The changes Google is making to Adwords will, it says, make it easier for advertisers serve up relevant ads to users on all devices. Critics say the only company to profit from this will be … guess who? Read more »
A survey by the analyst house Ovum has found a similar antipathy towards online tracking on both sides of the Atlantic. And that, they say, could have big implications for big data. Read more »
Microsoft has introduced a new sign-on experience for users of business applications such as Office 365 and Windows Azure, showing it’s trying to better accommodate cloud users. Read more »
Nvidia’s Project Shield handheld gaming console surprised and impressed me at this year’s CES. Here’s a closer look on video to explain why. Read more »
The $150 handset is cheap for a Windows Phone 8 device, but still pricey compared with entry-level smartphones and semi-smartphones from Nokia, BlackBerry and Huawei itself. Read more »
John Paton, the CEO of the Digital First Media chain, says that he doesn’t believe paywalls or subscription models are the solution to the industry’s problems, but he is experimenting with them anyway. Read more at paidContent »
The notion of a privately-held Dell, partly owned by Microsoft, is getting closer to reality, according to published reports. A deal in which Microsoft owns a big stake in a PC company shows just how drastically times have changed. Read more »
While Google may see its payments to French publishers as a smart move for its own short-term purposes, the deal is still being seen by many as a payment for links, and that could set a dangerous precedent. Read more »
How could HTC stage a smartphone comeback? Perhaps with not one, not two, but three camera sensors in its upcoming M7 handset. Read more »
Following Samsung and Acer, HP has thrown its hat into the Google Chromebook ring. The new $329 Pavilion may appeal to those wanting more screen and less Microsoft. Read more »
Opscode credits a huge new customer — Facebook — with helping test out the scalability of the new Private Chef code base. The goal? Scaling big, real big. Read more »
Forget getting a gigabit in one city in all 50 states of the U.S. The real gigabit challenge is helping the existing ISPs think like innovators, not like utilities. Read more »
The closer we get to Mobile World Congress, the more information leaks about new Android tablets and phones. Here’s a recap, along with good news for those wanting a Nexus 4. Read more »
Outbrain wants to dominate the business of suggesting stories to readers while helping publishers buy and sell web traffic. But now competition is coming and the company has to protect its turf. Read more at paidContent »
When Google announced it was dropping Sync support last month, it left Gmail users on Windows Phone reeling. An extension give Microsoft time to address the situation. Read more »
Not everyone is drowning in big data or has the know-how to deal with it if they were. Here are six free web services that help mere mortals analyze and visualize their own data. Read more »
Undersea cable maps are for the deeply nerdy, but Telegeography has just produced one that’s beautiful and functional. Plus it shows we’re only using about 36 percent of the purchased capacity. Read more »
What motivates 70 people to spend two days in a conference room, coding their hearts out? For the participants in this weekend’s Google hackathon, the answer was a lot bigger than just winning a new TV. Read more »
In his annual letter to shareholders of the seed-stage incubator Betaworks, founder and CEO John Borthwick argues that while closed platforms can be valuable in the short term, open systems and services will ultimately prevail. Read more »
Twitter released the second half of its 2012 transparency report, detailing the kinds of information the government has requested from Twitter including information requests, removal request, and copyright notices. Read more »
A new Google FAQ gives some detail about how the search giant deals with law enforcement and government requests for information on Google users. Read more »
Google is reportedly looking to bring a smart watch to market. That’s not too hard to believe when you consider it already has one that few people know about. Read more »
No one wants to be an annoying Facebook couple posting incessantly on each others walls, but a few couples-only apps are coming onto the market with solutions. Avocado, launched by ex-Googlers, is looking to give couples their own space online. Read more »
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer told attendees at the World Economic Forum that the key to the company’s future success is partnering with other players like Apple, Google and Facebook. But is that a future worth betting on? Read more »
A startup backed by Google, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Paul Allen’s investment firm, called AltaRock Energy has delivered an important breakthrough for the next-generation of geothermal technology at a site in Bend, Oregon. Read more »
After Microsoft bought Skype, some were concerned about the security of their Skype calls. Microsoft did little to assuage those concerns, so a group of human rights organizations and journalists are demanding more transparency. Read more »
Facebook’s new social-graph search may look like a fairly boring feature of interest only to marketers, but the information it is able to reveal highlights how much we make public without even realizing it. Read more »
YouTube got a lot of play during this week’s Google earnings call, in part because the site is starting to move the needle for Google. Read more »
Google published its latest report about how often governments are asking for data about individuals. The growth of this type of surveillance means that Facebook should consider publishing a report of its own. Read more »
I was enamored with Samsung’s newest Chromebook except for one key aspect: It couldn’t run some of the same apps as my older Chrome OS device. Google just fixed this with new support for ARM chips. Read more »
Evidence of Twitter’s ambition to become a media entity continues to accumulate, but if it wants to fulfil its role as a digital-media player, it is going to have to get a lot better at finding relevant content for its users. Read more at paidContent »
Google spent more than a billion dollars on infrastructure in the fourth quarter, representing the company’s second-biggest quarterly expenditure ever. As it competes against Facebook, Apple, Yelp and Amazon, the company can’t afford to stop building data centers now. Read more »
How did the most important public companies on GigaOM’s radar fare in the fourth quarter? Here’s our roundup of quarterly report cards. Read more »
It was a confusing quarter to judge, but Google appears to have had a solid fourth-quarter when it comes to its bread-and-butter: search and internet advertising. Read more »
Delivering and managing the web experience isn’t just about mobile. Companies are also faced with new challenges in the desktop environment, including browser fragmentation, network evolution, and client-side technologies. They must invest in both the desktop environment as well as to create an optimized experience for mobile. Read more »
It makes sense that Google Drive is the only cloud service on my Chromebook’s File Manager. That doesn’t mean I have to keep that limitation though. Here’s how to get Dropbox integration through a sync service. Read more »
Russia’s answer to Google hopes to validate its core MatrixNet machine learning technology – until now best-known for improving Yandex’s search ranking – by handing it over to nuclear physicists at CERN. Read more »
Tired of seeing that “sold out” note on the Google Nexus 4 purchase page? You may not see it for much longer according to LG, which is ramping up production of the Android smartphone. Read more »
Interest may be weakening in consumer social media businesses. But social technologies are working their way deeper into enterprise computing, and social media is playing a bigger role across advertising and marketing sectors. Read more »
Sony decided it will focus only on high-end smartphones going forward and it may be doing the same in tablets if the new Xperia Tablet Z is any indication. Read more »
