Todd R. Weiss

Google’s well-publicized efforts to consolidate and streamline its online services continues as the search company announced several new service cuts, including the end of Google Apps for Teams and the transitioning of Google Listen over to Google Play. The changes, which have been ongoing since June 2011 when CEO Larry Page announced a “house-cleaning” program […]

AT&T’s recently announced shared-device mobile phone plans will go on sale to consumers Aug. 23, just a month after they were unveiled by the phone carrier in response to Verizon’s “Share Everything Plan,” which made a big splash in June. The Aug. 23 availability of the upcoming AT&T Mobile Share plans were unveiled Aug. 6 […]

Google’s Street View image collection just got its first true “out of this world” images with the addition of detailed photographs taken of retired spacecraft, launching facilities and other notable scenes at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) on the Florida coast. Now visitors from almost anywhere on Earth can “see” and explore the facility through […]

The next chapter of extraterrestrial exploration on the surface of Mars will begin early in the morning on Aug. 6 when NASA’s latest Martian lander will deliver the new Curiosity rover for an experiment-filled science mission. So far, all is “go” with the mission, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is tracking the unmanned […]

The bitter patent infringement court fight going on now between Apple and Samsung escalated July 31 when Samsung’s attorneys publicly released design information about one of the company’s mobile phone models that was previously blocked from the jury by the court. The release of the information via email to several news media outlets covering the […]

AT&T is buying NextWave Wireless, a wireless spectrum holding company, as it seeks to grasp a new chunk of the 2.3 GHz Wireless Communication Service (WCS) spectrum, which presently is not yet available for use by mobile Internet carriers. The move will allow AT&T to be ready to take advantage of WCS when federal rules […]

Microsoft’s newly announced major refresh of its 16-year-old Hotmail product has the goods€”from a new name, Outlook.com, to a streamlined interface, key improvements and the integration of social media connections€”but those coming changes still appear to be too little, too late to get dedicated Gmail or Yahoo Mail users to jump ship. That’s the reaction […]

Google has released its latest Google Chrome 21 Web browser, keeping with its schedule of new versions about every six weeks to fix bugs and add new features for users. Chrome 21 was moved to Google’s stable development channel on July 31 and is available for download immediately for Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X […]

A reworked version of a proposed and controversial federal cyber-security law is again going before the U.S. Senate, but this time, the so-called Cybersecurity Act of 2012 might have enough changes and comprises to make it more palatable for all sides. Senate debate on the revised legislation will begin July 31, several months after an […]

In an effort to boost its online video chat services, Google has updated its Gmail Chat offering to allow users to go beyond simple one-on-one video chats. Now Gmail Chat will allow simultaneous video chats of up to nine people when the participants log in through their Google+ accounts, according to a July 30 blog […]

The long-awaited patent-infringement trial between Apple and Samsung that opens July 30 in U.S. District Court in California could potentially impact the kinds of mobile devices that are available to consumers and enterprise buyers in the mobile marketplace, so its implications are notable. Apple alleges that Samsung outwardly infringed on many of its patents in […]

Google is continuing to expand its collections of high-resolution images of selected cities and sights around the world, including the latest batch of images such as highlights of Olympic venues in London, where the 2012 Summer Games are playing out now. “This week we published new high-resolution aerial and satellite imagery for 25 cities and […]