David Needle

Even Microsoft can’t ignore the iPhone’s success. Today Microsoft’s Bing search unit announced the “Bing App” for the iPhone and iPod Touch has been accepted and is available for free download at the iPhone App Store. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) said in a blog post that Bing on the iPhone brings “some cool stuff” to the […]

Google plans to sell two versions of its own-branded cell phone: one with a service contract with T-Mobile USA and another that is unlocked, a source familiar with the matter said. The phone, manufactured by HTC, has a number of code names such as HTC Passion, Dream or Nexus One and could be available directly […]

The number of applications for Google’s Android mobile platform can now be measured in the tens of thousands. According a report by the Web site Androlib, which tracks Android use, there are now more than 20,000 Android applications available for download. Of those, 62.2 percent are free and 37.8 percent require a fee. While it’s […]

No one likes a long URL name, least of all Twitter. Making URLs shorter is becoming a booming business, even if the means to profit remains hazy. Both Google and bit.ly have new versions of their URL shorteners out this week that do more than just make long URLs short. Datamation checks out what’s new. […]

While the big boys of search look to capitalize on the real-time search craze, smaller players continue to build out alternatives. The latest is TwitVid, which on Monday released a real-time search feature for finding the most current and popular videos on Twitter. TwitVid said its proprietary “real-time ranking algorithm” ranks videos based on relevancy […]

Cupertino may be readying a revolutionary new tablet PC based on the iPhone’s design and interface. Or it may not. HardwareCentral looks at the latest grist for the rumor mill: A video that purports to show the much-rumored “iTablet” in all its glory. Apple-watchers have seen a steady stream of reports and speculation that the […]

Oracle customers told concerned European Union regulators on Thursday that the U.S. software company’s $7 billion deal to buy Sun Microsystems would not curtail competition in the database market. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL), the world’s biggest database software maker, said customers “uniformly and consistently” supported its case during the first day of a closed hearing held […]

AT&T said the company needs to “educate the customer” on data usage, particularly in New York and San Francisco, where just three percent of smartphone users are consuming up to 40 percent of the network capacity, according to Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. Speaking at a UBS investors conference […]

Sales of Apple’s iPhone in China are picking up. Officials at China Unicom have confirmed in several reports that the company has sold more than 100,000 iPhones in the 40 days since it began offering the popular mobile device in late October. That’s the first official sales figure heard from the company since a few […]

Friendster has a new owner. Following weeks of rumors, Malaysia-based online payments firm MOL Global confirmed it has entered into a definitive agreement to buy the site, an early mover in a market today known as the social networking space. Launched in Silicon Valley in 2002, Friendster quickly became eclipsed by the newer Facebook and […]

Yahoo is building on its recent moves to integrate Twitter feeds into News search results with today’s announcement of direct integration of relevant tweets into Web search page results for hot topics. The new feature is set to go live today throughout the U.S. The news follows moves by both Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft […]

We’ve heard terms “infoglut” and “information overload” for years, but now we know just how much information we really consume. U.S. households consumed about 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008, according to a study just released by the University of California, San Diego. One zettabyte is 1,000,000,000 trillion bytes. The researchers equated the total bytes […]