A location-based app for Apple Store customers may just speed up the in-store experience for the firm's users--and increase profits in the process.

Following close on the heels of CNN's Web site overhaul, Reuters has completely revamped its home page. The new effort is startlingly spartan in its minimalism--and it's absolutely designed to appeal to a broad consumer audience. Reuters is chasing extra cash.

It seems that not a day goes by that I don’t read about another once highly-regarded magazine or newspaper filing Chapter 11 or closing up shop. I feel sad, yet somewhat responsible, for its demise like so many other well-known and long standing periodicals. While I’ve enjoyed many of the now-defunct periodicals, I may have mentioned an article to someone only from time to time.

I now realize that I never advocated for the products, and may be partially responsible for their demise.

The holiday shopping season is already upon us, and just in time for the rush are two books centered on consumerism. With our purse strings at stake, we pit the reads against each other.

Source code for Wal-Mart's point-of-sale computer system was hacked and siphoned into Eastern European computers in 2005 and 2006, Wired.com reported today. The scale of the attack calls into question whether major retailers have been adequately complying with credit-card security standards that have been in place for nearly a decade.

Is the tech sector weaker than we think?

Just last week, analysts were abuzz over buoying technology stocks: The tech-heavy Nasdaq hit 2,000 points on news that chip demand was once again rising. Philadelphia's Semiconductor Index, the SOX, rose nearly two percent thanks to big gains by Intel, SanDisk, and Applied Materials.

The unusually long contract between Apple and AT&T for the sale of the iPhone may prompt the Department of Justice to look into charging large telecom providers with anticompetitive practices. According to the Wall Street Journal, rumors inside the DOJ suggest that investigators will be looking at how large mobile providers like AT&T and Verizon restrict the way devices and services are used on their networks. Justice has yet to make a formal announcement. Read More »

How a little lab called MAYA is giving firms such as Emerson and General Dynamics an innovation boost.

"Your movie made me physically sick," one audience member told Gary Hustwit (left), the director of Objectified, the eagerly anticipated film about industrial design, last night at a screening in New York.

Far from being miffed, Hustwit grinned. "Maybe that's what we were trying to do," he said slyly.