tech

Some of the tech world's biggest players are joining forces to press for immigration reform. Led by Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, the group has now enlisted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve ... Ballmer. Zuckerberg's political action group is known as FWD.us, and is devoted to changing how the United States approaches immigration policy. Tech Firms Look to the World for Help Specifically, the group hopes to adjust immigration policy to allow foreign engineers and scientists easier access to the United States. Many tech companies have been ... (view more)

In what is being described as a freak and somewhat ironic incident, British boss of Segway Inc. has been killed while piloting one of his company's own devices. Sixty-two-year-old Jimi Heselden reportedly took the device on an off-road stroll and ... was later found in a West Yorkshire river. Segway Used by Google A Segway is a high tech two-wheeled motorized vehicle and is powered by batteries and stabilized by gyroscopes. The Segway is viewed by many tech enthusiasts as one of the most recognizable gadgets in the technology world and is even used by big name brands such as Google at their ... (view more)

Despite the popularity of Blu-ray players, iPhones, iPods, and games like Rock Band 2 and LittleBigPlanet, the tech industry has not been impervious to the slings and arrows of a declining U.S. economy. According to a recent report, even Black ... Friday tech sales were down this year. Business trackers NPD have released figures for this year's Black Friday score, and results for the technology industry are not good. This year, consumers spent just over $2 billion on electronics at retail outlets, down significantly from last year's $2.21 billion mark. Although the number of sales online seems to ... (view more)

If you want a quick peek into the future of Internet marketing, go to an Ad:Tech show. I went to the 'Ad:Tech Spring' held in San Francisco last week and the future of the Internet appears very bright. First, let me explain Ad:Tech. For 10 years, ... Ad:Tech has been the place to go for brand advertisers, agencies, online publishers, and, well, nerds, if they wanted to find out about who's doing what in the digital marketing arena. This year approximately 10,000 Internet marketers (or would-be Internet marketers) congregated at SFO's Moscone Center to hear papers like "Marketing with Downloadable ... (view more)

In a recent address of tech industry executives in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer encouraged his listeners to get behind a plan that would see PCs become drastically more affordable for the world's less affluent users. The magic price ... tag? Just $100 -- a number that for most North Americans has proved hardly enough cold hard cash to purchase basic software (usually from Microsoft itself), let alone an entire system. For Ballmer, lowering PC costs to just $100 could in turn curtail rising piracy rates, which Microsoft has recently becoming increasingly determined to root out. ... (view more)

Oh, the irony. In the middle of an industry firestorm launched by Microsoft against software pirates, the tech world's most hardcore investigators have discovered that the Redmond-based company has been using cracked .wav files in its Windows Media ... Player. In its most recent operating system -- XP -- Microsoft is allegedly running hacked music files for its background sound. Microsoft has attracted intense scrutiny in recent weeks over the release of the Windows Genuine Advantage ( WGA ). WGA is Microsoft's pioneer program in the war against software piracy, as it rather forcefully "offers" ... (view more)