the actual link. Now, as first spotted by Alex Chitu from theGoogle Operating System blog, it looks like ...
TechCrunch

Strategy Analytics: Microsoft's share of tablet market quadrupled ...
By Sharif Sakr
Say what you like about Windows 8, but before it arrived Microsoft's presence in the tablet sphere was as small as it was stagnant. By the reckoning of number-crunchers at Strategy Analytics, just 400,000 Windows-running slates were shipped ...
Engadget RSS Feed

Apple Submits Revised Campus 2 Plans, Delays Tantau ...
By Juli Clover
Earlier this month, a report revealed that Apple's upcoming "spaceship" campus in Cupertino is both behind schedule and $2 billion...
MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors...

Amazon Developing Competitor to Apple TV Set-Top Box - Mac ...
By Jordan Golson
The box will compete with similar offerings like the Apple TV and the Roku, though both Microsoft'sXbox and Sony's Playstation have moved into the streaming video arena in recent years. The set-top box is being developed by Amazon's ...
MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors...

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Fighting Terrorism with Crowdsourcing

You want to defeat terrorists? Use crowdsourcing--why wasn't Reddit (and the rest of us) given the Lord & Taylor video?

Reddit and the Marathon Bombers: The Wise Way to Crowdsource a Manhunt : The New Yorker: " . . . the Redditors faced a simple, but insuperable, obstacle when it came to identifying the Tsarnaevs, namely that the two brothers were not, as far as I can tell, in any of the photographs that were widely available before Thursday morning. The footage that convinced investigators that the Tsarnaevs were prime suspects was the footage from the Lord & Taylor surveillance cameras, which hadn’t (and still hasn’t) been released to the public. This is an obvious point, but one that’s been overlooked: Reddit had no real chance of identifying the right suspects because it didn’t have access to the information that mattered. (Had the clip of the Tsarnaevs walking down Boylston Street been publicly available last Tuesday, I don’t think there’s any doubt Redditors would have flagged them as suspicious.) Whatever the value of the wisdom of crowds, it isn’t magic: you can’t ask the crowd to find someone that, in a sense, it’s never seen. . . ."

Afternoon MoJoe: Google’s Eric Schmidt on how technology upgrades the war on terror — MSNBC: "Not only did photographs capture and add surveillance to nearly every inch of the crime scene . . . “In the future, as terrorists have to opt in to using technology, the room for error becomes much greater, and millions of people with smartphones are able to catch them in their tracks and press rewind,” said Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, the company’s internal think-tank, and Schmidt’s co-author on the new book The New Digital Age." 

The Apple Economy Isn't Done Yet : The New Yorker: " . . . the company is trying to keep shareholders happy by dispensing some of its cash mountain on stock buybacks, and by promising to gear up the company a bit by issuing some debt. Together with a raised dividend, this financial engineering may put a floor under the stock for a while. But it will be Apple’s computer engineers, programmers, and designers—rather than its financial engineers—who will determine the company’s fate."

Fed guidelines: Carmakers must step up to stop distracted driving NBCNews.com Hoping to prevent distracted driving – blamed for causing more than 10 percent of all U.S. highway fatalities – the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released voluntary guidelines Tuesday to keep drivers' eyes on the road rather than on ... 

New Chevy Spark claims EV efficiency crown Los Angeles Times Chevrolet says it has earned bragging rights as the car company with the most efficient electric vehicle. The automaker says that the 2014 Spark, which is set to go on sale this summer in California and Oregon, has an EPA estimated range of of 82 miles when ... 

Sony Unveils $2000 Digital Binoculars With Image, Video Capture PC Magazine Sony today unveiled an updated pair of digital binoculars that can capture 3D images and video and is up to 30 percent lighter and smaller than its predecessor. Those bells and whistles won't come cheap, though. The DEV-50V will set you back $2,000 when ... 

