Look before you leap: M&A vs. IPO?

By Michael Orbach, contributor

Technology companies that are looking to take the plunge and go public might benefit from thinking twice. In many cases, they may be better off with an M&A or private equity transaction.

Lest we forget the lessons of our past, CEO's must remember that an IPO is a financing event in a recapitalization process, not a liquidity event. While it is encouraging that the number of information MORE

Why are Android smartphones so expensive?

...or here comes the $300 Verizon iPhone?

Google's Android is a free OS given to manufacturers and certified on different carriers.  Google (GOOG) derives revenue from advertising, rather than on selling the OS itself.  Hardware manufacturers like HTC, Motorola (MOT) and Samsung can focus on what they do best: building great commodity hardware to complement Google's OS.

Apple (AAPL), on the other hand, has to build and maintain its iOS without much MORE

Time Inc. breaks the iPad logjam

This week's People app is free to subscribers. Time, SI and Fortune are expected to follow

Image: Time Inc.

There's more to the iPad issue of People that appeared on the Apple (AAPL) App Store this morning than Sandra Bullock's new joy.

This People app may also signal the end of a four-and-a-half-month impasse that put the digital dreams of every major magazine publisher on hold.

Until now, the iPad versions of People, MORE

First casualty in Apple kickback case

The chairman of a Singapore-based supplier has stepped down to "facilitate" investigation

Photo: Apple Inc.

Singapore's JLJ Holdings, one of several Asian firms named in Apple's (AAPL) bribery suit against one of its own mid-level managers, announced Thursday that its executive chairman had temporarily relinquished his duties. Trading in JLJ stock was suspended after shares fell 18%.

Andrew Ang, a former employee of a JLJ subsidiary called Jin Li Mould, was MORE

The next Android flavor? Honeycomb

Even though Android 3.0 Gingerbead hasn't yet been released, a new version with a new delicious codename is rumored to be on the way.

Make room for Gingerbread and Honeycomb

Techradar is today pointing to 'Android 3.1 Honeycomb' as the next iteration of Google's (GOOG) Android OS.  The site says that the update will be a minor release following the major 3.0 release of Gingerbread toward MORE

NPR on iPhone: 8,000 listeners at 8 a.m.

A study of when and how Americans tune into public radio turns up some curious patterns

Click to enlarge. Source: NPR

See the bump in the blue line on the chart at right? That represents the more than 8,000 Americans who listen to National Public Radio on their iPhones (rather than, say, their car radios) between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. on a typical weekday morning -- one MORE

Facebook is going places. Where will Foursquare go?

The world's largest social network is positioning itself to be the hub for all location-based services. As always, the question of the business model goes unanswered.

All the online guesswork over the past few days was correct: Facebook has launched its own location features on the world's largest social network. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, wearing jeans but eschewing his signature hoody for a grey t-shirt, introduced the new feature MORE

Foxconn stages anti-suicide rallies

Also announces plans to increase its workforce in China to 1 million employees

Click for more photos. AP Photo/Kin Cheung

Thousands of workers at Foxconn's giant Shenzhen industrial park turned out Wednesday for what the company billed as a "Treasure Your Life, Love Your Family, Care for Each Other to Build a Wonderful Future" motivational event, but which the Western press quickly characterized as an anti-suicide rally.

Foxconn, a publicly traded subsidiary MORE

Google upgrades Picasa, adds Face Movie, Picnick

The update also has some bug fixes as well as some great new functionality and is available for Mac and PC.

Google (GOOG) has been busy upgrading its cross platform photo editing and library application. I like Picasa because it not only works on a Mac or PC (and syncs to both), it also syncs to the web so that my photos don't die if my computer does. Picasa also syncs with MORE

Celebrating Google's failures

With the success of its search engine and products like Android, sometimes it is good to put Google's efforts into perspective.

As Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt said this month in response to a question about the newly deceased Google Wave, Google celebrates its failures.

"We try things. Remember, we celebrate our failures. This is a company where it's absolutely okay to try something that's very hard, have it not be successful, and MORE