US Internet firm Yahoo! and Japan's SoftBank have announced that they have reached an agreement with their Chinese partners at Alibaba Group in a dispute over online payments platform Alipay.Alibaba Group -- which is 43 percent owned by Yahoo! -- "will continue to participate in Alipay's future financial performance, including a future IPO or other liquidity event," the companies said in a joint statement.Under the terms of the agreement, Alibaba Group will receive no less than US$2-billion and no more ...

Microsoft has RTMed the new "bet the farm" version of its Windows Mobile platform to manufacturers, with device shipments expected in stores Spetmber earliest. According to Microsoft, it features over 500 new features and faster browsing with Internet Explorer 9.It's novel interface design has attracted a mixed, but generally favourable response, and the Mango release is expected to improve integration with cloud services such as Bing and Facebook. There is still little detail on SDKs for software developers."This marks the ...

Social media is no longer just about Twitter and Facebook. Granted, at the time of their release, both of these entities rewrote the rules when it came to sharing our lives online. Facebook made it easy to become a voyeur of the lives of soon-to-be moms who you dated at university; Twitter gave you 140 characters into which you could cram your controversial opinion; and location-based services like FourSquare and Gowalla rewarded you for your loyalty. At the height of ...

Applications; what a few years ago was something we filled in when we wanted a job, has become an integral part of the way we use technology. In the war between Android, iPhone and BlackBerry, apps are tossed about like hand grenades.What started out as an honest effort to make our phones more versatile, has turned into a silly festival.Don't get me wrong, I delight in the sheer unnecessary entertainment offered by fmylife or damnyouautocorrect and am grateful ...

Steven Levy, a senior editor at Wired, spent a lot of time at Google researching his new book, "In the Plex". He also spent a lot of time with the new CEO Larry Page.Mr Levy says Google is now in the hands of "a true corporate radical".In an article for Wired, "Larry Page Wants to Return Google to Its Startup Roots" he reports that Mr Page has said many times, that he has always "wanted to change the world".He sees ...

Gadget lust. I've had it. I have it a lot actually, and if you're reading this then chances are, so have you. I've heard you emphatically proclaim your love for your iPhone; yes, loud enough to make the Android geek three cubicles down solemnly roll his eyes. Gadget man Joshua Topolsky called the Lenovo IdeaPad U260 "Pure sex", and even the traditionally staid Walt Mossberg, from Wall Street Journal fame, lauded the Vaio P, calling it "sexy", way back in ...

The majority of businesses in emerging markets are still quite hesitant when it comes to moving their organisational processes to the cloud. This is in part due to the perception that a comprehensive move to cloud-based services is a viable option only for those organisations able to pay for high-quality bandwidth, and partly because companies and their IT departments are hesitant to leave the "legacy paradigm" of their current infrastructure.The move to the cloud starts with a paradigm shift from ...

After a blog post to the Android developers blog, the penny has dropped as why the Honeycomb 3.2 update is actually a big thing. It allows proper support for 7" screens. Until now, mid-size tablets fell into the cracks between smartphones and full-size tablets, with apps often unable to swap smoothly between portrait and landscape, or not displaying properly.Read more on Gearburn.com

Shares in Japanese gaming giant Nintendo have fallen more than 20 percent after it posted a first-quarter loss, cut forecasts and slashed the price of its 3DS handheld console less than six months after its launch.Shares tumbled to 11 170 yen on the Osaka Stock Exchange to hit six-year lows, the day after the gaming giant booked a net loss of 25.5-billion yen (US$327.9-million) for the April-June quarter.Nintendo cut its forecast for the year to March 2012 to a net ...

Twitter has confirmed that it will begin placing advertisements known as "Promoted Tweets" in the timelines of users who follow a particular brand or company.Twitter said it will begin testing the new advertising offering with a number of companies including Dell, Gatorade, Groupon, JetBlue, LivingSocial, Microsoft, Red Bull, Starbucks and Virgin America.Promoted Tweets from non-profits such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the American Red Cross will also be shown, the San Francisco-based Twitter said in a blog post."When we decide ...