Embattled HP CEO on the chopping block

We may be looking at the final days of Leo Apotheker as the CEO of fledgling company HP.

Once a heavyweight in the industry, HP has become something of a train wreck over the last year. The company has tried a bunch of wild new strategies, but few of them have ended up working.

Most of those strategies have come…

Schmidt dismisses search complaints as sour grapes

Google chairman Eric Schmidt yesterday defended the company’s practices to a Senate anti-trust panel, but admitted it was a near-monopoly.

When committee chairman Senator Herb Kohl asked Schmidt whether he felt that Google constituted a monopoly or had a particularly dominant power in the market, Schmidt replied: “I would agree, sir, that we’re in that area”.

Google argues that companies…

Trade-ins of iPhone 4 spike ahead of iPhone 5

It looks like people with spare iPhone 4′s lying around are choosing to sell them now before the device becomes obsolete.

Apple is widely expected to officially announce the next iPhone model within the next two weeks. And as anyone familiar with Apple products knows, when the new iPhone is released, all previous models become instantly devalued.

It is perhaps no…

Mango to appear in next two weeks

Microsoft’s Mango update to Windows Phone should be hitting users’ handsets in the next two weeks, the company has confirmed.

“For months, we and dozens of our partner companies have been laying the groundwork for the Windows Phone 7.5 update — and making solid progress,” says Microsoft’s general manager for customer experience engineering on the company blog.

“As a result, we…

Why I don’t really HATE Facebook’s redesign

Another day, another Facebook redesign, and cries of “I hate it!” and “Facebook, you totally wrecked my whole, like, you know, LIFE,” are flooding the web.

Mostly on Facebook itself – which now seems to include the entire web. But what makes this redesign so different from other redesigns? Pretty much nothing. In fact, it’s not even…

Google talks monopoly

It isn’t just outsiders slinging mud at Google over its size and status anymore, as even the company’s own chairman admitted the firm is “in the area” of having a monopoly on the market.

Answering questions thrown at him from Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl, Google’s Eric Schmidt was goaded into admitting the search engine giant was getting dangerously…

Microsoft, Casio ink Linux licensing deal

It looks like Microsoft is about to rake in a lot of money from Casio as the two have just signed a deal for Casio to pay licensing fees over the use of Linux in upcoming products.

Casio manufactures a lot of consumer electronics, including calculators and watches. Where it makes a lot of its revenue, though, is from enterprise…

Google+ opens to the masses

Google’s popular social networking platform is now open to the masses – and does not require a specially sent invite to join.

Still, Google wants you to know that it is far from finished revamping and updating its nascent + service, as Mountain View continues to roll out new features in a steady cadence.

Google+ opens to the masses”For the past…

HTC targets geekettes with Rhyme “lady-phone”

HTC has unveiled an Android-powered smartphone that seems to target the female demographic.

Dubbed “Rhyme,” but nicknamed the “lady phone” by Joanna Stern, the Rhyme boasts some fairly respectable specs, including a 3.7-inch WVGA Super LCD display, 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 (MSM8655) CPU, 768MB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera and a VGA front-facing shooter.

The $200 handset – available from…

OS X Lion passwords vulnerable

A flaw in Mac OS X Lion allows hackers to reset passwords without knowing the existing one, thanks to insecure permissions.

Security blogger Patrick Dunstan first uncovered the problem. Passwords are stored in so-called shadow files, which can only be accessed with the right user password – except that Lion allows users to see all the passwords.

“Whilst…

Are Intel Ultrabooks the future?

Ultrabooks are the future, according to Intel, but if you’re more of an Apple fan you may be getting a bit of “back to the future” deja-vu with most new designs heavily modeled on the Macbook Air.

At its recent Developer Conference in San Francisco, Intel made a big deal over its Ultrabooks, telling a roomful of Mac hacks the…