News

Bill Gates twixt Putin and pope at No. 4 in Forbes 'most powerful'

Wielding both wealth and influence, Bill Gates is the world's fourth most powerful person, as ranked by Forbes.

Rising to fourth place from fifth last year, Gates was cited by Forbes for his vast fortune. The Microsoft co-founder is worth $65 billion even after donating more than $28 billion toward various causes.

But it's also his mission and his influence that make Gates a powerful man.

As co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he's been on a quest to stamp out a variety of diseases around the world. As Forbes notes, Gates estimates that the … Read more

HTC struggles continue, revenue falls in November

November was not a good month for HTC.

The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer today posted (PDF) revenue of 21 billion Taiwan dollars, or $729.4 million, in November, down nearly a third from a year ago. This marks the 13th consecutive month of year-over-year revenue drops, as the company struggles to get out of a slump that's lasted more than a year.

November did improve upon October, when revenue was 17.2 billion Taiwan dollars, or $591.8 million.

The results illustrate the continued struggles facing HTC, one of several handset manufacturers battered by the competition that has left Apple … Read more

Instagram-Twitter feud fudges photos

Wednesday's CNET Update won't cut you off:

Instagram and Twitter aren't playing nice, and it's annoying users. As the two services compete in the photo-sharing space, Instagram stopped supporting a key Twitter feature that helps display media inside a tweet. The casual user won't notice anything different on the Twitter website. But on Twitter's mobile app, you will notice that Instagram photos are no longer properly formatted to fit.

Why would Instagram spoil the appearance of photos shared on Twitter? Because Facebook-owned Instagram is growing its website and wants you to stay on its … Read more

Missing 'Find Duplicates' feature in iTunes 11 to be restored

The latest version of Apple's music management software, iTunes 11, was recently released, and is the first in a while to include significant changes to both its interface and the services offered through it.

While some of its refinements such as enhanced ease of use and overall snappier feel have been welcomed, the update did bring some changes including missing features that have been met with a fair bit of criticism.

Recently All Things Digital's Walt Mossberg outlined some of these features in his review of iTunes 11, and in doing so offers some insight on why Apple … Read more

Top 25 developers make half of all U.S. mobile app revenue

There might be hundreds of thousands of apps in your favorite mobile marketplace, but chances are, few developers there are actually making serious cash.

During the first 20 days of November, just 25 developers, including Rovio, Zynga, Electronic Arts, and Disney, generated half of all mobile app revenue earned, research firm Canalys discovered in a study announced yesterday. The companies pulled in a combined $60 million in the U.S. from paid downloads and in-app purchases. The remaining $60 million was earned by all other developers.

Canalys analyzed both the App Store and Google's Play marketplace. Although other app … Read more

AT&T: We've sold 6.4M smartphones in Q4 already

AT&T is hoping for a happy holiday when it comes to smartphone sales.

The wireless carrier is selling smartphones at a record pace -- 6.4 million already in the first two months of the quarter, according to Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T's mobility arm. De la Vega, speaking at an investor conference today, said he now expects to sell 26 million smartphones this year, 1 million more than previously expected.

"What we're seeing is tremendous response in the marketplace," he said. "Excitement is at all time high. I … Read more

Nokia taps into China Mobile gold mine with Lumia 920T

Nokia said today that it would launch a variant of its flagship smartphone, the Lumia 920, specifically for China Mobile.

The Lumia 920T will be the first Windows Phone to run on China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network. The phone is expected to hit the market by the end of the year and sell for 4,599 yuan (about $740).

This latest Nokia phone is important because it should allow the company to tap into China Mobile's more than 700 million customers -- the largest subscriber base in the world. China is an increasingly important market as Nokia hopes to … Read more

Dropbox plans Windows 8 touch support

PARIS -- Dropbox plans to launch a version of its software that will let Windows 8 customers use the file-sharing service on the Microsoft's new operating system.

"We are going to be launching our client app for Windows 8," said Aditya Agarwal, Dropbox's vice president of engineering, speaking at the LeWeb conference here. The software will of course work in the traditional desktop mode shared with earlier Windows versions, but also with the new touch-centric user interface of Windows 8 spotlighted with Microsoft's new Surface tablet, he said.

The move isn't a major surprise; … Read more

Future of Facebook voting up for vote

Tuesday's CNET Update doubts the vote will be rocked:

Facebook doesn't want policy changes to be put up for a vote anymore. But first, it's letting users have one last chance to make their voice heard on the matter. Facebook lets users vote on policy changes, but the votes only count if 30 percent of all active users participate. Problem is, there has never been enough voter turnout for it to matter. So Facebook now is proposing to end the voting option and also make changes to messages. Users can vote on the Facebook Site Governance app, … Read more

WD ships 8TB My Book Live Duo NAS server

Following its recent announcement of the availability of a new 4TB hard drive, Western Digital today announced that its RAID-capable NAS server, the My Book Live Duo, now offers up to 8TB of storage space.

The My Book Live Duo is the dual-bay version of the single-volume My Book Live and originally had a storage cap of 6TB.

The server houses two user-serviceable 3.5-inch hard drives and supports both RAID 1 and RAID 0 configurations. The top 8TB capacity is available only in the RAID 0 setup, which is fast but provides no redundancy. If you want data safety, … Read more