Michelle Maisto

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, will step down from his post “in the coming weeks,” he announced during a live broadcast March 22. His position officially ends in June. “I believed from Day One we could get big things done for our country and, thanks to you, we have,” he told the […]

The BlackBerry Z10 is finally available through a tier-one U.S. carrier. AT&T began selling the long-awaited device March 22 for $199 with a two-year-contract. It’s also now available at Best Buy. “3, 2, 1 … BlackBerry 10!” The company Tweeted just past midnight on the East Coast, announcing that the big-box store was offering a […]

Department of Defense officials have denied that they are scrapping support for the BlackBerry platform. Instead, they’re moving to support a mixed environment of devices. “The department is aware of recent reporting that asserts it is dropping BlackBerry. This reporting is in error,” Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, a spokesperson for the DOD, told PC Mag. […]

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s provocative decisions continue to make headlines. Or, one might say, her decisions continue to be considered provocative. Most recently, Mayer has come under fire for making a change to Yahoo’s hiring policy in which she now personally reviews every new hire, after they’ve been vetted by a team of colleagues­. Critics […]

Apple continues to keep attorneys busy. Intertrust, a Silicon Valley company partially owned by Sony and Philips, has filed a complaint with a U.S. District Court in Northern California against Apple, claiming that 15 Intertrust patents for security and “distributed trust computing” are being violated by a range of Apple products and services. Apple iPhones, […]

The merger between T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS, the country’s fourth- and fifth-largest carriers, respectively, is now in the hands of MetroPCS shareholders. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the last regulatory body needed to approve the deal, has given it a green light, Bloomberg reported March 21, citing an emailed statement from […]

NEW YORK—Samsung was back in the city March 20 to introduce its sixth generation of smart TVs, just a week after its high-production rollout of its highly anticipated Galaxy S 4 smartphone. If it felt natural at the first event to make comparisons to Apple and the iPhone 5, Apple was no less front-of-mind at […]

Samsung and Apple have been doing battle in the smartphone and tablet markets, and it’s expected that someday they’ll square off in the television and watch categories as well. Samsung has confirmed that it is indeed working on a smartwatch. “We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long,” Lee Young Hee, executive vice president […]

Taking a User-Centric Approach to BYOD For the report “BYOD: Putting Users First Produces Biggest Gains, Fewest Setbacks,” nearly 1,500 IT heads in 10 countries were interviewed. Researchers found that companies that treated BYOD as a strategic advantage, rather than as a headache, “were able to resolve some of the biggest BYOD problems, including security, […]

Google has been up-front about its desire to streamline to become a more focused company. Likely as part of that effort, Google reportedly is working on a project that will bring all of its messaging platforms under a single umbrella, expected to be called Babble. Geek.com reported the rumor March 18, citing multiple sources who […]

Apple appears to be on the defensive, and BlackBerry is the latest company to play offense. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins, in Australia to defend the brand’s position there, told the Australian Financial Review that the iPhone’s interface isn’t very fresh anymore. “Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market. … They did […]

A clean email inbox may seem an impossible feat, but it’s what mobile app Mailbox offers, and what Dropbox will help the young company deliver. Dropbox announced March 15 that it’s acquiring Mailbox. Dropbox enables users to store and share files in the cloud. Mailbox sits on top of a Gmail account in iOS or […]