Todd R. Weiss

Apple’s App Store is continuing its rapid success, marking 40 billion downloads by customers since the store was created in July 2008, with some 20 billion downloads of that total coming in 2012 alone. Those are the latest figures, announced Jan. 7 by Apple, and also include a record-breaking month of December 2012, in which […]

Apple iPad use online dropped by 7.1 percent in December as consumers fired up the various new mobile and electronic devices they received over the holidays, which ultimately boosted the usage numbers for competing Amazon and Android devices. Those are the results from a new report on consumer mobile device online usage from research firm […]

Cisco Systems is getting into the vehicle safety business, joining NXP Semiconductors to help in the push toward creating in-vehicle safety systems that wirelessly communicate with drivers in real-time to warn of road hazards, impending crashes and other driving dangers. In an announcement Jan. 4, Cisco and NXP said they are investing an unspecified amount […]

Google could have been hit with a government sledgehammer in connection with charges of anticompetitive behaviors against rivals, but instead the search giant has come away with a much less damaging fate—a voluntary agreement with the Federal Trade Commission to change some of its business practices. Google also won a separate and large part of […]

Apple’s App Store won the top rankings for the best and easiest app store for consumers to use in a new study announced by ABI Research. Google’s Android Play Store came in second, while Microsoft’s Windows Phone Store ranked third, according to ABI’s report, which looked at how app stores implement their offerings to consumers […]

Even as Apple and Samsung have been fighting each other for months over patent-infringement claims, Apple has continued to build its iPhones and iPads using Samsung ARM-based chips. But that is apparently changing and occurs on the heels of some longtime rumors that the move was in the works, according to a report from Forbes. […]

Google Maps’ Santa Tracker is ready to be used by Santa Claus fans around the world as they track his Christmas Eve trip that has him delivering toys and gifts to good children and to well-behaved techies. And that’s not all. For the first time, Google Chrome users can install a special Chrome extension in […]

Facebook is testing an idea to charge a $1 fee to allow someone to send a Facebook message to another user who is not a connected friend on the social media service. The idea, according to Facebook, could allow users to gain more control over how non-friends can attempt to send them messages outside the […]

Google seemed to be heading to a relatively painless antitrust decision from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in recent months, one that wouldn’t have hit the search giant’s search engine practices with a big stick. But that’s been changing lately as critics have been letting the FTC know that a more serious approach should be […]

Google has unveiled a new Quickoffice iPad app that will allow their Apps for Business users to open and edit their Microsoft Office files on their iPads. The new capabilities were announced in a Dec. 19 post on the Google Enterprise Blog by Jonathan Rochelle, director of product management for Google Drive. “Starting today, the […]