MetroPCS Shareholders Approve T-Mobile Merger PC Magazine MetroPCS stockholders on Wednesday gave their stamp of approval to the company's merger with T-Mobile. The move means all the necessary regulatory and procedural hurdles have been dealt with, and the transaction is expected to close by May 1, ... 

Doubts raised about LulzSec 'mastermind' Telegraph.co.uk Mr Flannery, a 24-year-old IT worker, was arrested in Sydney after he was linked to a recent cyber-attack against an Australian government agency. The Australian Federal Police said the man was described as a leader on LulzSec chat sites and made no ...
Telegraph.co.uk 

Egg laid by extinct elephant bird sells for $101G at British auction Fox News LONDON – A massive, partly fossilized egg laid by a now-extinct elephant bird has sold for more than double its estimate at a London auction. Christie's auction house said Wednesday that the foot-long, nearly nine-inches in diameter egg fetched 66,675 ... 

Want the most reliable Windows PC? Buy a Mac (or maybe a Dell) ZDNet Summary: A new report from Soluto uses data from its massive online database of PC crashes, hangs, and performance metrics to identify the 10 most reliable Windows PCs you can buy today. Surprisingly, a MacBook Pro is at the top of the list. Even more ... 

Swype Ditches Beta Tags, Lands in Google Play PC Magazine After a lengthy beta phase, the Swype virtual keyboard has finally made its way to the Google Play store for Android devices. Swype is currently priced at 99 cents as a limited-time offer, so those looking to get their hands on the app should download it soon...

Java Flaw Targeted By Crimeware Toolkit: Patch Now InformationWeek Don't wait on this update, Java 7 users. Exploit uses bug, patched by Oracle last week, to execute arbitrary code. Java 7 users: Have you updated to the latest ... 

BitTorrent Sync challenges cloud-based file management BBC News Developers of the BitTorrent file-sharing process have opened an experimental data-synchronising tool up to the public. BitTorrent Sync uses peer-to-peer technology to send information between users' PCs. It eliminates the need to upload data to a third ... 

Antimatter results emerge at LHC - but puzzle abides BBC News The quest to understand why our Universe is made of matter rather than antimatter has received a boost at the Large Hadron Collider. The LHCb experiment has for the first time observed decays of particles known as Bs mesons that preferentially end up as ...
BBC News 

Report: Twitter working on two-step authentication - USA Today USA TODAY Twitter is reportedly close to adding two-step authentication to its service following the hack of the official account of the Associated Press. According to Wired, Twitter has been internally testing the feature, and hopes to make it available to users soon. 

FreedomPop introduces nationwide 3G, $40 hotspot CNET The company's new Overdrive Pro supports both 3G and 4G connectivity via Sprint's network, which covers most of the country instead of just select cities. Rick Broida. by Rick Broida. April 24, 2013 7:48 AM PDT Follow @cheapskateblog. The FreedomPop ... 

Microsoft, ZTE Reach Android Patent Deal PC Magazine "Under the agreement, Microsoft grants ZTE a license to Microsoft's worldwide patent portfolio for ZTE phones, tablets, computers and other devices running Android and Chrome OS," Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's deputy general counsel, wrote in a blog post. 

Fish-Eating Dino Hunted Like a House Cat Discovery News An illustration of Microraptor, a 120-million-year-old dinosaur found with a stomach full of fish. Some researchers ... 

Google Buys Wavii For North Of $30 Million TechCrunch Google has finally closed the deal on Wavii, a natural language processing startup, for a price that is more than $30 million, we're hearing from a legitimate source. Both Apple and Google were competing for the Seattle-based startup, and Google eventually ...

Monaco's co-op game play will steal your heart (review) VentureBeat Co-op gaming is often magical. When done right, it enables gamers to team up and have a great time with friends and family that are not as skilled. Monaco, out now for PC and soon for Xbox Live Arcade, does co-op right. Developer Pocketwatch Games ... 

