Intel, one of the most hardware-centric companies in technology, placed a massive bid to purchase McAfee on Thursday for $7.68 billion in cash. The acquisition is chipmaker’s biggest to date, and represents a big, diversifying bet that the future of computing is in software and services.

Foxconn Technology Group — the Chinese company which manufactures hardware for Apple, Dell, HP, Nokia and Sony — has been hit by a dozen suicides at its plants this year. It has begun holding rallies at all of its factories to raise moral. The theme? "Treasure Your Life, Love Your Family, Care for Each Other to Build a Wonderful Future."

If the second coming happened right now, Jesus would probably show up as an app. It seems everything these days is an app, or awaiting approval, so don't be surprised. You read it here first. What's funny is that we've had a killer app for the internet all along, no need for a second coming. It's called the web.

Two roads diverge on a tablet screen. One is the path to the native app, the other leads to the open web. Luckily, you can take both. But if you had to pick one — native app or web app — which would you choose? Your decision will make all the difference in how you approach your design, development and distribution.

As wind power gains U.S. market share the domestic manufacturing sector may benefit in tow: According to a recent report from the World Resources Institute, off-shoring wind industry manufacturing to places where labor is cheap has no significant cost benefit over domestic manufacturing, because of transport costs.

Google and Verizon made tsunami-like waves on Monday by proposing an additional paid, closed internet to complement the free, open one we have today. That's putting massive pressure on the government to do something about net neutrality, whether or not that means following the Google/Verizon proposal. Perhaps the answer could be to allow ISPs to balance traffic loads, while barring them from accepting payment for doing so.

The Google-Verizon deal has launched a thousand blog posts and stories. Here's some of the reactions from the top news sites and blogs.

In 2007, Google put $4.6 billion on the line to defend wireless openness. On Monday, in a joint statement with former nemesis Verizon, Google said those rules weren't necessary. Here's the economic truth behind the stunning reversal.

Intel agrees to play nicer with PC makers to settle an FTC lawsuit, alleging the chipmaker illegally stifled rivals. The outcome: an order to stop unfair incentives, but no fine.

Microsoft's Bing Maps now offers an OpenStreetMap data layer. Bing users can download the new feature from the App Gallery that makes the maps from the popular open source project fully searchable in the browser.

Rankings of the best and fastest ISPs in U.S. cities are now available, thanks to stats from Speedtest.net. And while the country is far from leading the world, the nation's tubes aren't nearly as bad as many suspect.

Apple reported record revenues earlier this week, but Microsoft had a blowout quarter of its own, reporting revenues Thursday of $16.04 billion -- enough to keep the Redmond giant ahead of the Cupertino company in this particular financial metric. But that's not the whole story.

Apple has displaced Oracle as the company with the most security vulnerabilities in its software, according to security company Secunia. Over the first half of 2010, Apple had more reported flaws than any other vendor.

Apple surpassed Microsoft two months ago as the world’s most highly valued tech company, and is now challenging the Redmond giant on another key metric: In a blowout third quarter, AAPL posted record revenue of $15.7 billion, which should be close to or exceed what Microsoft reports Thursday.

AT&T and the iPhone -- a pairing that truly was too good to be true. Here's how the partnership between AT&T and Apple went so terribly wrong.

Ending nearly a month of speculation, the wizard of Cupertino or one of his designees will emerge from behind the curtain this afternoon to say something about the Apple iPhone 4. Will it be free bumper cases for iPhone 4 owners? Or could it be the full recall that many consider unlikely? Here are five recalls that would make any company shudder.

Uploading photos or data using AT&T's 3G service became nearly impossible for many earlier this month, and the situation hasn't improved -- that, despite a promised fix.

AT&T says partner Alactel-Lucent is responsible for a weekend glitch that sent smartphone users' upload speeds plummeting. A patch is in, and the company says 3G service for iPhone users is back to normal speed.

IPhone users around the country are finding their phones are uploading data like it's 1999 — which is to say slowly. Some think AT&T is capping data, but the company says an explanation is coming.

As a class-action lawsuit about the iPhone 4’s reception woes gathers steam, Apple issued a statement Friday morning that there is no actual problem with the device’s antenna. Instead, Cupertino claims, the issues stem from a faulty formula in software that indicates the iPhone’s signal strength, which has been present in every iPhone from the first-generation model to the latest iPhone 4.