Tech News Headlines

Today's PCs and smartphones can do a lot -- from telling you the weather in Zimbabwe in milliseconds, to buying your morning coffee. But ask them to show you what a piece of fabric feels like, or to detect the odor of a great-smelling soup, and they're lost.

Just a few days left. Your mission: to get your holiday shopping done AND to stay under budget. So here are my top picks for great gifts under $25. As a tech reporter, my gift ideas tend to slant toward the geeky, but with virtually everyone using technology these days, geeky has gone mainstream. And [...]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Intel Corp. won an appeal in a patent fight with Negotiated Data Solutions LLC (N-Data) over Ethernet patents that make it possible for computers to easily talk to one another. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on Monday that Intel did not infringe the patents because it had …

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Nielsen Holdings NV, the television viewership measurement company, said on Monday it will partner with Twitter to publish a new set of ratings that measure chatter on Twitter about TV programming. The new measurement, dubbed the "Nielsen Twitter TV Rating," seeks to tap into the stream of viewer …

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's mobile ad revenue in the United States will be roughly $4 billion next year, while Facebook Inc's nascent mobile advertising business will more than double, according to a new study by research firm eMarketer. Marketers are boosting spending on ads that reach consumers on smartphones …

The first app I downloaded for my first Android was a live wallpaper. Despite its battery-sucking ways, I was thrilled to add so much customization to my new phone. It’s one of the perks Android users still have over iPhone users. Four years later, there’s even more variety for customizing the Android experience, from launchers …

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A pair of NASA moon-mapping probes smashed themselves into a lunar mountain on Monday, ending a year-long mission that is shedding light on how the solar system formed. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, spacecraft had been flying around the moon, enabling scientists …

The latest version of Windows brought a wave of confusion to consumers looking to purchase a new computer or tablet. Microsoft’s (MSFT) operating system is available in four different versions — Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, Windows 8 Enterprise and Widows RT. All but the latter are compatible with traditional Intel (INTC) …

BOSTON (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley , the lead underwriter for Facebook Inc's initial public offering, will pay a $5 million fine to Massachusetts for violating securities laws governing how investment research can be distributed. Massachusetts' top securities regulator, William Galvin, charged on Monday that a top Morgan …

A federal judge sentenced a hacker to 10 years in prison on Monday after he broke into the personal online accounts of Scarlett Johansson, Christina Aguilera and other women and posted revealing photos and other material on the Internet.

Apple said Monday that it sold more than 2 million iPhone 5s in China in their first three days of availability, setting a record for that market.

Sprint, the country's third-largest cellphone company, said Monday that it will buy out the portion of wireless network operator Clearwire that it doesn't already own after raising its offer price to $2.2 billion.

Apple’s (AAPL) plans to limit Google’s (GOOG) reach onto its devices took a major hit recently when more than 10 million users downloaded the new iOS version of Google Maps in just two days. Google kept up its push onto iOS devices on Monday by releasing the new YouTube Capture iOS application that’s designed to let users …

WILMINGTON, Del (Reuters) - Ancestry.com Inc must provide more details about the $1.6 billion sale of the genealogy website before its shareholders vote on the acquisition by private equity firm Permira Investment Advisors, a Delaware judge ruled on Monday. Delaware Court of Chancery judge Leo Strine made his ruling from …

As just about every major smartphone maker gears up to introduce their own 1080p-resolution Android “phablets,” one platform that apparently won’t be getting larger screens with higher resolutions is Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone 8. According to Bloomberg, HTC (2498) canceled plans to build a large-screened smartphone …

For the first time, the Census Bureau is giving U.S. households a chance to respond to government surveys over the Internet, part of a bid to save costs and boost sagging response rates in a digital age.

Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for Facebook's troubled public stock offering, has agreed to pay $5 million to Massachusetts' securities regulators after they accused it of disclosing a revenue shortfall only to certain analysts and not the general public.