Tech Biz

Juggernaut Amazon is striking another blow at the traditional textbook industry by offering semester-long rentals of physical books. The listings for a number of textbooks now include a “rent” option that’s usually around $50 for a title that sells for $170. According to Amazon’s FAQ, the books are rented out by the semester (counted as Continue Reading →

Hundreds of thousands of developers know that building apps that rely on the Facebook or Twitter platforms comes at a risk—at any time, the companies can change their access rules or launch a competing feature. The risk is often worth the built-in audience and data from millions of users. Just look at how Zynga grew. Continue Reading →

Amazon has revealed that consumers in the UK are now buying more Kindle eBooks than printed books for the first time, with British Kindle owners buying up to four times more books than before they owned the popular Amazon e-reader devices. The Guardian reports that for every 100 paperback and hardback books it sells, the Continue Reading →

A heartwarming new video documents the story of a small child whose life has been radically changed for the better because of 3D printing technology. Two-year-old Emma was born with a rare disease called arthrogryposis that makes it so she can’t raise her arms without assistance. Through the use of 3D printing, a Delaware hospital Continue Reading →

The Socialympics? Nope. Just Social and Olympic. Everyone seems to want to talk about how social media is impacting NBC’s Olympic coverage. “Look at the velocity of tweets!” “Look at the ratings!” “Twitter must be helping raise awareness and therefore impacting ratings.” “Social media is the secret to saving appointment television viewing!” Maybe, but I Continue Reading →

Apple executive Eddy Cue sent an email in January 2011 to CEO Tim Cook and others recommending that the company build its own 7-inch tablet. “I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one,” Cue wrote in the email, which forwarded an article written by a reporter that switched from the Continue Reading →

Apple investors, start your engines. The latest juicy morsel to emerge from the soap opera that is San Jose, California’s Apple vs. Samsung trial consists of a remarkable state that comes straight from the horse’s mouth. The Verge, which is actually live-blogging the trial right now, caught a great tidbit from Apple’s senior vice president Continue Reading →

(This content was originally posted on KellerFay.com) There were two stories in the press about Facebook last Thursday that caught my eye. The first was the story of Facebook’s first earnings report since going public. Investor expectations were not met and the stock tumbled. The same day, a new research study was released and reported with this headline: Continue Reading →

Thursday saw plenty of speculation about exactly what Samsung is launching at the media event it has arranged for German consumer electronics show IFA, and now the company has come clean and confirmed it will unveil the next version of the Galaxy Note ‘phablet’ on August 29 at the event. A company spokesperson told Reuters: Continue Reading →

Unnamed sources have told the Wall Street Journal that Google has been having internal discussions about possibly expanding its super-speedy Google Fiber service into markets that aren’t currently being served by Verizon’s FiOS network. WSJ’s report provided no further details on specific markets that Google is eyeing for possible expansion, and would only note that Continue Reading →