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Congress speaks, tech investors party -- like it's 2013

Well, it took long enough.

But after finally clinching a (literally) last-minute deal to break a weeks-long deadlock over the so-called fiscal cliff, tech investors had a field day on the first day of trading for 2013.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index closed up more than 3 percent on the day, led by the usual roster of big names with Google finishing at $723.25, up 2.24 percent and Apple gaining almost 3 percent to close at $548.07. Facebook, which for much of the spring and summer had been a neglected stock, continued its recent climb, finishing up … Read more

Cyber Monday rings up record U.S. sales (week in review)

This year's Cyber Monday was one for the record books.

Market analyst ComScore reported that spending in the U.S. on Monday reached $1.465 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago, "representing the heaviest [U.S.] online spending day in history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1 billion in sales."

ComScore said that the top category for sales was digital content and subscriptions (up 28 percent), followed by consumer electronics (up 24 percent and "buoyed by gains in smartphone sales"), computer hardware (up 22 percent, … Read more

Googleplex expansion to include 'Experience Center,' test labs

Google has big plans for Googleplex.

The company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters will soon welcome a 120,000-square-foot "Google Experience Center" that will serve as a combination private museum and meeting area, according to a San Jose Mercury News report. The $120 million expansion will also reportedly house labs to test secret projects such as the company's "@home" project--rumored to be a home entertainment device.

The Google Experience Center would allow the Web giant "to share visionary ideas, and explore new ways of working" with up to 900 guests at a time, … Read more

Rogue Google engineer: Google trying to make me happy

Many of you will have been understandably concerned about the personal safety of Steve Yegge.

He's the Google engineer who, last week, accidentally posted a public disquisition on Google+ about, well, Google's vast and many failures. Its Google+ platform, for example, which he described as "a pathetic afterthought."

Could it be that Messrs. Page and Brin would consider that same phrase for Yegge? Could it be that they would have him thrown off a peak in Mountain View, cackling as his career crashed somewhere down below?

Please fear not. Because after midnight last night, Yegge posted again to Google+ … Read more

Unlicensed Google Music arrives Tuesday

Google is preparing to launch a test version of a new digital music service that will enable users to upload their music libraries to the company's servers.

CNET reported in March that Google was testing its music service internally and was ready to unveil the long-anticipated service. And that is what Google intends to do tomorrow at the company's I/O Developer Conference in San Francisco, according to Zahavah Levine, one of the executives in charge of getting the music service off the ground.

While Google and Levine have been negotiating to obtain licenses from the four largest … Read more

Google goes glossy

Links from Thursday's episode of Loaded:

Yahoo launches Search Direct to compete with Google Instant

Google launches an online quarterly magazine

Apple pulls an app that offended many people by claiming it could "cure" homosexuality

The new Ford Focus will use AT&T Wireless to send and receive car data

The New York Times asks Twitter to remove an account that gives a free feed of its articles in preparation for its paywall

The music from the upcoming British royal wedding will be available for download just hours after the ceremony

Research In Motion agrees to disallow … Read more

Windows Phone 7 apps

Links from Friday's episode of Loaded:

Google pulls the plug on GOOG-411Facebook launches Friendship PagesAmazon announces a Kindle app for Windows Phone 7Twitter announces a Twitter app for Windows Phone 7T-Mobile will get a 4G MyTouch on November 3Flickr embraces OpenID and allows Google logins

Google hanging up on GOOG-411

Google is shutting down GOOG-411, its first attempt to create a search-by-voice application.

The company announced in a blog post today that the service will end on November 12. First launched back in 2007, GOOG-411 allowed users to say the name of a business and have the service text you back a listing for that business with address and phone number.

Google has been doing a lot of work on speech recognition since then, and has separately begun to focus almost all of its mobile efforts on modern smartphones: GOOG-411 is kind of irrelevant if you have the Internet in … Read more

Webware 100 winner: Goog411

Site: Google.com/goog411 Category: Location-based services

Goog411 (1-800-GOOG-411) was introduced in early 2007 as a way to access Google search results on your mobile phone. It's the equivalent of dialing 411, but it's free, and pulls multiple listings like the ones you'd get from a search in Google Maps. Mobile phone users can get listings sent to their phone via SMS, including telephone numbers and full addresses. You can also be connected to a business for free.

The entire service runs off voice-recognition technology, which has since been baked into other Google products, including Google's … Read more

Google Finance gets real-time NYSE ticker updates

If you've had bold ambitions of becoming a day trader, Google Finance is now one step closer to getting you there.

Tuesday morning the New York Stock Exchange partnered with Google and CNBC to provide real-time stock quotes that will show up on Google's finance site.

This means that whatever symbols you're looking at on Google Finance will be updated without delay, and the changes can be seen both on the page and at the top of the tab it's open in on your browser. You can also get it in widget form, either in iGoogle … Read more