Apple earns over $28B in record Q3, with 20M iPhones, 9M iPads sold

Apple just released its third-quarter earnings, and as expected it’s yet another record-breaking quarter for the company.

Apple blew away analyst expectations with revenues of $28.57 billion at $7.79 per share and $7.31 billion in profit. Apple last year reported $15.70 billion in revenue with $3.25 billion in profit for the quarter. This year’s results represent a 82 percent increase in revenue and 125 percent jump in profit.

At the time of this post, the … Continue Reading

Isis mobile payment network gets in bed with Visa, MasterCard, AmEx, Discover

Isis, the mobile payment network put together by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, today announced that it now has the support of Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover.

The news means that Isis’s mobile payment terminals will be able to handle transactions with the four major U.S. credit card companies. Instead of swiping a credit card, you could make purchases by touching an Isis-enabled phone to the terminal, authorizing the transaction with account data stored on … Continue Reading

Microsoft tailors Azure cloud services to social game developers

Microsoft said today it is tailoring its Windows Azure cloud development platform for social game developers, making it much easier for them to develop, launch, and support online games.

The company will release a new Windows Azure tool kit for social game developers by the end of the week. The announcement shows that Microsoft wants to win over the allegiance of the developers that are making cutting edge social games, which live or die based … Continue Reading

Updated: Google’s Google+ iPhone app is here (hands on)

[Update: it appears Google has already released an updated, less buggy version of the Google+ app onto the iTunes App Store.]

Google has finally launched an iPhone application for its latest social network, Google+. The overall experience feels great, but there are still a few kinks that keep it from going toe-to-toe with other social networking apps like Twitter and Facebook.

The news feed is somewhere between Twitter and Facebook. Like the Facebook app, it … Continue Reading

Time.com welcomes online readers, but it wants you to pay

Time magazine is about to make itself somewhat harder to read. It’s adding a pay wall that will keep non-subscribers from reading print editions on the web site for three months after the issue hits the newsstand. On the flip side, it’s making it easier for readers to subscribe to digital and print editions.

This Thursday the weekly magazine will release an “all access” plan, giving readers a chance to purchase bundles of access to … Continue Reading

LinkedIn CEO: Google+ has reshaped social, but there’s little room left

As Google+ grows at an incredible rate, it’s going to start crowding other social networks.

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner warned that the new service has altered the social landscape and that users don’t have much time left for additional social networking. Something will have to go.

LinkedIn was one of the first major tech players to go public this year and its share price on the New York Stock Exchange sits above $100 per share … Continue Reading

Not just Zuckerberg: 62 Facebook employees join Google+

Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the only Facebook employee using Google’s new social offering, Google+. At least 62 Facebook employees have signed up for the competing social service, according to an unofficial list compiled by Huffington Post Senior Editor Craig Kanalley.

“Why are people so surprised that I’d have a Google+ account?” Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, said in a text message to tech news personality Robert Scoble last week.

Presumably, many of his employees share their … Continue Reading

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch targeted by pie-thrower in Parliamentary hearing

Media mogul and News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch was reportedly attacked by a pie-thrower during hearings before members of the British Parliament Tuesday.

According to live reports, a man threw a “white substance” at Murdoch during the hearings before the House of Commons Culture Committee. The screen capture above, posted by Reuters’ Felix Salmon on a liveblog of the hearings, clearly shows a pie of some kind in the hands of the plaid shirt-wearing assailant. … Continue Reading

Updated: Facebook to share ad revenue with Zynga, SEC filing reveals

[Updated: Facebook has made a statement about the filing.]

Social games maker Zynga it has a revenue-sharing agreement with Facebook.

The agreement, disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, gives Zynga a slice of the revenue generated by ads that Facebook serves alongside Zynga’s games on future Zynga websites — such as a “FarmVille.com” property.

