On Thursday, after two years of complaints from application developers for its mobile devices, Apple opened up some leeway and even released the guidelines they use to determine whether apps will make the grade. Apple has been criticized for the closed system that characterizes the app approval process, with its rigidly tight control over content…

Something historic happened in August. For the first time ever, Facebook surpassed Google’s hold on people’s Web surfing time. According to the Associated Press, people spent 41.1 million minutes, or 9.9 percent of their online time, on the social-networking site of walls, pokes and farms,  compared with 39.8 million minutes, or 9.6 percent, on Google’s…

A deal giving Amazon.com exclusive rights to sell some of Random House’s most classic books in electronic format has fallen apart. The publisher and its representative, the Wylie Agency, announced Tuesday that 13 titles were being removed, including Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Nabokov’s “Lolita.” The development is being hailed as good news by independent booksellers,…

NPR — the American multimedia news service formerly known as National Public Radio – recently reported on a new trend: wireless Internet access popping up in, of all places, campgrounds. “Now it’s just like having a water line or a telephone or any other basic amenity. You basically need it to do business,” said Kathy…

Online retailer Amazon has given us a peek inside its famously secretive books, announcing that sales of electronic books on its site have outpaced sales of hardcover tomes. For every 100 hardbacks sold in the last three months, Amazon says it has sold 143 e-books, for its own proprietary Kindle and other e-reading devices. Why…

It was the talk of the town for a while in the blogosphere: A man finds an iPhone prototype on a floor in a bar, sells it to a technology news website and all hell breaks loose. Police raid a journalist’s home, take computer equipment and try to determine whether any laws are broken —…