mobile apps - News, Features, and Slideshows

Features

• Location-based services: Controversy at every level

  Your smartphone can be a beacon telling the world where you are, with increasing precision. Is that good commerce or bad privacy, or maybe a bit of both?

• A mobile app reality check

  If you have programming chops and hold dreams of chucking your day job to build a cash cow mobile app in your basement, here's an irksome reality check.

• Are your smartphone apps selling you out?

  Apple's App Store, Google's Play store and other app stores are packed with apps that can compromise your security and privacy without you ever knowing anything bad happened. What's a mobile app user to do?

• Google escalates offensive against Office with Android KitKat

  Google last week again turned the screws on Microsoft and its Office franchise, this time by including Quickoffice with its newest Android mobile operating system, version 4.4 and dubbed "KitKat."

• Google closes in on mastering mobile

  Google may be the Internet company getting closest to figuring out mobile -- with a slew of mobile YouTube users and increasing smartphone ad clicks -- but it still hasn't quite mastered it yet.

• Windows Developers Struggling With Mobile Apps

  Windows developers are receiving an ever-greater number of requests for mobile apps. However, they are struggling to meet that mobile demand with current tools and skills, while also meeting expectations to support and enhance of existing desktop applications.

• Talk to me, Facebook! Social net buys speech recognition company

  Facebook said it is buying Mobile Technologies, a company known for its speech recognition and voice-to-voice translation technology.

• Office revenue smells sweet even as PC sales stink it up

  Microsoft's Business Division, the company's biggest money maker for 10 out of the last 11 quarters thanks to its Office cash cow, was not immune to the historic decline in PC sales.

• Tips for testing your mobile app security

  The enterprise has gone mobile and there's no turning back. And while the BYOD movement has received plenty of attention, IT departments are getting a handle on the security risks of personal mobile devices in the workplace. The next challenge is "bring your own application" (BYOA), because many public app stores have serious malware problems.

• Google buys Waze and puts the squeeze on Facebook and Apple

  With Google set to buy app-maker Waze, the question is whether Google actually needs the crowd-sourced traffic app or is simply trying to stick it to its competitors.

• Developers clamor for unified dev tools for Microsoft's 3 operating systems

  Merging the Windows Phone OS with the Windows and Windows RT OSs could give Microsoft a boost in attracting more developers and, ultimately, improving its market share for smartphones and tablets.

• Google dives headfirst into streaming music pool

  At Google I/O on Wednesday, Google unveiled a streaming music service that will compete directly with the likes of Pandora and Spotify -- in what is said to be a growing market, however.

• There's an app for that: Avoiding the ugliest business problems

  Kindergarten rules for living well can get you in trouble in the corporate world. Now, there is an app for business complications of the worst type.

• Facebook Home goes after mobile market with 'ferocity'

  Less than a year after calling mobile one of its biggest risks, Facebook has made another big move to attack the mobile market with Facebook Home for Android devices.

• Physicians may be marginalized as mobile tech engages us in healthcare

  Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and professor of genomics took aim at the medical community, calling for the end to paternal medicine and annual checks and the beginning a consumer-centered healthcare, where patients own their own data, including their genomes for drug treatment.