Next Call of Duty to drop 'Modern Warfare' name, called Call of Duty: Ghosts MCV That's according to a retail listing on Tesco Direct. It could be wrong, of course, but the clearly final product cover image it includes more or less proves its authenticity. It lists the release date as December 31st – a placeholder, certainly. The game will almost ...
MCV 

Toyota Outsells GM for Fifth Quarter Amid Yen-Led Recovery Bloomberg Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) outsold all automakers for a fifth straight quarter as the yen's depreciation sharpens the Japanese company's edge over General Motors Co. (GM) and Volkswagen AG. (VOW). Worldwide sales at Toyota, including those of ... 

New 'Fairy' Insect is Mind-Blowingly Small LiveScience.com A new species of tiny fly named after the fairy in "Peter Pan" is mind-blowingly miniscule, with delicate wings trimmed in fringe. Tinkerbella nana is a newly discovered species of fairyfly from Costa Rica. Fairyflies are a type of chalcid wasp, and almost all are ...

Russian cargo ship launched on station resupply flight CBS News A Russian cargo ship loaded with 3.1 tons of needed supplies and equipment blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Wednesday and set off after the space station amid troubleshooting to figure out what might be done to free a jammed ... 
CBS News 

The Competition Has AT&T's Number Barron's AT&T reported underwhelming first-quarter results, with disappointing net adds, weak average-revenue-per-user trends, and continued wireline-segment declines. We believe AT&T (ticker: T) management is caught in a bind, having enabled application ... 

Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow Register Pics Open-source hardware outfit BeagleBoard has formally announced a major revision of its BeagleBone board computer that ups the spec and downs the price. The BeagleBone Black's single-core processor jumps from its predecessor's 720MHz to 1GHz. 

Chatterbox: Wednesday | Technology | guardian.co.uk - The Guardian By Keith Stuart The place to talk about games and other things that matter. Technology: Games blog | guardian.co.uk

Try Glasses Online Thanks To 3D Technology | Ubergizmo By Edwin Kee 3D printing has seen its fair share of successes, and in one case, students from Harvard University have plans to use 3D printing so that the blind... Ubergizmo

HTC found blameless over Nokia microphone technology used in ... By Chris Chavez More details have emerged from yesterday's legal spat between Nokia and HTC, the one that ended with a preliminary injunction against the HTC One in. Android Phone Fans

Denver post names boa technology as one of denver's top workplaces By Evan Buzbee Boa Technology has been ranked 13th on a list of Denver's top workplaces for their corporate health and wellness program. Transworld Business » | Transworld...

BitTorrent Sync: Secure File Sync Between Computers Using P2P ... By Andrew BitTorrent Sync: Secure File Sync Between Computers Using P2P Technology [Public Alpha] ~ Ubuntu / Linux blog. ... BitTorrent Sync: Secure File Sync Between Computers Using P2P Technology [Public Alpha] ... Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog

Coto Technology claims industry's smallest MEMS reed switch Coto Technology, which has been designing and developing small signal switching solutions to the worldwide electronics industry for over 90 years, has announced the availability of its RedRock RS-A-2515 MEMS-based magnetic reed ... DIGITIMES: IT news from Asia

An assistive technology guide for autism | eSchool News By Meris Stansbury In recent years, educators and parents have touted iPads, tablets, and mobile apps as assistive technologies that can help children or students diagnosed with autism communicate and learn basic concepts. But just as there's a spectrum of ... eSchool News

Editorial: Has Technology Taken Over Our Lives? | CAFNR Corner ... By Ashley Craft As you walk across campus, count how many people are zombie-fied on their phone while they walk. You might be amazed if you look up from your own phone to ... CAFNR Corner Post

Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology launches ... Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) has announced the launch of the new strategic project DubaiSat-3, the first satellite that will be completed in the UAE.A core team of 45 UAE experts and engineers will lead ...

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Neither Apple nor Google have decisive legal wins

Well, at least Apple and Google are making the lawyers rich--

Apple Wins Case Brought by Google's Motorola Over IPhones
Bloomberg
The decision marks the latest instance in which neither Cupertino, California-based Apple nor Google has been able to strike a decisive blow against its competitor in a squabble that began more than two years ago. Each has claimed the other is ...

