Facebook is now disclosing to the public the number of national security-related requests it received from the government for user data. Microsoft has released similar statistics. But Google has declined, saying it prefers a different approach. Read more »
Despite increased innovation in education technology, a new report from the non-profit Center for American Progress shows that U.S. schools are not doing enough to take advantage of digital tools. Read more »
Amazon Web Services outages have prodded customer Netflix to write software that can keep the service alive amid infrastructure issues. Now comes a new tool addressing issues around the Christmas Eve outage. Read more »
Mozilla’s ScienceLab wants the open web to transform science as much as it’s transformed the other areas of our lives. Read more »
Don’t judge a book by its content — at least not if it’s copy-protected: German researchers are working on a new DRM system that would change individual words of a story to track pirated book copies back to their original owners. Read more at paidContent »
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has told EU commissioner of justice Viviane Reding that the NSA is primarily targeting U.S. citizens and suspected foreign terrorists in its data collection efforts. Read more »
After a trail of breadcrumb evidence, an FCC certification report indicates that a new Nexus 7 is on the way. The device forgoes an Nvidia chip for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S600. Read more »
Unsurprisingly, there’s a crazy amount of interest in the biggest visual change to iOS since its introduction in 2007. Read more »
Recent recipient of an Apple Design Award, Ridiculous FIshing is, well, a ridiculous but really fun version of a physics-based fishing game. Read more »
Updated: Savvis will offer AppFog’s platform in both public and dedicated, private implementations to corporate customers. Read more »
This week, both Facebook and Yahoo detailed new efforts to manage real-time data flows within their myriad systems. Yahoo’s work is an open source implementation of Storm designed to run on the same cluster as Hadoop and even share resources. Read more »
Apple isn’t making it a requirement, but it’s something every developer should do anyway: because when you put an iOS 6-designed app next to an iOS 7-ready one, the difference will be incredibly stark — and not in a good way. Read more »
The full backing of the U.S. executive branch is now behind the idea of spectrum sharing, which would split time between federal and commercial users on the wireless airwaves. Read more »
On this week’s show, Sony scores with the PS4, the PRISM story keeps evolving and GigaOM turns seven years old! Read more »
The next big technology wave — the internet of things (IoT) — promises to transform how people interact with the world and make everyone from entrepreneurs to enterprises a ton of money in the process. With Xively’s IoT public cloud, you can easily capitalize on this huge opportunity. Read more »
Without any fanfare, the software giant has released the clumsily-titled “Office Mobile for Office 365 subscribers”, which seems to do what it says on the tin. Read more »
A Bloomberg report suggests widespread cooperation between U.S. tech firms and the nation’s intelligence agencies that could help those spies hack into foreign computers. Read more »
With AppFog, Savvis will get a Cloud Foundry-based Platform as a Service to run atop its own VSphere or vCloud Director-based infrastructure. Read more »
Amid increased reports of cyberattacks and security vulnerabilities in healthcare, the FDA is calling on medical device makers to ramp up their safeguards. Read more »
A division of the Swedish government has prohibited government bodies from using Google Apps, giving more credence to privacy concerns around public-cloud services. Read more »
Exclusive: New usage data from Onavo shows that iOS users are taking to Chrome, to Twitter’s Vine and to Yahoo apps. Read more »
Some of the changes are barely noticeable, while others may cause some initial confusion for longtime iOS users. Read more »
TextNow today may be an also-ran in the crowded over-the-top communications market, but it plans to set itself apart by becoming a full-fledged carrier. It wants to be the first all-IP carrier in the U.S. Read more »
Boxee is looking to raise additional funding, the company confirmed Thursday. However, selling itself to a pay TV provider is also a possibility. Read more »
Connected cars will be a big business for cellular carriers as governments demand more embedded systems inside vehicles to meet safety demands. Tethering will also be big, but smartphone integration less so. Read more »
The annual Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is sold out – but you can still enjoy many of the festival’s top acts, thanks to an extensive live stream. Read more »
Online learning startup creativeLIVE is breaking in its new San Francisco studios with a special broadcast featuring several big names from Silicon Valley. Read more »
The UK Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has suggested that Google’s average payment of less than 0.1 percent in corporation tax may not be entirely legal. Read more »
Raymie Stata spent seven years working on the guts of Hadoop as a VP, chief architect and CTO at Yahoo. His new Hadoop startup, called Altiscale, has raised a $12 million from some prominent investors. Read more »
Archimedes asked only for a lever and a place to stand and promised he could move the earth. Maybe he was only playing 200 B.C. hype man for his mathematical musings on levers, but it’s a point worth taking: Work smarter and accomplish great things. Read more »
The Financial Times is quoting three senior EU officials as saying an “anti-FISA” clause was taken out of the EU’s proposed data protection legislation, after senior U.S. figures lobbied against it. Read more »
Connected devices are making their way into the animal kingdom, which may have surprising benefits for humans if it helps lead to acceptance of sensor data for tracking health. Read more »
The creation of the Open SmartWatch Project means developers can use the Android-companion Sony device to try out new peripheral use cases — at their own risk, of course. Read more »
Marissa Mayer’s hunger for fresh talent has clearly not yet been sated — in the last day alone, Yahoo has snapped up and announced the closure of two more startups. Read more »
It’s not nearly as full-featured as Google Now, but Today gives notifications about weather, commute traffic and a quick glance at future events. Read more »
Clearwire resisted Dish’s advances for five months, but it has finally given in. Clearwire’s board recommended today that shareholders give Sprint the old heave-ho and back Dish’s offer to assume a major stake in the WiMAX operator. Read more »
Google Image Search just got a whole lot better, and the company’s purpose-built machine learning system infrastructure is a big reason why. No surprise, Jeff Dean helped build it. Read more »
It’s not the latest 4G-capable iPad that’s eating up all this data, though, it’s older 3G models, mainly the iPad 2 and iPad 3. Read more »
Looking for a deal? The new frontier of ecommerce websites encourage trading and bartering from users’ closets — and it’s exploding in popularity. Read more »
Apple’s long-rumored Apple TV has yet to materialize – and one reason for the delay may be that cable companies have been engaging in anti-competitive behavior. Read more »
