Todd R. Weiss

Amazon is making it easier for software developers to sell extra features and services to consumers through their software apps by tying the transactions in with Amazon’s established and trusted e-commerce infrastructure. The move, which was announced Jan. 22, is aimed at helping developers to reach more customers and make more money from their apps […]

Google Maps are certainly not just for finding your way to a distant location on your next road trip. All over the world, software developers are building intriguing new Google Maps applications and Websites using the Maps API and Google’s Street View images to portray lots of unorthodox thinking. The Website Google Maps Mania, an […]

Google Docs users have known since last fall that they’d soon no longer be able to export files to older Microsoft Office formats. Now the drop-dead deadline of Jan. 31 is fast approaching, and Google Docs wants to remind users of the coming changes. The changes were announced Sept. 25, 2012, with an original planned […]

Facebook Messenger now allows iPhone users to make calls to other iPhone users for free via WiFi, as the company continues to provide its users with new ways to reach out to their friends. The new feature was launched Jan. 16 without any fanfare or announcement, according to a report by The Verge. The new […]

Google is donating $3.7 million to two organizations that are working to make government data more open, available and transparent to citizens in the United States and around the world. Google.org has awarded $2.1 million to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, and $1.6 million to mySociety, a U.K.-based group, according to a Jan. 16 post […]

Google is planning two special “hackathon” events to showcase its Google Glass eyeglass-mounted computers and gain input from developers who want to improve them and make them more usable. The Google hackathon events were unveiled in an email sent by Google to developers who attended the Google I/O Conference in July 2012, where the “smart […]

Apple and Amazon have been fighting a legal battle for almost two years over the use of the term “app store” to describe their online stores that sell apps and other content to consumers and businesses. Now a federal judge is ordering the two companies to try to reach a settlement to put the disagreement […]

Google is working to transform its Chrome Web browser by adding the ability for users to give voice commands to complete an assortment of tasks in the browser. The nascent new feature is included in the latest Chrome 25 browser beta release, according to a Jan. 14 post by Glen Shires, a Google software engineer […]

Google is awarding a $2.65 million grant to help fund energy conservation efforts by The Energy Foundation, a group that works to advance energy efficiency and renewable energy in the United States and China. In a Jan. 14 post on The Official Google.org Blog, Michael Terrell, senior policy counsel for energy and sustainability at Google, […]

Two Java security vulnerabilities that can affect Java used within popular Web browsers received emergency patches Jan. 13 from Oracle to prevent unsuspecting users from being affected by malicious processes from attacking Websites. In a weekend post on The Oracle Software Security Assurance Blog, spokesman Eric P. Maurice wrote that the company released Security Alert […]