Bloomberg

Sun-watching observatory turns 3
CNET
Three years ago, NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory on an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral. Since that time, the millions of images returned have given us an unprecedented understanding of the sun. This image is a composite of 25 images ...

Health Care Point-of-Sale Breaches a Rising Concern: Verizon - eWeek
eWeek
Cyber-crime impacts point-of-sale systems in health care and other industries, and organizations should focus their security efforts in this area, Verizon warned. Financially motivated cyber-crime was a key part of 75 percent of the incidents in Verizon's 2013 ...

eWeek

Google Acquires Wavii to Beef Up Web-Search 'Knowledge Graph'
Wall Street Journal
Google is close to announcing its acquisition of Wavii, according to people familiar with the matter. The Seattle startup had been trying to give people a “a better way to consume the mountains of information being created on the Web.” One of the people said ...

Hubble's first photo of potentially spectacular Comet ISON
Los Angeles Times
It's hurtling through space at approximately 47,000 mph. Its dust tail extends for more than 57,000 miles. And this fall it may appear as bright in our sky as the moon. Its name is Comet ISON, and the Hubble Space Telescope has just snapped its first picture of ...

Forget online drives, sync directly with BitTorrent Sync
CNET
If you do not trust online storage drives for file syncing across your devices or are frustrated with storage limits, there is another player in town. BitTorrent has released a new alpha version of its Sync software, which supports syncing folders across the Internet ...

Apple now has more than 300M iCloud users
VentureBeat
Apple now has more than 300 million people using its iCloud storage and syncing service, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said today on its Q2 2013 earnings call. During its last quarterly earnings report, Apple announced that it had 250 million iCloud users.

Galaxy Goes Green in Burning Stellar Fuel
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Galaxy Packs Big Star-Making Punch The tiny red spot in this image is one of the most efficient star-making galaxies ever observed, converting gas into stars at the maximum possible rate. The galaxy is shown here in an image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared ...

Study Finds Voice-to-Text Apps Don't Increase Driver Safety - Mashable
Mashable
In an effort to be a safer driver, many people, myself included, have started using voice-to-text mobile apps like Siri to keep two hands on the steering wheel. However, a new study by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute finds using voice-to-text apps to ...

$15 Apple 'Antennagate' Checks in the Mail
PC Magazine
Apple iPhone 4 owners who participated in a class-action lawsuit over "Antennagate" are starting to receive their $15 payouts from the tech giant, according to reports. Checks issued on April 17 are arriving for the first wave of class-action responders who ...

Gcorelab Gets $482,000 For New Battery Cooling Technology ...
By Victoria Ho
She was previously the technology correspondent for The Business Times in Singapore, and senior writer for ZDNet Asia prior to that. She started out working for ComputerWorld and CIO Asia magazines, under the IDG and Fairfax Business ...
TechCrunch

Why Facial Recognition Technology Didn't Help ID the Tsarnaevs ...
By Erika Eichelberger
So it was a perfect setting for the FBI to make use of facial recognition technology. But even though Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev's images existed in official databases, the brothers were not identified that way—because we just aren't that ...
Political Mojo | Mother Jones

"12 Hours of Separation" Connect Individuals on Social Networks ...
Social networks can be used to track random individuals in just 12 hours provided the right incentives are on offer, say computer scientists.
New on MIT Technology Review

The 5 Worst Error Messages in the History of Technology | Cracked ...
Error messages are a necessary evil. We live in a world filled with complicated things that break in complicated ways. If we're all being honest with ...

Google Predicts Australia Tech Boom
Wall Street Journal (blog)
Google's study, co-authored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, predicts Australia's technology entrepreneurs could contribute up to 109 billion Australian dollars (US$112 billion) a year to the economy and directly employ 540,000 people by 2033. If achieved...

