Michelle Maisto

NBC News has acquired startup Stringwire, in an effort to be a better, more nimble news machine. NBC News is scheduled to officially report the deal Aug. 12, but The New York Times scooped it, publishing the story Aug. 11. Stringwire makes possible better so-called citizen journalism. It enables users to set up a channel […]

Apple’s next-generation iPhones will be called the iPhone 5S and 5C, Japanese Mac blog Macotakara reported Aug. 12. The blog, which cited sources in Asia, has a good record of having its rumors pan out. Apple is expected to introduce the smartphones at a Sept. 10 event, AllThingsD first reported Aug. 10. The company introduced […]

BlackBerry had formed a Special Committee to “explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase scale in order to accelerate BlackBerry 10 deployment,” the company announced in an Aug. 12 statement Such alternatives, it added, “could include, among others, possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships or alliances, a sale of the company or other possible transactions.” […]

Bringing Home That First Mobile Phone: Smart Tools for Parents, Kids By Michelle Maisto At What Age Should a Child Have a First Phone? According to a study AT&T commissioned from GfK, the average age that kids receive their first mobile phone is 12. Among kids who have a phone, 34 percent have a smartphone. […]

HTC has pretty well figured out how to make a great smartphone. It’s selling them that has lately stumped the Taiwan-based company. But that may be about to change. After promises of a new marketing strategy, HTC announced Aug. 12 that it has signed actor Robert Downey Jr. to a two-year deal and slightly lifted […]

At a party recently, an acquaintance, laughing nervously and holding firm to a wine glass, told me that her daughter is starting junior high in the fall and will have to walk home from school by herself, so earlier that day she’d bought her an iPhone. My first thought was of the Pew Internet study […]

Mobile videos. There seems to be no end to the virtual mountains of them created daily. What to do with it all? How to better organize, store, edit and enjoy them? Chad Hurley and Steve Chen did the world a service with their creation of YouTube, back in 2005. But eight years later, they say, […]

T-Mobile may be the nation’s fourth-largest carrier, but during the second quarter of 2013, it led the wireless industry in branded postpaid customer additions, it announced Aug. 8. This is what a comeback looks like. T-Mobile had been hemorrhaging subscribers for years. It had no iPhone to sell, no Long Term Evolution (LTE) network to […]

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has called her first year at Yahoo an aggressive period of “making every day count.” But the 30 days coming up, Yahoo announced Aug. 7, are going to particularly be doozies. Yahoo plans to unveil a new logo Sept. 4, and to build excitement toward that date, it’s kicked off a […]

T-Mobile added three new Long Term Evolution-enabled LG smartphones to its portfolio Aug. 7, the G2—a new flagship phone for the electronics maker—the Optimus F6 and the F3. T-Mobile called the trio a “triple threat,” each with its own “uniqueness.” The G2, certainly, will be impossible to overlook, given its 5.2-inch full-high-definition in-plane switching (IPS) […]

AOL, an early Internet brand that has morphed with the changing times, has announced a $405 million plan to buy Adap.tv, a self-described “programmatic video advertising platform.” AOL has invested heavily in the digital video space, with a focus on premium content. These investments, AOL said in an Aug. 7 statement, have made AOL On […]

Enflick, the company behind TextNow—the free Android and iOS app that gives users a phone number, unlimited texting and picture messaging, and free calling and voicemail—has moved into the phone business. On Aug. 6, Enflick introduced a TextNow phone service based on the app, calling it the “world’s first all-IP mobile operator.” The contract-free, monthly […]