By Tim Conneally, Betanews Thursday, at the annual Microsoft Financial Analyst meeting, CEO Steve Ballmer gave a somewhat baffling explanation about Microsoft's position on tablet/slate computing that seems to run contradictory to the strategy of one...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews At the National Press Club in Washington, DC Thursday, the X PRIZE Foundation launched its $1.4 million oil spill clean-up competition called the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge. The Foundation, which currently also h...

By Ed Oswald, Betanews Using publicly available information on Facebook, a researcher has been able to gather personal details of nearly 170 million users of the service, or about a third of all users. The data includes names, addresses, e-mails, pho...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews While the superstar of the Black Hat USA 2010 security conference in Las Vegas this week was Barnaby Jack from IOActive showing off techniques for "Jackpotting" Windows CE-based ATMs, research from security company Lookout...

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews Cloud computing dominated the morning's Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2010 presentations. COO Kevin Turner and Chief Research Strategy Officer Craig Mundie spent more time talking cloud computing than any other topic. Fo...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Shaumberg, Illinois electronics company Motorola Inc. on Thursday posted its earnings for the second quarter of 2010. The company's total revenue was $5.41 billion, which beat Wall Street's estimates of $5.19 billion, but w...

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews Microsoft COO Kevin Turner made the bold statement this morning during the company's annual FInancial Analyst Meeting. "One of the most exciting things about our cloud strategy is that 70 percent of the wins in the cloud that...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Amazon, online retailer and e-book pioneer announced Thursday the latest generation of its popular 6" Kindle e-book reader.The Kindle received an overhaul similar to the one its big brother Kindle DX got on the first of Jul...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Facebook today officially introduced a new feature called Facebook Questions, the social network's take on crowdsourced question and answer sites like Yahoo Answers, Quora, and Hunch.The new feature, still classified as a b...

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews July 29, 2010 may be remembered as the most important day in Steve Ballmer's career at Microsoft. Tomorrow, the company hosts its annual Financial Analyst Meeting, or FAM. How much Ballmer and his core leadership team spend co...

By Ed Oswald, Betanews Delivering on a promise the company made back in June, Apple on Wednesday released an update to Safari 5 which turns on extensions support akin to what browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer have been offering for years...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews This week, Yahoo Japan announced it reached a deal with competitor Google to utilize its search engine technology and advertising and distribution platform while retaining its current appearance. Despite protests from Micro...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Today, Panasonic announced its first consumer camcorder capable of capturing both 2D HD and 3D video, the $1,399 SDT750. Panasonic was one of the most vocal early supporters of 1080p 3D. The Japanese consumer electronics co...

By Ed Oswald, Betanews Online retail giant Amazon on Tuesday launched a beta of new functionality intended to use data from Facebook to make recommendations. Once connected, the retailer would comb through the data in both your own profile and that o...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews On Tuesday, Apple launched its second multi-touch peripheral, the Magic Trackpad, which elicited an immediate reaction from tech spectators. TechCrunch's MG Siegler declared it to be the harbinger of the end of the mouse er...

By Ed Oswald, Betanews Most Internet veterans would associate the Ask brand with the familiar face of Jeeves, who you could ask a question and usually get the answer that you'd be looking for. However, as the Internet became more sophisticated, that...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Bangalore, India-based software startup Hidden Reflex has launched the beta of a new Web browser for Windows called Epic. The new browser is heavily focused on three areas: In-browser user multitasking, customization throug...

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Last Week, the future of Qualcomm's FLO TV mobile TV business came into question after CEO Paul Jacobs said the chipmaker was "engaged in discussions with a number of partners," about what to do with the asset-rich service....

By Tim Conneally, Betanews Brick and Mortar retailers haven't quite figured out the perfect way to utilize location-based "check in" services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Latitude, but mobile rewards app CardStar today presented a new option for ret...

By Ed Oswald, Betanews Aiming to bring its multi-touch technology to its desktop systems, Apple on Tuesday introduced the "Magic Trackpad," a navigation device that looks much like the trackpads on its current MacBook Pro line of laptops.The device,...