David Needle

It’s out with the old and in with the new at Google. The search giant is discontinuing a spate of under-used experimental features available through its Labs program. But not to worry, it’s also introducing several new offerings to soup up its Gmail service. Datamation’s got the details on the incoming and outgoing products. Google […]

Smartphones, ubiquitous GPS and a host of new location-aware services have lawmakers, privacy advocates, industry groups and manufacturers rethinking the balance between public safety and consumer privacy. Location is becoming the latest battleground over privacy. As a new generation of mobile devices broadcast a user’s location, there is no agreement among lawmakers, privacy […]

Privacy in the digital age has provided a sturdy policy debate since the advent of the commercial Web. But the emergence of geo-aware mobile devices has added a new wrinkle. The issue was the subject of a congressional hearing on Wednesday, and the wireless industry lobby weighed in to support legislation clarifying the rules for […]

Google quickly took the offensive to address reports of an investigation into its practices by the European Union. In a blog post late Tuesday by Julia Holtz, senior competition counsel at Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), the search giant acknowledged it’s been notified by the European Commission that three firms – a UK price comparison site called […]

Google Apps may be on-demand and not locally-installed but they still require some management and administration. Google has decided to leave that up to third party vendors, and Cloud Sherpas is stepping in to fill that gap. Datamation has more information. Google hopes to become a major player in the enterprise space with its cloud-based […]

The smartbooks are coming, the smartbooks are coming. And boy are they ever. ABI Research is forecasting 163 million smartbooks will ship by 2015, but don’t think of this as a whole new category of device spawned by, for example, Apple’s forthcoming iPad. The research firm said its smartbook forecast report includes devices across several […]

End-users may have come to depend on Google for all their searching needs, but many merchants and vendors have become equally if not more dependent on Google for their advertising needs. Lucky for them Google is not letting its dalliances with operating systems and smartphones distract it from investing in its ad business. Datamation gets […]

It took a while before shoppers were willing to punch in their credit card numbers to complete a transaction on a Web site. But just as U.S. consumers have warmed up to the convenience of shopping online, mobile devices are poised to take off as the next big platform for retailers. But it’s still very […]

It was inevitable. Make phones smart enough and powerful enough and sooner or later someone would find a way to push advertising onto them. Well, one firm has. So will it be tolerable or trying on your patience? Enterprise Mobile Today has the details. Companies and ad agencies looking to get more of their message […]

IBM has released for beta testing CoScripter Reusable History, a tool that captures the steps of Web browser activity. IBM Research previewed CoScripter last year, but today marks its public debut as a beta release as an extension for the Firefox browser. The Web-based tool provides what IBM (NYSE: IBM) calls an “actionshot” of their […]

If the blogosphere was not completely awash with news of today’s WordPress outage, that might be because so many blogs that rely on the WordPress publishing platform couldn’t post. The hours-long outage Thursday affected more than 9 million blogs that rely on WordPress. The company’s “showcase” site of top customers includes the Wall Street Journal‘s […]

The overall economy may still be soft, but within the tech sector, there’s plenty of work available for developers of wireless applications. That’s the finding from Elance, an online hub for contract job postings. A new study shows soaring demand for developers who can develop applications for Android, Google’s mobile operating system, and Apple’s iPad. […]