August, 2011 — Tech News and Analysis

Archive for August 2011

Apple Store Sanlitun in Beijing, China.

Apple has been showing strong growth in greater China in recent quarterly reports, and now it looks like the company is even beating a longtime regional heavyweight for the first time, taking in $3.8 billion in sales revenue vs. Lenovo’s $2.8 billion last quarter. Read More »

Macheen CEO Richard Schwartz

Macheen, a company that wants to build a broadband cloud that can provide device makers and retailers with connectivity, has signed a deal with Sprint to deliver 3G service in the U.S. It is now working with Dell in the U.S. and Germany. Read More »

 
 

Android users have about 250,000 apps to choose from but most have little use for any of them outside the top 50. New data from Nielsen found that 61 percent of the time spent on apps by Android users are in the top 50 apps. Read More »

German startup Gigalocal has good backers and a name that seems inspired. But can its focus on a local market be enough to help open up a gap in the increasingly busy — but still relatively unproven — field of service marketplaces? Read More »

The U.S. military has stepped up efforts to invest and use more cleantech at its bases and battlefields, including renewable electricity, energy storage and a host of energy efficiency technologies. Here is a list of plans and projects underway. Read More »

IBM's cognitive computer recognizing numbers.

After a century of making tabulation machines IBM has come up with a new chip that marries our brain’s architecture with silicon guts. The goal is to create a new style of computing aimed at making sense of big data without consuming a lot of power. Read More »

Exclusive: Ask.com is amping up its star power. The Q&A search engine — which provides a mix of user-generated and algorithmically sourced content — has added several heavyweight partnerships with Lonely Planet, Weather Underground, and others to make sure it answers users’ questions in the best… Read More »

When Congress returns from its summer recess in early September, it will vote on patent reform legislation that should represent a major overhaul of the United States patent system. It won’t do away with patent trolls or software patents, but it could level the playing field. Read More »

GM to sell electric Cadillac

GM just announced the next car in its extended range electric car lineup: the Cadillac ELR. Like GM’s Volt, the Cadillac ELR will have a t-shaped lithium ion battery to enable driving on electric power, but then also features an engine as a backup. Read More »

Social gaming giant Zynga is the subject of a new patent infringement lawsuit, the latest in a string of such claims. Now that Zynga is under a microscope as it moves toward an IPO, will its legal troubles be too much for potential investors to handle? Read More »

While plenty of newspapers and other media entities are happy to use social tools like Twitter and Facebook to promote their content, few are really engaging with their readers on a regular basis, says Reynolds Journalism fellow Joy Mayer — but that is the future of… Read More »

The latest company to enter the social TV fray isn’t being very vocal about its plans, but that’s hasn’t stopped it from being able to raise funds. Umami announced a $1.65 million funding round it will use to build out its social TV platform. Read More »

More Must Reads

GroupMe, a top contender in the group messaging app space, was born out of a hackathon but managed to find success by executing on its vision. The founders sat down with me and looked back at how the first year has gone since the service launched. Read More »

The most appealing tablet these days is clearly Apple’s iPad, but HP’s TouchPad is a surprising second choice, beating out the many Google Android tablets and RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook in a survey of potential tablet buyers. It may be too soon to call it the “OuchPad.” Read More »

Google wants to eat everyone’s cake. Photovine, the photo-sharing app built by Google’s Slide team, is now open to public use after an initial beta period, and is gunning for Instagram’s iOS App Store crown. How does it stack up against the champ? Read More »

According to analysis of consumer reaction to all the tablet ads aired on TV this year, the most effective tablet ad produced so far is not for the industry-leading iPad. Rather, it’s an ad from Apple frenemy Samsung for its Galaxy Tab. Read More »

Battery maker Ener1 already was forced to write down a $59.4 million impairment charge for its investment in electric vehicle maker Think. But now it’s time for Ener1 to report its latest earnings and the Think problem is still weighing down the company. Read More »

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