approval

The U.S. Justice Department is asking for more information as it takes a deep dive into its investigation of AT&T's proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA, Bloomberg reported today.

According to two unnamed sources familiar with the situation, Bloomberg said that the Justice Department's antitrust division also sent "civil investigative demands," which are like subpoenas, to competitors of the two companies. The Justice Department is seeking more information on how the deal will affect other wireless businesses, Bloomberg reported.

Neither AT&T nor T-Mobile would comment on the story. And the … Read more

This is what wireless iPhone syncing looks like:

Too bad you probably won't get to enjoy it.

Earlier this month, just ahead of Apple's iPhone OS 4 announcement, I posted a poll asking what new feature you wanted the most. Though multitasking was the clear winner with 36 percent of the vote, nearly 10 percent of voters named "syncing over Wi-Fi" as their top pick.

Needless to say, those folks didn't get their wish.

Despite the fact that Microsoft's Zune player has offered Wi-Fi syncing since 2007, Apple is either unwilling or unable to bestow it upon iPad, iPod, and iPhone users. Well, probably not unable, but obviously unwilling--which is why the new Wi-Fi Sync app will likely get rejected by Apple's App Store overlords.… Read more

The oft reported accounts of Apple's App Store developers finding faster approval times since the New Year holiday may have more to do with the impending announcement of the fabled tablet device than any iPhone concerns. As has been discussed in nearly every tech forum that mentions Apple, the struggles some developers have faced getting their Apps approved in the App Store has been one of the few (if not the only) blemish on the iPhone's domination of the mobile phone market. All that is changing though.… Read more

Career site Glassdoor.com has announced the employees' choice awards for the top 50 best places to work. Unfortunately, tech companies didn't make the top five.

According to Glassdoor, Southwest Airlines, General Mills, Slalom Consulting, Bain & Co., and McKinsey & Co. were the best places to work this year. Only General Mills and Bain & Co. were in the top five last year.

On the tech side, it was enterprise-solution provider Juniper Networks that led the way for the industry, placing 10th in the list with a 3.9 (out of 5) company rating from employees. Google placed … Read more

Apple's App Store has been a runaway success, but it's also been mired in controversy due to the application approval process. The company, however, isn't making apologies for its stringent gatekeeping and insists it's acting in the best interest of its customers.

"We've built a store for the most part that people can trust," Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, told BusinessWeek in an interview posted Monday. "You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you'… Read more

Apple's App Store boasts more than 100,000 apps and more than 2 billion downloads, but not all of its developers are as happy as some would think. One well-respected developer decided to call it quits.

Citing his frustration with the App Store approval process, Rogue Amoeba's Paul Kafasis said on his company's blog last week that he is throwing in the towel on iPhone app development after an exasperating three-and-a-half month app approval.

"Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare,&… Read more

The Commodore 64 emulator application for iPhone was pulled from the App Store by Apple in September for leaving its BASIC interpreter intact and accessible via a backdoor hack. This week, the app has returned after some major rework by its creator, Manomio.

C64 no longer contains the BASIC interpreter and Commodore 64 ROM files, since Apple originally rejected the app for these reasons. As a result, the emulator no longer lets you run your own BASIC code inside the app. However, it will still run classic Commodore 64 games, and it now comes with a total of eight free … Read more

As predicted last month, the IEEE has finally approved the 802.11n high-throughput wireless LAN standard.

Finalization of the new wireless networking standard--which is capable of delivering throughput speeds up to 300 megabits per second (and even higher)--took exactly seven years from the day it was conceived, or six years from the first draft version. The standard has been through a dozen or so draft versions.

News of the ratification broke via a blog post displaying an e-mail sent by Bruce Kraemer, longtime chairman of the 802.11n Task Group, to task group members. There has been no public … Read more

The Commodore 64 emulator application for iPhone, previously rejected by Apple, was approved for availability in the App Store over the weekend, only to get pulled days later.

Apple blocked the sale of the iPhone app, dubbed C64, from the store on Tuesday without explaining why, according to developer Manomio. And while Apple was not immediately available for comment regarding the C64 app, which is designed to enable users to play classic Commodore 64 games and run applications, Manomio says it believes that the yanking is related to an available work-around that enables users to activate the Commodore BASIC interpreter, … Read more