What’s your chief gripe about trucks and sport utility vehicles? Okay, after the part where their engines sound like a washing machine played through a distortion pedal. Right: fuel efficiency. The solution? Buy hybrid (if you can swallow the premium price, that is) where you’ll average, if not impressively, somewhere in the low 20s as …
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Skype Acquires Text Messaging Service ‘GroupMe’
Skype has announced that it’s acquired “GroupMe,” a group text messaging service. Financial details are still relatively unknown at this point, but AllThingsD says Skype purchased the company for around $85 million late Sunday afternoon.
(MORE: What’s Going to be Huge at SXSW? Group Messaging)
GroupMe, which lets you text with …
Google, Motorola and HP: How the Tech Industry Is Changing
Ben Bajarin is the Director of Consumer Technology Analysis and Research at Creative Strategies, Inc, a technology industry analysis and market intelligence firm located in Silicon Valley.
It’s not every week that two major industry announcements happen that could change the technology playing field forever. But the fact is that the …
Why HP Is Getting Out of the Consumer Game
Hewlett Packard has abruptly announced that it’s getting out of the smartphone and tablet game, a little over a month after it launched its TouchPad tablet and around two years after it ponied up almost $2 billion to buy Palm for its mobile “WebOS” software. Speculation about such a decision has been brewing in recent months, though HP …
Google Launches ‘Magnifier’ Blog for Music Discovery
Remember Google Music? You know, the era before Spotify? Google’s launched a music blog called Magnifier to help you discover music that you can add to your Google Music Beta account.
The blog is basically updated every day, spotlighting a specific artist. A couple of songs will be featured, and then each song can be added to your
…
Ten Questions About Google Buying Motorola
Apple buying T-Mobile. Microsoft buying Adobe. We’re all used to reading stuff by tech pundits talking about seismic, world-changing acquisitions in a somewhat fanciful manner. But Google buying Motorola Mobility, the recently-spun-off part of Motorola that makes phones and other consumer hardware, is real–and the most potentially …
Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility (for a Few Obvious Reasons)
Google dropped a bomb this morning by announcing that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in cash. Motorola Mobility, which became independent from Motorola earlier this year, currently builds Android phones such as the Droid 3 and Android tablets such as the Motorola Xoom.
Android will remain open to other handset …
Those Chinese Apple Store Knockoffs? China Says It Found 22 More
The hits (and trademark misses) just keep coming out of China, whose authorities now say they’ve uncovered a whopping 22 fake Apple stores—and that’s just in the city of Kunming, where this strange, sordid tale of Apple retail ne’er do wells started.
According to Xinhua News Agency, China’s official press agency, the country’s …
Apple Granted Injunction to Block Samsung Tablet Sales in Europe
Apple has been granted a preliminary junction against Samsung, ruling that Samsung’s 10.1-inch “Galaxy Tab” Android tablet be pulled from store shelves “across all of Europe and except the Netherlands,” reports the Telegraph.
The injunction was granted by a judge in Germany, yet is enforceable elsewhere since it’s “possible to apply …
Apple Passes Exxon as Most Valuable Company in the World (Updated)
It finally happened: Apple Inc. has passed Exxon Mobil Corp. to become the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Though both companies saw their stocks plummet due to market fears, Exxon Mobil’s dive was harder, while Apple seems to be rebounding (but not by much). The oil giant and former “most valuable company in the …
Microsoft Fires Back at Google’s ‘Bogus Patents’ Claim
There’s a bunch of suited-up, nerdy middle-age dudes going at it again. I mean, the guys from Google and Microsoft.
Google published a blog post yesterday, basically accusing Apple, Oracle and Microsoft of waging a vicious campaign against Android using “bogus patents.” The post specifically mentions litigation practices and the …
AOL Unveils ‘Editions’ iPad Magazine: Hmm, This Looks Familiar
AOL took the curtains off their newest project, a customizable iPad-only magazine dubbed Editions, yesterday. The free download allows users to cultivate content across several news fields and arranges stories into an attractive magazine format, complete with photos.
The entire presentation is quite lovely: The grid structure is …