Datamation Staff

PCWorld: The U.S. has awarded Google a patent for “advertising based on environmental conditions.” In other words, the search giant wants to tailor the ads you see based on conditions picked up by the sensors on your mobile device. If it’s cold, they could sell you coats. If it’s hot, they’ll show you ads for […]

Macworld: Having promised monthly updates on working conditions at its suppliers’ factories, Apple has refreshed its Supplier Responsibility website. It reports improvements  in compliance with Apple’s 60-hour-per-week maximum: In January, 84 percent of its suppliers met the requirement, but in February that improved to 89 percent. The average worker at the factories producing Apple’s products […]

The Wall Street Journal: Unnamed sources say that HP CEO Meg Whitman plans to merge the company’s PC and printer divisions into a single unit. Recently, both divisions have experienced declining revenues, and the move could reduce costs by sharing some resources between both groups. Together, the printer and PC divisions at HP earn about […]

Computerworld: According to management consulting firm The Hackett Group, 270,000 IT jobs from large firms in the U.S. and Europe will likely move overseas by 2016. However, the company says that within ten years, the offshoring trend will end because companies will run out of jobs they can move overseas. “You can’t offshore everything,” said […]

eWeek: Thanks to strong software sales, Oracle turned in a third-quarter earnings report that beat analyst expectations. The company had revenue of $9.04 billion, a 2.2 percent year-over-year increase. Net income came in at $2.5 billion or 62 cents per share, an 18 percent yearly increase. Analysts had predicted income of 56 cents per share. […]

ZDNet: According to StatCounter, Google’s Chrome browser took first place in market share for one single day — March 18. Chrome captured 32.7 percent of the market, compared to 32.5 for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and 24.8 percent for Mozilla’s Firefox. The victory was short-lived, however; when people returned to work on Monday, IE again climbed […]

Ecomonic Times: A team of security researchers led by North Carolina State University associate professor Xuxian Jiang is warning that even if a mobile app is secure, the ad networks it uses may not be. Examining 100,000 apps from the Google Play app store, the researchers found that 48,139 of the apps had ad libraries […]

Financial Times: France’s National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties (CNIL) wants more information about Google’s recent changes to its privacy policies. In a letter to Google CEO Larry Page, the agency wrote that it “deeply regrets that Google did not delay the application of the new policy.” In cooperation with other EU agencies, the […]

Bloomberg: Unnamed “people with knowledge of the schedule” tell Bloomberg that Microsoft will finish up Windows 8 this summer and the first devices using the new operating system will hit the shelves in October–in plenty of time for the holiday shopping rush. “If they miss the September-October time frame, they’re going to be stuck without […]

Engadget: Bloggers at Tweakers.net have confirmed what several new iPad owners have suspected–the new tablet runs hotter than the old one. Thermal imaging confirms that the new iPad climbs to about 92.5 Fahrenheit during benchmark tests, compared to 82.9 Fahrenheit for the iPad 2. On Monday, Apple revealed that it sold more than 3 million […]

Ars Technica: Varia Holdings Inc. has filed patent infringement lawsuits against RIM and Samsung. The patent in question, titled “emoticon input method and apparatus,” gives the company the rights to the concept of allowing users to select emoticons from a menu of options rather than typing in the characters one at a time. A startup […]

Bloomberg BusinessWeek: China’s Anti-Monopoly Bureau has expanded the second phase of its investigation into Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Chinese approval of the deal is the last hurdle Google faces before it can complete its $12.5 billion acquisition of the smartphone manufacturer. Government regulators in the U.S., the E.U. and other parts of the world […]