How Kinect, smartphones and programming are reshaping high school

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Tech-minded teachers from across the country are on the Microsoft campus in Redmond this week, sharing some of the new ways they’re incorporating technology into their classrooms. The event is the company’s Partners in Learning U.S. Forum. See the video above for highlights from my tour of the event earlier today — including teachers incorporating… Read More…

Chart: Samsung tops Apple in smartphone shipments

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Apple’s iPhone may be synonymous with the smartphone revolution. But Samsung still holds the lead in terms of worldwide shipments, showing a 32.6 percent market share as it shipped 50.2 million units during the second quarter. That compared to Apple’s 16.9 percent market share and 16.9 million units shipped, according to a report from IDC. Together,… Read More…

Tablets surpass smartphones in e-commerce traffic

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It was bound to happen. With larger, easier-to-view screens and their sheer portability, tablets have now overtaken smartphones as devices for shopping, according to Monetate, a provider of cloud-based technology for online marketers. As reported by Gigaom, tablets drove more traffic to retail sites than smartphones during the first quarter of 2012, 6.52 percent vs. smartphones 5.35… Read More…

Will your next smartphone have a backside display?

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A newly surfaced patent filing from Microsoft provides a glimpse of where our smartphones might be headed — even if it’s not the most original idea in the world. The concept, as detailed by PatentBolt.com, is a smartphone with a low-powered backside display, possibly wrapping around the corners of the device, that could show content… Read More…

Still think tablets are a fad? This comScore stat will convince you otherwise

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ComScore’s new report — U.S. Digital Future in Focus 2012 — spells out just how powerful of a force the tablet market is becoming in tech. Consider this: It took seven years for 40 million Americans to own a smartphone, a milestone that the tablet computers hit in less than two years. “The growth in… Read More…

The Greatest innovators of all time: Edison, Jobs, Zuckerberg (but no Bill Gates?)

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Maybe Bill Gates needs to burnish his legacy a bit with the kids. A survey released this week asked 1,010 young adults between the ages of 16 to 25 to name the greatest innovators of all time. Thomas Edison, the “Wizard of Menlo Park” who developed the electric light bulb and motion picture camera, got… Read More…

RIM’s new CEO states the obvious in YouTube video: ‘We have to get better at execution’

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RIM, which has struggled to keep its BlackBerry line of smartphones relevant amid increasing competition from the iPhone and Android, today replaced co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with a little-known executive by the name of Thorsten Heins. (Full release here). Who is Thorsten Heins? Well, as part of the introductory process, the company posted… Read More…

With LG patent pact, Microsoft has deals on 70% of U.S. Android phones

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Microsoft this morning announced a patent deal with LG Electronics that covers LG’s tablets, mobile phones and other consumer devices running Google’s Chrome and Android operating systems. It’s the latest in a series of patent agreements by Microsoft with makers of Android devices, and the company says it now has deals in place covering more… Read More…

Ask Andru: Apple iMessage Follow-Up

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The first ever Ask Andru column featured a question about Apple’s iMessage, a proprietary method the company uses to allow owners of iOS devices to send text messages, pictures, and videos to each other through Apple’s servers, bypassing the traditional wireless carrier. This allows users to send as many messages as they want without having… Read More…

Amazon offers megadiscount on smartphones, sells a slew of Android devices for a penny

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Black Friday hasn’t hit yet, nor has cyber Monday. But that’s not stopping Amazon.com from rolling out big discounts on smartphones. The online retailer has slashed prices on many popular Android devices to one penny (with a two-year contract). The discount was first reported by the news site Launch, which noted in its headline “Bezos… Read More…