Holiday Gift Guide: 10 online charitable gift options for the person who has everything

Let’s face it: These days, most of us have more than enough stuff.

Instead of buying more gadgets and do-dads for your loved ones and friends, have you considered making a charitable donation in their names instead? Or handing out charitable gift cards?

Since the best, feel-goodiest part of gift-giving is knowing you brightened someone else’s day, it makes sense to give your gifts to those who are truly in need — and your recipients … Continue Reading

Check out Facebook’s new 1M-square-foot Menlo Park campus (pics)

It may not have the ring of Beverly Hills, 90210, but Menlo Park, 94025 is arguably the most elite zip code in the nation now that Facebook has moved to town.

As of Monday, the world’s largest social network is officially headquartered at 1601 Willow Road in Menlo Park. The new eco-friendly, private office- and cubicle-free compound houses Facebook’s 2,000 local employees. It’s a 1 million-square-foot space that could one day hold up to 9,400 … Continue Reading

Cornell wins its bid to build a Stanford of the East Coast

Cornell University is erecting a massive, important new science and engineering campus on New York’s Roosevelt Island, just half a bridge away from Manhattan in the middle of the East River.

The two million-square-foot campus will cost $2 billion to build, with around $100 million of capital coming from the city of New York. The full, permanent campus is expected to house as many as 2,500 students and almost 280 faculty, and won’t be completed … Continue Reading

Zynga stock pummeled in second day of trading (updated)

Social games company Zynga’s stock ended its second day of trading on the Nasdaq exchange down nearly 5 percent, a signal of turbulent times ahead for the value of the company.

Zynga’s stock closed on Friday at $9.50 a share, down 50 cents from its IPO price of $10 a share. The weak performance came after a strange combination of hype and criticism for the gaming company, which raised $1 billion at an $8.9 billion … Continue Reading

Is DICE teasing a Battlefield 2143 expansion for Battlefield 3?

Eagle-eyed gamers have spotted a potential Easter egg in Battlefield 3. The well-hidden image suggests that developer DICE could be preparing to follow up its futuristic shooter Battlefield 2142 with a Battlefield 2143 experience.

DICE previously teased the release of the original Battlefield 2142 back in 2006, with a car number plate that appeared in the Battlefield 2: Armored Fury expansion. Now the number 2143 has been spotted tucked away on a crate on the … Continue Reading

HBO Go access coming to Cablevision and Time Warner subscribers

HBO has reached an agreement with cable-television providers Cablevision and Time Warner that will allow cable subscribers to access the HBO Go streaming video service, the companies announced today.

The HBO Go app grants paid HBO subscribers the ability to view the entire library of HBO content, which is composed of 1,400 TV episodes, documentaries and movies. HBO isn’t cannibalizing its current business since viewers must subscribe to a HBO package through a pre-existing cable … Continue Reading

Avvo fights for transparency in law and medicine with its Quora competitor (video)

Question and answer company Avvo, a competitor of Quora‘s that focuses on medical and law queries, is fighting off legal battles while developing its service. It has one goal: make these otherwise elusive professionals as accessible as possible.

“You’ll stumble on health tid-bits on Quora in the same way you might stumble on health tid-bits in People Magazine,” said Mark Britton, chief executive officer and founder of Avvo, in an interview with VentureBeat.

The company … Continue Reading

Exclusive: Dance Central: Halo Edition gameplay (video)

Submitted as an April Fool’s joke for 1up.com earlier this year, this original animated video by Jan Neves is a glimpse into what we all know is coming eventually anyway. First the Halo Warthog is a featured vehicle in Forza Motorsport 4, then Master Chief is a featured backup dancer in Dance Central 3. It could happen…

Jan used 3D Studio Max for the modelling and animating, Adobe Premier for audiovisual editing, and After Effects … Continue Reading

Google is making its own tablet, and in 6 months you can buy it

Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced in an interview today that the company was looking to launch its own tablet within the next six months.

In a conversation with Italian publication Carriere Della Sera, Schmidt spoke briefly about the iPad and revealed, “In the next six months, we plan to market a tablet of the highest quality.”

While Apple has vigorously prosecuted manufacturers such as Samsung for its allegedy copycat tablet design — and while Steve … Continue Reading

Skype offers free Wi-Fi at 50 U.S. airports

Skype is donning its Santa suit and leaving the gift of free Wi-Fi underneath trees at select airports across the U.S. this holiday season.

