News

Apple demands over $2B from Samsung for patent infringement

Apple lawyers spoke of 'massive' infringement by Samsung as a jury trial began in California

Windows can’t keep partying like it’s 1999

Microsoft will use its Build developer conference to talk about innovations for its flagship OS

Newton is the first MIPS-based mini-computer for wearables

The Newton development kit is the first with a MIPS CPU

NSA phone metadata collection program renewed for 90 days

Reauthorization was needed to ensure continuity while changes are made, feds say

U.S. Navy to test humanoid robotic firefighters

Autonomous robots expected to communicate and work with sailors

Western Digital’s ‘MyCloud’ has been broken for 5 days

There's still no information about when the site will be fixed

NSA isn’t evil, says noted civil libertarian

Geoffrey Stone says the beleaguered agency has successfully thwarted multiple terrorist plots since 9/11

BMW’s new i8 is the first production car with laser headlights

The headlights project whiter light that's three times brighter than LEDs

Google trumpets extra encryption for Gmail, but stays mum on other apps

While touting an additional security layer to protect Gmail users against snooping, Google remains vague on its other apps

Ex-Microsoft employee pleads guilty to trade secret theft

Prosecutors will recommend three-month prison sentence for insider who allegedly shared info with French blogger

Last-minute lazybones dump Windows XP

Windows 7 outduels Windows 8 as haven for those abandoning nearly-retired XP

Hacked passwords can enable remote unlocking, tracking of Tesla cars

Tesla Motors accounts that enable remote car control are only protected by six-character passwords, researcher says

Amazon super-sizes instances to lure Hadoop users to Web Services

The company has launched 12 new virtual servers that can be used for image processing and financial analytics

Alcatel-Lucent ups the ante in unified access

Second rev of its strategy adds SDN and analytics to wired/wireless unification portfolio

InteropNet: The show behind the show

A lot of work for the people behind the networking conference's own network.

Offshore firms took 50% of H-1B visas in 2013

Government data shows who is really using the visas

Mozilla steps up damage control as pressure for CEO Eich’s ouster mounts

Petition calling for Brendan Eich to renounce past support for same-sex marriage ban nears 70K signatures

Open-Xchange adds spreadsheet program to its online app suite

OX Spreadsheet offers online collaboration and allows editing of Excel documents

Microsoft slashes Azure prices, introduces new basic tier

Amazon Web Services and Google also cut prices in March

Mistake in ransomware program leaves decryption key accessible

It's unlikely, however, that average users would pick up on the error and reclaim their files

Twitter looks to cash in on TV-related tweets overseas

Two acquisitions could help Twitter develop new advertising partnerships overseas, one expert said

With one ‘dinosaur’ and one BlackBerry owner, iCourt jury is selected

Apple gear was well-represented among the pool of prospective jurors

Yahoo reportedly launching YouTube rival

A popular video site would help Marissa Mayer mend Yahoo's image

Avaya tried to monopolize maintenance, jury says in $60M verdict

A third-party provider sued, saying it was locked out of servicing Avaya equipment

Intel plays defense against ARM with Cloudera stake

Beyond selling more x86 chips, the Intel investment could be pushing Cloudera away from software development for ARM

CIOs Predict IT Spending to Increase

FCC clears the way for faster Wi-Fi

The commission opens up 100MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi in the 5GHz band and makes 65MHz of lower spectrum available

Bing adds context to people, places with ‘snapshot’ feature

The tool shows results in a panel with related information from various sources

Many SAP customers struggling to figure out its mobility strategy, user survey finds

SAP pledges to provide more clarity on its mobile offerings

‘Significant’ solar flare may affect communications, GPS on Wednesday

Radiation emission could hit radios, power lines and satellites

Supreme Cout justices question some software patents

Some justices express skepticism about patents involving a trading platform tied to a computer

Tip of the Hat: Facebook’s Oculus buy a smart move

Whether the $2 billion deal to buy a startup proves successful isn't the point; tech companies must make bold moves to get 'the next big thing'

Nadella names Guthrie his successor to head Microsoft Cloud & Enterprise group

Microsoft's CEO also picked Phil Spencer to lead the Xbox team and said Stephen Elop will be in charge of devices

Healthcare.gov experiences maintenance outage on deadline day

Technicians took the site down in order to fix a software bug

LaCie doubles wireless capacity for iPhones, iPads

The drive maintains the same form factor as the 1TB model

Samsung’s 28-inch, 4K monitor to sell for $699.99

Samsung's new 4K monitor should bring the price of 4K monitors down even further.

China’s unsupported XP machines hold the potential to become a massive botnet army

Expert: It might make sense to help reluctant users to upgrade to something newer and more secure

SQL and NoSQL come together with new MariaDB Enterprise offerings

The products are based on MariaDB 10, which became generally available on Monday

Beyond Meritocracy: 6 Ways IT Employee Performance Evaluations Are Changing

Early STEM Education Will Lead to More Women in IT

Extreme binds Enterasys gear tighter to its own

Extreme Networks unveils software architecture, 100G blades and 802.11ac access points

HP bucks up unified access line to better battle Cisco, others

Cloud-based managed service, SDN apps and access points launch

Microsoft’s Word for iPad cracks top 10 in gross revenue

In-app subscriptions to Office 365 Home provide revenue, and Apple's 30%

Oracle doubles the speed of MySQL query handling

MySQL 5.7 can process twice as many query requests as the previous version could

Alarming synthesized speech tells you when to freak out

Fujitsu technology could work with cloud data to tailor synthesized speech to a given situation

Activists to appeal US judge’s ruling on Baidu’s censorship

A judge ruled on Thursday that Baidu's censorship is protected as free speech

Judge overrules Samsung objection to jury video depicting Apple devices

Samsung argued that the instructional video for jurors suggested that Apple's products were patentable and innovative

Smartphone kill-switch could save consumers $2.6B per year, says report

A survey finds almost all consumers want the ability to remotely kill a stolen cellphone

Banks pulls out of class-action suit against Target, Trustwave

Trustmark National Bank is volunarily dismissing its claims

Where’s the touch-first Office for Windows?

Analysts expect more info about a Windows 8.1 version this week at Build; CEO Satya Nadella confirms as much