Research in Motion stated that it remains committed to the PlayBook tablet and the tablet market, discounting an analyst’s report that said the death of the device is imminent. “Rumors suggesting that the BlackBerry PlayBook is being discontinued are pure fiction,” RIM spokeswoman Marisa Conway said in an email to Reuters. “RIM remains highly committed to the tablet market and the future of QNX in its platform.” QNX is the operating system that runs PlayBook and is scheduled... 

IBM has become the second largest information technology company by market capitalisation, surpassing Microsoft. Big Blue, which ditched its PC business back in 2005, now focuses on bigger hardware, software, services and consultancy. The company has been seeing its share price slowly rise while Microsoft has had a horrible year. Now IBM’s market value – its share price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding – is at $214bn while Microsoft’s market value is $213.2bn. Microsoft... 

A new type of mobile DDR3 memory that can speed up tablets, smartphones and laptops could be included in devices starting as early as late next year, with adoption rates continuing to increase in 2013, analysts said on Thursday. Low-power DDR3 memory — also called LPDDR3 — will bring a bigger data transfer pipe to tablets and smartphones, which could translate into better performance and longer battery life, analysts said. Standards-setting organization JEDEC (Joint Electron Device... 

Google’s Chrome is on the brink of knocking Firefox out as the second-most-popular browser, according to one Web statistics firm. Data provided by StatCounter, an Irish company that tracks browser usage using the free analytics tools it offers websites, shows that Chrome will pass Firefox to take the No. 2 spot behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) no later than December. As of Wednesday, Chrome’s global average user share for September was 23.6%, while Firefox’s stood... 

Word on the street is that Oracle has threatened to buy its sworn enemy HP. According to the Times of India, HP directors are terrified that their falling shares would make the company vulnerable to a bid from Oracle. Apparently this was the reason for the sudden sacking of Leo Apotheker. Oracle has considered informally whether to approach Hewlett-Packard, but it’s unlikely to make a bid any time soon. But to make sure HP has hired Goldman Sachs to help it prepare for any possible... 

The FTC has asked Google for more information about its $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility. Google is buying the outfit as a defence against Apple and Microsoft patent law suits, however in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Motorola said it received a request for “additional information and documentary material” from the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust division. According to Reuters, Motorola said Google also received a similar... 

A Russian security firm has upgraded a phone-password cracking software with the ability to figure out the master device password for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices. Elcomsoft said on Thursday that before it developed the product, it was believed that there was no way to uncover a device password on a BlackBerry smartphone or PlayBook tablet. BlackBerry smartphones are configured to wipe all data on the phone if a password is typed incorrectly 10 times in a row, the company said. Elcomsoft... 

Cisco announced improvements to its video product line Thursday to make it easier for businesses to create and share video, including a free app coming soon for iPhone and iPad devices. The free app will make Cisco’s existing Show and Share software available for iPad and iPhone in late October through the Apple App Store, Cisco officials stated via a Webcast earlier this week. Show and Share is Cisco’s video-sharing software, which allows users to search and watch videos as well as record... 

Warner Bros. on Thursday will debut a Web show from “Charlie’s Angels” director McG that seeks to create a new genre the studio calls a “social series” by taking pictures, music and information from a viewer’s Facebook page and putting it into the show . The series, “Aim High,” marks one more way in which Hollywood’s studios are trying to engage younger audiences on social media websites that have become competition for films, TV shows and... 

Sources have confirmed that most Tegra 2 tablets you know will get Ice Cream Sandwich. We are still sniffing around to find out if the ICS is going to end up as Android 4.0 but it will bring phones and tablets much closer and should ship in October or November. Many Asus, Samsung, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony and any other Android 3.x compatible tablets on market will have a chance to get the new one. The upgrade will come as manufacturers get it ready and customized for its tablets but most tablets... 

First came the “Running Chicken” nebula, and now comes a cosmic “Fried Egg.” A European telescope has captured the best image yet of one of the rarest classes of stars in our universe, and astronomers playfully point out that the cosmic scene resembles an egg white around a yolky center. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, spotted the monster star, which is called a yellow hypergiant. The star is located about... 

Traffic exploded on Google+ after the social networking site availed itself to the public, rising1,269% in one week, making the site the eighth largest social network on the Internet, according to Web analytics firm Hitwise. Google+ rose from the 54th most visited site social networking to the eighth, receiving nearly 15 million visits in one week. This number is likely to be larger because Hitwise’s data does not include mobile traffic or traffic from the Google notification bar. When Google... 

The release of Firefox 7 is important because the new version features better memory management and is the first step in Mozilla’s long term plan to make the browser more resource friendly. Nevertheless, users who upgrade to it will also benefit from improved security as this release fixes six critical and two moderate severity security vulnerabilities. Four of the critical patches are shared with Thunderbird 7 and address a use-after-free condition with OGG headers, an exploitable crash in... 

Two Linux software groups have decided to collaborate, they said on Wednesday, to develop a new operating system for cellphones and other devices in partnerships with Intel and Samsung Electronics. However, analysts said the new Tizen platform is likely to struggle to attract wider developer and manufacturer support to compete with the dozen or so other mobile operating systems in a market dominated by Apple and Google’s Linux-based Android. Even industry majors Nokia and Hewlett-Packard have canceled... 

GM subsidiary OnStar has reversed course on a planned change to its privacy policies that would have allowed them to collect and share GPS tracking and other data from vehicles — even after their users discontinued subscribing to OnStar service. In a statement Tuesday, OnStar said that it had decided to abandon their plans in response to consumer privacy concerns. “We realize that our proposed amendments did not satisfy our subscribers,” OnStar President Linda Marshall said in...