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Amazon has introduced Amazon Local Register to the mobile payment market, taking on such companies as Square and Paypal Here. The product is a combination of a secure card reader, which sells for $10, and a free mobile app. Together, they offer a platform that allows businesses to accept credit and ...

California is poised to enact a consumer-friendly law requiring smartphone manufacturers to install "kill switches" -- that is, antitheft technology that would be activated by the carrier when a consumer alerts it that a device has been stolen or lost. The technology not only wipes the device of per...

Target last week introduced In a Snap, a new image-recognition app that lets users buy products from the pages of select magazine and printed ads. It is unlike earlier variations of such apps in that consumers don't have to scan codes or follow a link to buy a product. It works like this: You select...

Twitter posted healthy revenue for the second quarter -- US$312 million, up 124 percent year-over-year. Its profit? Not there yet. However, even though the company reported a net loss of $145 million, investors are likely to overlook the lack of profit for some time. Financials aside, what Twitter r...

Amazon may wow customers with its extraordinary array of products and customer services, but its shareholders are less-than-impressed at the moment. The company on Thursday announced second-quarter losses that were nearly double what analysts had been expecting. Furthermore, Amazon informed sharehol...

Amazon on Friday introduced Kindle Unlimited, a new subscription service for e-books. The service allows customers to download and read as many books as they want from a list of more than 600,000 Kindle books for a monthly fee of $9.99. Amazon is making a number of popular titles available under the...

The Beijing First Intermediate Court ruled against Apple in a case that pitted it against a Shanghai-based firm and the country's State Intellectual Property Office's Patent Review Committee. The court found that the intellectual property rights of Zhizhen Internet Technology, a company that holds s...

Twitter is deepening its mobile advertising capabilities with the acquisition of TapCommerce, a retargeting and re-engagement provider. Twitter announced the deal on Monday, calling the company's toolset an important piece of the mobile advertising platform it is building for marketers, app develope...

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday signed a measure that legalizes the use of bitcoins and other virtual currencies in the state. The law repealed previous legislation that specified only "lawful money of the United States" could be used in California. "Modern methods of payment have expanded b...

Barnes & Noble finally bit the bullet. The company on Wednesday announced its board of directors had approved a proposal to spin off its Nook e-reader business into a publicly traded company. Both its print and e-book divisions have been struggling financially for several quarters; it has become...

Barnes & Noble finally bit the bullet. The company on Wednesday announced its board of directors had approved a proposal to spin off its Nook e-reader business into a publicly traded company. Both its print and e-book divisions have been struggling financially for several quarters; it has become...

Apple has reached a settlement with plaintiffs in 33 states regarding allegations that it colluded with five major U.S. book publishers to fix the price of e-books. The class action maintained that Apple overcharged plaintiffs $280 million. News of the settlement came on Tuesday via a filing with U....

Apple this week updated its App Store Review Guidelines with a change that signals a loosening of its restrictive policies against bitcoin and other digital currencies. The change now allows apps to "facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with a...

Yahoo is in advanced talks to launch its own online video channel this year, a product meant to rival Google's YouTube, based on a report citing unnamed sources. The news has intrigued the online video and advertising industry because it would introduce some very welcome competition into this channe...

Twitter is positioned for some nice growth in the coming months and years, according to a report released Tuesday by eMarketer. However, that growth largely will be occurring in emerging countries. What makes that trajectory problematic in the view of some investors is this: It was Twitter's U.S. us...

In the wake of a weak Q2 earnings report, HP has announced it will eliminate 11,000 to 16,000 jobs. The news was a blow; it was only two years ago that HP announced it would undergo a massive restructuring to move away from its PC roots. As part of that effort, it planned to eliminate 34,000 jobs. W...

If there's a list of retailers that have not exposed their customers' data to a security breach, it just got shorter. The most recent company to confess to being hacked is eBay, which on Wednesday began sending emails urging customers to change their passwords. eBay announced that a cyberattack ha...

After years of legal wrangling over their mobile technology intellectual patent rights in courtrooms around the world, Apple and Samsung apparently are ready to call it a day. Representatives of the companies reportedly are in negotiations to settle their legal differences out of court. This is not ...

Pinterest last week announced that it had raised $200 million in a new round of fundraising from existing investors SV Angel, Bessemer Venture Partners, Fidelity and Andreessen Horowitz. The latest funding puts its valuation at $5 billion, which is quite a tidy sum for a company that has little to o...

Yahoo has acquired Blink, a mobile app that destroys messages at a predetermined time set by the user. Yahoo intends to shut down both the iOS and Android versions of the app in the coming weeks. Blink made its debut just a year ago. The conventional thinking is that Yahoo acquired Blink largely for...