Wall Street Journal (blog)

Google Glass for consumers 'coming in 2014', says Eric Schmidt
ZDNet
In an interview with the BBC this weekend, Schmidt said Google will probably be making some changes to the Explorer Edition before a final consumer release goes ahead in early 2014. "Well, the developers are beginning now. It would be fair to say that ...

Germany fines Google as Facebook, Microsoft launch privacy campaigns
Washington Post
(Read more about the U.S. settlement here.) At the same time, Google's largest competitors are working to persuade users they are committed to privacy. Microsoft launched a new advertising campaign this week on the issue, The Washington Post reported: ...

Microsoft launches free consumer privacy tool - USA Today
USA TODAY
The TV commercial dramatizes the potential harm of oversharing online, without making any references to the roiling Do Not Track debate simmering in the U.S. and Europe over new rules that could hinder how Google, Facebook and even Microsoft tracks ...

Microsoft's Blue: What will developers do?
ZDNet
One of Microsoft's goals with Windows 8, sources have said all along, was to try to convince the developer community that it is/was still worth writing "killer apps" for Windows. But if Blue, a k a Windows 8.1, allows users to opt to boot straight to ...

Google Now Destined For Google.com?
InformationWeek
Telltale code on a Google test web page suggests that Google Now, the service that displays appointments and other personalized info on Android screens, will soon be part of the desktop. Start The Discussion · Tweet; Mail Mail; Print Print · Thomas ...

ValueAct Takes $2 Billion Stake in Microsoft
Wall Street Journal (blog)
Mr. Einhorn, who has become known for doggedly pushing for changes at companies such as investment bank Lehman Brothers and most recently at Apple Inc., hasn't said more publicly about Microsoft since his 2011 speech. Mr. Einhorn's Greenlight Capital ...

Wall Street Journal (blog)

Apple reportedly restricting use of special characters in app descriptions [u]
Apple Insider
In a reported change to its iTunes Connect developer portal, Apple recently deprecated the use of special emoji-type characters for app descriptions, limiting app makers to standard text for submitted updates. iTunes Connect. The exact date of the ...

Apple Insider

Amazon's AWS Turns On Redshift Data Warehousing And EC2 High ...
By Ingrid Lunden
Amazon's business model, CTO Werner Vogels reminded us today, is based on "low margins, high volume", and today the company announced a develop..
TechCrunch » Enterprise

Apple Donates $8 Million to Chinese Earthquake Victims - Mac ...
By Juli Clover
Following a devastating earthquake that struck in Sichuan, China over the weekend, Apple has donated 50 million RMB or approximately $8 million... ... Microsoft is way ahead in this charity game.. Just saying. Charity should not be a competition. Rating: 13 ... 18 hours ago on iOS Blog ·Apple has won a small victory in its long standing case against Google's Motorola, reports Bloomberg, after the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) upheld an earlier invalidation.
MacRumors: Mac News and Rumors...

Google patent details augmented reality overlay for sat nav - Engadget
By Steve Dent
Google's been granted a patent that puts quite a few of its favorite ideas together, namely Maps Navigation, Street View and augmented reality. The. ... Google patent envisions Street Viewlike functionality with GPS navigation. Google's been ...
Engadget RSS Feed

Hedge Fund Takes $2 Billion Stake in Microsoft - Emily Glazer and ...
By Emily Glazer and Shira Ovide
A hedge-fund executive disclosed that he owns about $2 billion in Microsoft Corp. stock, stating that the value of the software giant's businesses wasn't appreciated by other investors.
AllThingsD

Without a big product launch, don't expect too much from Apple's Q2 ...
By Erica Ogg
January through March sales are always slower compared to the holiday buying period. And all ofApple's major products -- iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, Macs -- were refreshed in the fall, leaving Applewith no major new device release during the ...
Apple

One Today by Google - Android Apps on Google Play
Do a little. Change a lot. Learn about a new project from a nonprofit every day. One Today by Google is a mobile app that brings together people and nonprofits ...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com...apps...

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