Yahoo is playing the press while trying to force Facebook into licensing between 10 and 20 of its patents.
Yahoo is making fairly standard claims in Web tech circles: that a hotter, younger company is infringing on patents Yahoo registered years ago and now needs to cut the former Web behemoth in on some of the action. But how Yahoo is going about its fight reads more like the script from a political thriller, complete with reportedlydropping a dime to the New York Times.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Google is trying to get developers interested in Dart with a technology preview of the Dart VM in Chromium, better known as Dartium. The plan is ultimately to include the Dart VM in Chrome itself, but no timeline has been given yet for that.
Google has been pushing pretty hard to move Dart forward. The company released a Rosetta Stone for JavaScript programmers called Dart Synonym at the beginning of February. However, developers have had to compile Dartium from source or find unofficial builds to test the code.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Zynga is in talks to partner with other portals in a bid to wean itself off the Facebookteat.
The company is the largest game developer on Facebook and raised $1 billion last year in an initial public offering of its stock. But investor enthusiasm has been lackluster since then, in large part because the company, which credits 90% of its sales to Facebook, is seen as being too dependent on social networking giant. Facebook takes a 30% cut of virtual wares sold in Zynga games.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
It's official. The next version of Apple's desktop operating system is due out this summer, and it's going to move Mac OS X closer toward the look, feel and functionality of iOS. Mountain Lion, much like its predecessor, adds features to desktop that users of the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch are already quite familiar with. And it will make the integration between all of these devices much tighter.
Of all of the new features coming in Mountain Lion, most of them either port something from iOS over to Mac OS X or otherwise bridge the user experience between the two operating systems.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Just because you're not ready to shell out $99 per month to figure out the best times to tweet and post Facebook status updates doesn't mean you can't take better control of understanding your social media output.
Indeed, paid Twitter analytics services may offer way more than the average user needs. And despite increasing sophistication of their competitors, some of the best analytics tools remain free for users, either on a trial or permanent basis. Here are four free tools to get you started in better understanding how and when to tweet.
The tablet revolution. The post-PC era. The smartphone explosion. Whatever label you want to apply to it, personal computing is changing. People are spending more time with smaller devices like tablets and smartphones and less time on desktops and laptops. This been evident for awhile, but the trend is still relatively young and the data points are only just beginning to trickle in.
For evidence of this shift, look no further than Apple. The company just reported an absolutely bonkers financial quarter, in which it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. The two products now make up 72% of Apple's quarterly revenue and the consumer demand shows no sign of letting up.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Microsoft could unveil a stand-alone Skype application for Windows Phone as soon as this month's Mobile Phone Congress, and Skype is expected to be standard on the mobile operating system when the company launches Windows Phone 8.
Skype was acquired by Microsoft in 2011 and a Skype client for Windows Phone had been promised by the end of last year. So far, Microsoft and its Skype unit have been quiet about the integration, but the Verge is reporting that company employees can now download a test version of Skype from the Windows Phone Marketplace.
Meanwhile, an internal Microsoft video that had been intended for executives at Nokia, is fueling more speculation about what features will be added to Windows Phone 8. Known by the codename Apollo, Windows Phone 8 is expected to be released sometime after the release of the Tango operating system, which is also expected at the Mobile Phone Congress.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
