Fighting bad guys with good tech

As more crimes are committed online, or with the help of online data, police departments are banding together to share tech tips and catch wrongdoing wherever it occurs.

There are times when the invasion of privacy is a good thing -- like when you're fighting bad guys. After all, criminals have also benefited from all of those new technologies that we enjoy, using digital tools for everything from defrauding credit cards MORE

Nexus S goes on sale at Best Buy for $199 on contract

The new Google phone is now available to the general public.  Will it fare better than its predecessor, the Nexus One?

Select Best Buy stores (BBY) are opening their doors this morning ready to sell the Samsung Nexus S.  It is the first time U.S. shoppers will be able to see an official Google (GOOG) phone on display first hand.  The previous Google phone, the Nexus One, was only available for MORE

Holiday crime spree targets Apple

Since late November, retail stores in four states have been hit by nighttime burglaries

Burglars hit the Greenwich, Conn., Apple Store. Source: IFOAppleStore.com

Apple (AAPL) doesn't like to talk about it, but its products have become a favorite target of robbers, pickpockets and burglars. According a reporter who covers the New York City Police Department, iPods and iPhones regularly top the list of items lifted from Big Apple subway passengers.

And now, MORE

Today in Tech: Facebook facial recognition, Twitter worth $3.7 billion?

A curated selection of the day's most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web.

The new Tag Suggestions feature, rolling out next week. Photo: Mashable

Next week, Facebook, which is on track to reach sales of $2 billion this year, will release a new facial recognition feature called Tag Suggestions that automatically suggests who users should tag in photos. Whenever users choose to tag people in their photos, Tag Suggestions will MORE

A peek at next year's Macs

Reports from Apple's Asian suppliers hint at lighter, more affordable machines

Today's iMac and MacBook Pro. Photos: Apple Inc.

An item in Thursday's DigiTimes offers an early glimpse at Apple's (AAPL) plans for its flagship computer line in 2011. The details -- based on reports from unnamed "upstream component makers" -- are sparse:

At least four new MacBook Pro models with a "slight" change in chassis design
A new iMac with a different MORE

How employees who bet can guide a company's future

Internal prediction markets enable colleagues to wager on the fate of crucial projects and the success of products in the pipeline.

By Chris Taylor, MIT Technology Review

The need to predict the future, as exciting as it sounds, crops up in corporate life in terribly mundane ways. Case in point: large videogame companies need to know where to put their marketing dollars many months before they complete their games. Inevitably, some games MORE

Free minds, free markets ... free networks?

What does it means to be a libertarian in the digital age?  Tim Lee is just the man to ask.

Tim Lee

Many computer geeks are also libertarians, so it's not too surprising to hear Tim Lee proudly describe himself as a member of both groups. No, what makes Lee unusual is his passion for figuring out exactly what it means to be both a libertarian and a technophile. What's the best MORE

Try a new web browser, donate some money to charity

A win win for Google Chrome and charity.

Google(GOOG) is going to putting some money up for charity in an event this week called Chrome for a Cause.  To get people using Chrome and specifically Chrome extensions and tabs, Google will donate a certain amount of resources to each charity dependant on how many Chrome tabs are opened throughout each day.  Download the extension and the more tabs you open, the more MORE

ChangeWave: Business [hearts] iPad

Among enterprises planning to purchase tablets next quarter, 78% intend to buy iPads

Click to enlarge. Source: ChangeWave Research

There's not much good news for Apple's (AAPL) competitors in the results of a ChangeWave survey released Wednesday.

In November, ChangeWave researchers asked 1,641 corporate IT buyers about their current and future tablet purchase policies. Although only 7% of the respondents currently provide employees with tablets -- up from 1% in an August MORE

Why the Nexus S matters

The hardware has only minor upgrades from phones released six months ago. The key is the untouched software.

Nexus S from Google

There are two major hardware advancements in the new Samsung Nexus S Google Phone.  One is the Near Field Communication chip inside, which, at the moment, allows you to scan tags that are around town to get more information about the venue.  My local UPS store has one and I scanned MORE