Stories by Brennon Slattery

AOL revamps AIM with Facebook, Google chat apps

AIM, AOL's seminal instant messenger app, just received a preview update to pull it out of obscurity and compete with other more popular chat apps like Facebook Chat, Google Talk, Skype and a slew of others that aggregate disparate clients and boast features like video and picture-sharing.

Study says Kindle Fire will 'delay' iPad purchases - or does it?

New research suggests the Kindle Fire could chomp into over a quarter of the iPad's sales - an impressive feat, considering Apple's iPad currently has 67 per cent dominance over the tablet market.

Cool features your iPhone 4 gets after downloading Apple iOS 5

Apple's major overhaul of its iOS operating system arrives today, but amidst the excitement comes a major concern: Will iOS 5 function properly on older model iPhones? Or will there be an added circle of bricked-iPhone hell comparable to what happened in 2010 when the iPhone 3G took on iOS 4?

Amazon Kindle E-Book lending program: What it needs

Amazon's plans to create a subscription-based lending library of e-books on the Kindle is just, at this point, a rumor -- but, despite the novelty of the idea, it's already running into problems, namely from major book publishers.

Fox's 8-day content delay encourages piracy

Fox recently decided to stop releasing free online streams of its TV shows on Hulu the day after they air -- instead, Fox is delaying free streaming for eight days. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this choice by the network has resulted in an increase in over-100-percent increase in piracy.

Facebook lets expectant parents share the news

Facebook has added a feature that lets expectant parents add unborn children to the "Friends and Family" section of their profiles by selecting "Expected: Child" on the drop-down list. Typical of anything Facebook does, this feature -- implemented so that parents-to-be wouldn't break Facebook's rules by creating a profile for someone who is very underage -- has stirred controversy for the social network.

Mozilla's Boot to Gecko: A Mobile OS that could succeed

Mozilla, the makers of the Firefox browser, hopes to revolutionize the modern operating system with Boot to Gecko, a universal-platform OS primary aimed at mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets that could theoretically drive futuristic desktops as well.

Twitter won't fly as high if it flubs Bing deal

Twitter stands to lose a lot of clout -- and money -- if it flubs its social search deal with Microsoft's Bing like it did with Google.

5 possible reasons U.S. users are ditching Facebook

Have we finally grown tired of Facebook? According to Inside Facebook, more than five per cent of U.S. users abandoned Facebook in May -- that's about six million people who have stopped "liking" the world's largest social network. Six million people jumping ship sounds like a lot, but when you consider that Facebook is on track to hit 700 million users any day now, it's not such a big deal.

Microsoft's Xbox TV service may be near

Streaming TV may soon be coming to an Xbox near you.

Google's Schmidt admits to screwing up on Facebook

When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt took the stage at the AllThingsD conference, it was almost guaranteed that he would blurt out something controversial. But Schmidt didn't go over the top -- he did, however, admit that Google "screwed up" on its social strategy, and that it's his fault.

Beware of malware even as Mac Defender details emerge

Apple users are getting new details about one malware scare, but should be careful not to fall victim to another that may be lurking.

Samsung's e-reader screens boast 16.7 million colors

Much of the buzz coming out of the SID Display Week 2011 International Symposium conference in Los Angeles this week is about high-resolution screens for tablets capable of 2560-by-1600 resolution -- five times that of the iPad's 1024-by-768 display.

Bing, Facebook deepen ties, threaten Google +1

Microsoft has unveiled a deeper conglomerate of Bing and Facebook that harvests the power of the social Web, one year after forming a partnership to take "social search" to the next level.

Chromebooks to ship with offline versions of Google Apps

One of the problems with the marketability of the Chromebook -- that it only functions when connected to the Internet -- is also a misunderstanding. Google's Chrome OS doesn't have any locally installed apps like a word processor or spreadsheet manager, so many believe that Chromebooks are dependent on and useless without Wi-Fi or cellular data connectivity. But when Chromebooks ship on June 15, they'll come packaged with offline versions of Gmail, Docs, and Google Calendar.