Google's I/O: Perfect Blend of Substance and Spectacle?

It used to be that technology companies would head to one or more of the plethora of industry trade shows to introduce new products and showcase their latest offerings. But in recent years many large companies have forgone the shows and instead have offered company-specific conferences and events. This week Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) might have raised the bar for what attendees -- specifically...

It Took Less Than 10 Years for IT Not to Matter

Way back in May 2003, Nick Carr published the article “IT Doesn’t Matter” in the Harvard Business Review. For those of you who don’t remember it, Carr’s piece was a doozy and then some. He argued that companies paying top dollar for the latest and greatest technological equipment were spending a lot to buy a very limited competitive edge, if any. The chief executive officers of the...

National Optical Fibre Network project gets PMO push

If the government has its way, more than two lakh gram panchayats of the country will soon have access to the high speed Internet connection. The Prime Minister Office (PMO) has now shown its keen interest in pushing the Rs. 20,000 crore for National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) project, which is aimed at providing broadband connection to 250,000 gram panchayats. The PMO has decided...

What's .Google want with 101 new .domains, anyway?

It's easy to dismiss Google's big play for a slice of the expanding Internet domain universe as just another side project from the Googleplex. Perhaps too easy. Google, we learned last week, has applied for 101 domains -- or, more precisely, 101 generic top-level domains, or gTLDs -- and the number itself (surely the 101 Dalmatians reference was intentional) doesn't exactly suggest...

30/30: A Pretty but Shy Taskmaster

Why can't the iPad be a clock? What did it ever do, or not do, to convince Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) not to grant it that privilege? It has a built-in Reminders app, just like the iPhone, and yes, the iPad will tell you what time it is in the digital readout at the top of the home screen. But it has no built-in Clock app, with that familiar set of alarm, stopwatch and timer settings. Why...

Google threatens legal action against YouTube conversion website

There are a number of websites that allow users to convert YouTube videos to audio or video for free. One of the popular YouTube video to audio conversion websites is YouTube-mp3.org. The website, which is said to have 1.3 million visitors per day, extracts audio from YouTube videos and lets users download the audio tracks. However, the growing popularity of the website has started...

Rich Russian Wants More Robots

Dmitry Grishin, the chief executive of Russian e-mail and social networking giant Mail.ru, has an elaborate wedding fantasy. He sees robotic drones flying around the guests and snapping their every move from every angle. “People today have very standard pictures,” Grishin says. “If you have drones, you can attach a camera and make very nice and different movies and pictures.” Add some...

UK to Google: About Those Street View Records ...

The head of data protection in the United Kingdom, the Information Commissioner's Office, or ICO, is reopening its investigation into Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) data collection, according to ZDNet. The investigation stems from the U.S. Federal Communication Commission's April report that Google collected extensive data from WiFi connections while compiling pictures for its Street View service. The...

Download: Flickr Browser (Windows Phone)

Photography lovers who own a Windows Phone can now access their Flickr accounts from their smartphones using the Flickr Browser. The app is already available on the iOS and Android platforms. Once installed, you can browse high resolution pictures through the app's touch-optimised navigation and upload images to your Flickr account with the in-app uploader. You can also share photos with...

Researchers work on smart city search engine

Researchers at the University of Glasgow are working on an urban search engine that will interrogate sensors and answer questions such as: "How crowded is the city centre?" Sensors attached to traffic lights, lamp-posts and other city landmarks are seen as key to creating smarter cities. They will create a vast amount of data and the hope is that citizens will make use of it to improve...

Apple Thunderbolt adapters arriving in Apple stores

Part of Apple's keynote address at WWDC this morning was a demonstration of its new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro systems, which have not only done away with optical drives but have also streamlined other I/O offerings. In order to save space in its systems, Apple has combined USB 2.0 and 3.0 connections, but has also fallen to relying on its Thunderbolt connections to provide the I/O...

How Social Media Is Changing CRM

It’s big news these days for tech watchers: CRM software stalwarts are rapidly acquiring startups that enable businesses to manage the increasing number and variety of social media platforms better. In May, Oracle (ORCL) bought Vitrue to help it publish and manage social media campaigns, and the company just announced the acquisition of Collective Intellect to help it monitor social chatter....

Google Maps Travels Off-Road, Into the Sky, and Into the Pocket

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) unveiled new features to its mapping technology Wednesday, including an offline mobile version of Google Maps and 3D enhancements to Google Earth. The announcement comes just before Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is expected to drop Google Maps from its built-in mapping application on the iOS platform and pursue advanced...

Windows Marketplace Breaches 100,000 App Mark

Windows Marketplace, the application store for Windows Phone devices, now hosts more than 100,000 apps. The task took 20 months to achieve since its inception, but the growth has seen a tremendous acceleration in the past six months. Windows Marketplace had 50,000 apps in December 2011 and the number has since doubled. That being said, it still lags far behind Apple's App Store and Google...

Microsoft's E3 Message: It's All About Games - and Everything Else

The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) remains the biggest video game trade event in the world, but Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) proved that the electronic entertainment world could be very much in transition as the Xbox looks to continue its dominance in the living room. "Xbox has moved from being the best-selling console in North America to being the best-selling console worldwide,"...

A Google-a-Day Puzzle for June 4

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here. .answer { color: rgb(255, 255, 255); }.answer:hover {...