Michelle Maisto

GM Spark EV: Connected, but Not Often to the Electrical Outlet by Michelle Maisto GM Rolls Out the Chevrolet Spark EV GM is just beginning to roll out the 2014 Spark EV. It’s Chevy’s first all-electric “mini car” and the most efficient retail electric vehicle (EV) in the United States, according to GM. Miles per […]

Yahoo held its annual shareholders meeting June 25, its first since Marissa Mayer became CEO, and it had plenty of news to share. User activity is up 10 percent. User interactions on the home page are up 25 percent. Since redesigning and relaunching Flickr, photo uploads have increased fourfold. And that 1 terabyte of storage […]

Sprint stockholders overwhelmingly approved of a merger agreement with SoftBank during a June 25 vote. The merger, which was first announced in October 2012, now requires only the approval of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). If approved, Softbank, Japan’s third-largest carrier, will receive control of a 78 percent share of Sprint. In exchange, Sprint will […]

T-Mobile has proposed a new solution, called a Dynamic Market Rule, to the debate over how the Federal Communications Commission should run its highly anticipated spectrum auctions scheduled for 2014. At the center of the debate are Verizon Wireless and AT&T, which are the largest carriers, with the deepest pockets. Some parties fear that, if […]

National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden has told the South China Morning Post that the U.S. government is spying on Chinese citizens by reading their text messages, among other offenses, the paper reported June 23. “The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS […]

AT&T continues to explore options to expand its empire beyond U.S. borders. Within the last two months, it has pursued several deals, including buying a portion of Telefonica, Spain’s second-largest operator, Bloomberg reported July 21, citing three people familiar with the matter. According to the report, AT&T approached Spanish authorities, looking to buy as much […]

Sprint announced June 20 that it has increased its bid for the nearly 50 percent of Clearwire shares that it doesn’t already own to $5 per share and has won the approval of the majority of Clearwire stockholders. And with that, the drama between Sprint, Dish Network and Clearwire, for the latter’s considerable trove of […]

Samsung No Longer Content to Beat Apple in Just Smartphones by Michelle Maisto Samsung ATIV Q: A Tablet Contender The ATIV Q features a 13.3-inch touch-screen with a resolution of 3200 by 1800, for a pixel density of 275 pixels per inch (ppi). The Apple iPad with Retina display has 265 ppi. It comes with […]

Apple has added HBO Go and WatchESPN programming to Apple TV. Its June 19 announcement ushers in one of the biggest updates to the product since its 2007 debut. Apple TV enables iTunes users to download and view video on an HDTV, as well as access their own music, videos and content. Eddy Cue, Apple’s […]

Samsung has sold tens of millions of Galaxy handsets, likely many of them to Apple Mac, MacBook and iPad owners, and now it’s working to further their conversion. Microsoft users? It wants to take those, too. During a June 20 event in London, Samsung showed off the ATIV Book 9 Plus and Book 9 lite […]

Microsoft and Nokia discussed a possible purchase of the Finnish handset maker, as recently as this month. But the talks fell apart, the Wall Street Journal reported June 19, after the pair were unable to agree on a price. Sources told the Journal that the talks “aren’t likely to be revived.” But as things remain, […]

Google Ventures-backed developer Kibits has introduced Collaborate, a mobile app that it says is the first “mobile collaboration platform” for helping “work teams that are not desk-bound” to collaborate and get real work done on fast-paced projects. Put another way, it’s designed to help keep a team on the same page, as it were. Collaborate […]