In the filing, the company quotes Facebook’s sharing deal as follows: ”Each month during the term, for … Continue Reading

RPost sues Adobe and EchoSign for patent infringement

Sunday night, Adobe announced that it had acquired EchoSign, a startup that provides electronic signatures. This morning, the two companies are getting hit with a patent lawsuit.

RPost, another electronic signature startup, has filed suit against Adobe and EchoSign for violating five patents.

The timing isn’t surprising in one sense: Adobe has much bigger pockets than EchoSign.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Texas. Los Angeles-based RPost asked the court to issue an … Continue Reading

Gigwalk adds Microsoft, offers 110K paying odd jobs (Infographic)

Microsoft’s search engine Bing will soon add crowdsourced photos to its map results. It will do so using the on-demand job board Gigwalk, which boasts 110,000 “gigs” just 9 weeks after its launch.

Gigwalk is a mobile app that allows brands to post odd jobs, or “gigs,” that need real-time attention. Examples include taking a photo of a menu, verifying a street name, confirming product placements in stores, etc. The company, which can only survive … Continue Reading

Google’s Eric Schmidt: Apple responding to Android with lawsuits, not innovation

Apple’s patent victory over HTC’s Android phones isn’t winning it many friends, especially not from Google.

Former Google CEO (and current executive chairman) Eric Schmidt lambasted Apple for responding to Android’s success with legal attacks, the Australian newspaper Perth Now reports.

“The big news in the past year has been the explosion of Google Android handsets and this means our competitors are responding,” Schmidt said, speaking at Google’s Mobile Revolution conference in Tokyo. “[T]hey [Apple]are … Continue Reading

Scribd’s Float app will replace your news apps

Online document sharing site Scribd announced today that it is releasing Float, a mobile application that pulls content from news and content websites and lays it out in a homogenous reading format.

“The things online that you read aren’t just your PDFs or slide shows, [they include] news content and everything else — we want to bring those in with the content you publish and make it a consistent reading experience,” Matt Riley, Scribd’s director … Continue Reading

Live Gamer acquires Brandport and GamerDNA as it moves into games ads

Live  Gamer, a game e-commerce infrastructure firm, has acquired Brandport and GamerDNA as part of a move into the game advertising business.

With these acquisitions, Live Gamer will have more ways to help game publishers make money from their online games. Not only will the company enable publishers to take advantage of virtual goods and micro-transaction business models, it will also help them make money from creative advertising inside their games.

“We want to provide … Continue Reading

Josh Topolsky unveils new site The Verge on Jimmy Fallon show

Joshua Topolsky, the former editor of Engadget, appeared on the Jimmy Fallon talk show tonight to talk about tech gadgets and unveil his new tech enthusiast site The Verge.

Topolsky joined the late-night talk show host and showed off a bunch of gadgets such as the Olympus E3 camera, which reportedly has the fastest autofocus of any camera. Topolsky said his web site, www.theverge.com, will debut in the early fall.

Topolsky left Engadget, which is … Continue Reading

Why Microsoft’s HealthVault ramp-up is good for developers

Despite Google ending its endeavors in the health care industry, Microsoft announced Monday that it’s ramping up efforts to boost its web-based health records platform HealthVault.

The company is trying to attract former Google Health, users and developers to port their data over to HealthVault. Google Health will be discontinued as of Jan. 1, 2012, as previously reported by VentureBeat.

“Microsoft is much better suited to take on the standardization of Health records, and its … Continue Reading

Rebecca Black follow-up ‘My Moment’ collects 65K dislikes in a matter of hours

Internet meme Rebecca Black is back and surprisingly, her follow-up to fail sensation “Friday” is not that bad. Her new video “My Moment” launched Monday evening, and it looks and feels a bit like videos from other teen starlets like Selena Gomez.

Black’s first video “Friday” amassed a staggering 167 million views on YouTube before the video was taken down from the Internet briefly about a month ago. Her fame and ridicule were powered by … Continue Reading