Holiday travelers courageous enough to brave the nation’s airports between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27 will get free Wi-Fi courtesy of Skype — but only for one hour.

Existing Skype for Mac, PC and iOS users can access Skype WiFi from their laptop or mobile device at 50 select airports and … Continue Reading

Apple gets into the Christmas spirit with clever Santa Siri ad

Apple has debuted a clever new ad for the iPhone 4S, showing Santa Claus using the Siri voice-enabled personal assistant to help him with his important Christmas duties.

Some analysts believe Siri could help Apple sell 30 million iPhone 4S units by the end of Q4 2012. Naturally, Siri has been become a focus point for Apple’s iPhone 4S advertising. Siri only officially works on the iPhone 4S, but many iPhone 4 owners have been … Continue Reading

Rock Band adds seven Jimi Hendrix greatest hits

Jimi Hendrix can be found at the top of Rolling Stone Magazine’s recent 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time feature, and now seven more of his most iconic hits are making their way to the Rock Band video game Music Store.

On December 20, a mix of tracks from 1968′s Electric Ladyland and 1971′s Rainbow Bridge and The Cry of Love albums will be available for download on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo … Continue Reading

Google and Apple working on wearable computing devices

The next wave of computer innovation might be heading to the runway — or at least your wardrobe — if tech titans Apple and Google have anything to say about it.

With wearable computing, both companies are aiming to boost sales of smartphones, according to a New York Times report. The wearable technology will add a new level to the user experience by collecting data new kinds of data about the wearer.

According to anonymous … Continue Reading

British Telecom targets more than Android in patent suit against Google

Yet another major company has jumped into patent squabbles with Google. British Telecommunications filed suit against the search giant on Thursday for infringing on six patents.

BT is aiming higher than most other companies targeting Google — which at this point include Apple, Oracle, and Microsoft — because it’s not just targeting Android; it’s targeting almost every Google service, including Gmail, Google+ and Google Docs, reports Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents.

“BT seeks damages — … Continue Reading

Review: A Minecraft review isn’t really possible, but we’ll try anyway

How the hell do you write a review for a game that’s been out since 2009? A game that you’ve played across many changes, with additions and subtractions, a game without a box, a user manual, or, really, any sort of guiding pedagogy. I’ve personally spent at least 100 hours, probably more, playing this procedurally generated oddity of a video game across the beta and official versions, on servers, my own server, and in single … Continue Reading

Google+ adds much-welcomed features to Pages, activity stream and more

Google+ will add a few major improvements to its service over the next few days, including new activity stream controls, welcome changes to business Pages, better notifications and a dramatically better photo experience, the company announced today.

Despite contrary claims from Google, Google+ is a social network that competes with Facebook and Twitter for eyeballs. It has been rapidly adding new features to bring the network up to speed against the competition. One of the … Continue Reading

Joojoo boo-boo: Fusion Garage dumped by its lawyers, PR firm

Fusion Garage may finally be done trolling the technology industry. The controversial company, maker of the Joojoo tablet, is in its death throes after being abandoned by its PR company and its lawyers, following issues with its website over the weekend.

The company most recently announced its Grid 10 tablet and Grid 4 smartphone, following an obnoxious early marketing campaign where it masqueraded as “TabCo.” But Fusion Garage, and its CEO, Chandrasekar “Chandra” Rathakrishnan (pictured), … Continue Reading

Review: Should you buy Star Wars: The Old Republic?

Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft could soon be feeling a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of subscribers suddenly cried out and started heading for a galaxy far, far away. Star Wars: The Old Republic is an impressive and easy to play new competitor from Electronic Arts that makes great use of the Star Wars license. It is the most promising new massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) since World of Warcraft claimed … Continue Reading

ZappoTV’s new iOS app makes watching mobile videos on your TV easier

Converging media startup ZappoTV is releasing a public version of its media center application for iOS today.

The ZappoTV app lets you combine your media content via mobile device and watch it on an internet-connected television. You can also access podcasts, photos and videos from social networks (Facebook, Picasa and Flickr) and all the stuff that’s currently on your computer or smartphone.

ZappoTV solves the problem many people have of transferring their digital media collections … Continue Reading