Tech Biz

In the South Korean industrial town of Gumi, about a 45-minute helicopter ride southeast of here, Samsung Electronics factory workers, nearly all of them young women, are methodically applying the finishing touches on Galaxy S5s. The launch of Samsung’s newest flagship smartphone on April 11 was a little over a week away, and though most Continue Reading →

Apple has a crazily powerful digital store, used by hundreds of millions of customers. But if you want to sell something there it will cost you: In almost every case, Apple keeps 30 percent of the purchase price on whatever its users buy. Beats Music, the new subscription music service that launched in January, figures that’s worth it. Continue Reading →

Nike is gearing up to shutter its wearable-hardware efforts, and the sportswear company this week fired the majority of the team responsible for the development of its FuelBand fitness tracker, a person familiar with the matter told CNET. “As a fast-paced, global business we continually align resources with business priorities,” Nike spokesman Brian Strong said Continue Reading →

After years of complaining about how Airbnb doesn’t compete on a level playing field, apparently the hotel lobby in New York now wants to ensure that the peer-to-peer hospitality startup isn’t held to the same standards, especially as it relates to taxes. Airbnb has taken steps to ensure that it will be able to begin Continue Reading →

A recent patent application from the search engine kingpin might make you reconsider wanting to buy Google Glass. Spotted by the folks at Patent Bolt, Google has filed a patent application for a micro camera component to compliment its recently announced smart contact lenses. In addition to being able to monitor a person’s vitals, this unannounced apparatus could be used Continue Reading →

Just days before Microsoft retired Windows XP from public support, the company drastically reduced the price of custom support agreements that give large companies and government agencies another year of XP patches, experts reported on Wednesday. “I believe that Microsoft changed prices because it decided that not enough customers were enrolling in the program, and Continue Reading →

A Google Fiber job posting in New York City has a bunch of tech news sites excited about the prospect of Google bringing its fiber Internet service to the Big Apple. It would certainly be a nice consolation prize for a city bemoaning the comical failure of the New York Knicks. But Google says there Continue Reading →

Mt. Gox, once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, is likely to be liquidated after a Tokyo court dismissed the company’s bid to resuscitate its business, the court-appointed administrator said on Wednesday. CEO Mark Karpeles is also likely to be investigated for liability in the collapse of the Tokyo-based firm, the provisional administrator, lawyer Nobuaki Kobayashi, Continue Reading →

A working space elevator is still, sadly, not a reality. But sci-fi geeks may be excited to know that some of the most intelligent and imaginative minds on Earth have indeed looked into the logistics of building such a fanciful contraption. Rich DeVaul, head of Google X’s Rapid Evaluation team, has confirmed for the first Continue Reading →

After a longstanding relationship with the company, Twitter has decided to acquire Gnip, “a leading provider of social data.” Numerous deals hammered out over the last few years have allowed Gnip to sell access to a realtime “firehose” of activity on Twitter and the full historical archive of public tweets. “Gnip has played a crucial Continue Reading →