Tech Buzz

Despite coming from one of the world's most well-known tech companies, Microsoft, Windows Phone has a freakishly odd smartphone branding problem. From what I see out there, most consumers barely know what a Windows Phone is or how it works or why they might want one. Business users tend to be more a...

Microsoft is expected to debut a smaller version of its Surface line of tablets later this month. The company reportedly will showcase the device for the first time, along with other new Surface models, at a New York City event on May 20. The smaller version of the Surface will run on Qualcomm proce...

Google and Microsoft are positioned against each other as primary competitors, and that could mean trouble. I remember past dynamics similar to theirs that didn't end well for either company. Apple focused on IBM and didn't see Microsoft coming. Microsoft focused on AOL and didn't see the Internet c...

There's a lot shaping up for Apple this year, and it's going to be wild. In fact, there's so much going on at Infinite Loop in Cupertino these days that it makes me believe that 2014 will be the first post-Steve Jobs year when Apple -- in the eyes of the broader tech world -- stops dancing around an...

Last week, Microsoft delivered its quarterly report, and it was a big deal. It was CEO Satya Nadella's first real quarter and the Nokia merger was completed. This is just the beginning of the Microsoft makeover, but two things indicate that in the end, Ballmer finally did what was right for Microsof...

True, market-changing, life-changing innovation comes from three key elements: passion, patience and pressure. Apple is the poster child for this view of innovation. Especially now. Especially when Apple is simply selling millions of profitable iPhones and MacBooks and iPads, quarter after quarter -...

Nike appears to be retreating from its vanguard position in the computer wearables market. The company reportedly has begun slashing the engineering team working on its FuelBand product, a fitness computer that can be worn on a wrist, laying off as many as 55 of the 70-person team working on FuelBa...

I saw the movie Transcendence last week, and it was an impressive telling of what might happen were we to achieve singularity. Given this is likely where AI research is taking us and that analytics is a major component to getting there, I not only recommend the movie as entertainment but also as a m...

HOT TECH RUMOR

Google This: Yahoo Wants Apple's Search Business

Google has dominated the world of search for years, so much so that "Google" is not only synonymous with searching -- it's a verb, too. Who hasn't told someone to google something? That's awesome mindshare, and its power is translated to billions of dollars of ad-related revenue for Google. Where wi...

OPINION

Why Is It So Hard to Think Different?

I've been having an interesting week -- first, with AMD, which has returned to profitability and stopped chasing Intel's butt to do some rather interesting different things, like merging x86 and ARM technologies. Then, with IBM, which also realized that chasing Intel wasn't doing it any good. It cho...

One thing that Apple made clear when it took the smartphone market by storm and away from then-dominant players Palm, BlackBerry and Microsoft is that to win you need to make big bets and change the battle. The market is now dominated by Apple and Google technology -- much of which Google doesn't co...

Amazon is widely expected to reveal a new set-top video streaming device on Wednesday. It likely will introduce either a streaming stick like the HDMI Google Chromecast or a set-top box like the Apple Apple TV. Or, the company might produce both options -- like Roku's new Streaming Stick or more tra...

ECS -- Nvidia's Emerging Companies Summit -- is a place to check out some of the firms that could become the next breakout company. It didn't disappoint this year. Among the highlights: A firm that could redefine advertising connected to Web pictures and videos; a company that could put your entire ...

What really surprises me about the book Haunted Empire, which predicts the decline of Apple, isn't that Apple fans don't like it. That's a given -- Apple fans only want positive books and stories. It is the level of effort that has gone into killing this book, and how much that apparently has accele...

I'm usually not a prediction sort of guy because it's cosmically silly -- we're tiny little humans on a tiny little rock spinning in a very large universe. Yet here I am, looking at 2014 and the latest batch of smartwatch efforts from Samsung, Google, Motorola and LG. Here's what I see: All of these...

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