The Glider

Facebook has a strong ally in its growing battle against Google and its own social-networking aims: Microsoft. - Facebooks initial public offering will hand the social network billions of dollars to spend on future projects, and turn many of its employees into millionaires or billionaires. It will also intensify competition with Google, which desperately wants to establish an outsized presence in the so...

RIM will likely abandon plans to license the BlackBerry OS in favor of positioning BlackBerry 10 head-to-head against Apple and Google Android, according to an analyst. - Research In Motion will dump its BlackBerry OS licensing plans and double down on the upcoming BlackBerry 10s ability to battle toe-to-toe against Apples iOS and Google Android, according to a new analyst report. “Our checks indicate RIM is likely to move away from a proposal to the Board th...

Microsoft's week included a swipe at Google, the next version of Office in technical preview, and some leaks about Windows Phone 8. - Microsofts week saw the release of its Kinect for Windows SDK (software development kit) and Runtime, a very public broadside at Google over the latters privacy policy, the next version of Office entering technical preview, and the unexpected revelation of some crucial Windows Phone 8 details. ...

Facebook users like to get more information than they give on the world's leading social network, according to a small Pew Internet Project study. The question is how Facebook can boost user engagement beyond just power users. - Facebook's IPO will newly mint many millionaires, but many of the social network's 845 million users can't be accorded the same largesse. The majority of Facebook users receive more from their Facebook friends than they give, according to new information from the Pew Internet Project, which onl...

Motorola Mobility's troubles with the Android Honeycomb-based Xoom tablet continue as nearly 100 WiFi Xoom devices were accidentally resold with user data on them. - Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI) Feb. 3 said that it failed to wipe some user data from roughly 100 out of a batch of 6,200 Motorola Xoom WiFi tablets that were refurbished and resold via daily deals Website Woot between October and December 2011. Original owners who performed a factory data reset...

According to an analysis by IBM and the University of Southern California, Eli Manning of the New York Giants has edged out the New England Patriots Tom Brady as the top QB in the Super Bowl. - If Eli Manning doesn't beat Tom Brady on the field on Super Bowl Sunday, he has at least thus far won the battle of public sentiment, according to an analysis of Twitter traffic by IBM. In a joint effort with the University of Southern California's (USC) Annenberg Innovation Lab, IBM used its analy...

NEWS ANALYSIS: The Android Market was kind of like the Wild West until Google Bouncer showed up as the new sheriff in town. - As peculiar as the after-the-fact announcement of Google Bouncer may have been, it was still good news. Perhaps Google was ramping up, trying to make sure that its Bouncer would work as intended and be able to handle the flood of new apps submitted to the Android Market. Perhaps the company just...

NEWS ANALYSIS: Google and Facebook have their gun sights set on each other. As Facebook gains huge new riches with its initial public stock offering, the competition between these two giants is likely to become fierce and even nasty. - When Facebook first launched, it was looked at as a niche social network. The site catered to college kids and seemed to be destined to live in that world. But after an increasing number of people joined the site, and its CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg decided to open it up to the general pu...

The VeriSign breach is an example of how no one is too secure or too big to be attacked. Security experts said targeted attacks on "high value" companies will continue. - Companies get breached. That's the lesson of 2011. Large or small, no organization is immune to attacks. The VeriSign breach was just another day of business as usual for the bad guys. Campaigns such as Operation Shady Rat, disclosed by McAfee, and Nitro, disclosed by Symantec, showed how eve...

Adobe wants researchers to focus on mitigation technologies that make it expensive for attackers to launch attacks, not hunting bugs. - CANCUN, Mexico Security researchers need to shift their attention away from hunting for vulnerabilities and start thinking about ways to make it difficult to create exploits, according to a security expert from Adobe. There is too much focus on vulnerabilities and defects in software, Brad Ar...