rivalries

Apple draws up battle strategy against Google at WWDC

SAN FRANCISCO -- They are classic "frienemies," collaborating when the interest is mutual and going for the other's jugular when the opportunity presents itself. So it was that on Monday Apple made clear that it's willing to cut ties with Google if that's what it takes to move its own agenda forward.

Among the product and technology announcements made at its annual developer conference here, Apple said it is expanding its Siri voice assistant software, as well as offering a complete rewrite of its maps app. Apple also added deep integration to Facebook to its … Read more

Is AMD still relevant?

How much does Advanced Micro Devices matter these days? Not much.

But you won't find many headlines proclaiming this and then explaining why. This post at The Verge does a pretty good job, though.

I, for one, have been waiting for a bigger, badder AMD to emerge since CEO Dirk Meyer "retired" at the start of 2011. And waiting and waiting and waiting.

AMD's problem for many years has been to overpromise and underdeliver. It began in earnest with the quad-core Barcelona chip debacle and has continued with the perennial promise of a CPU-GPU combo that … Read more

Tamagotchi forced to deal with family issues

Alas, the Tamagotchi is no longer the passive digital pet that made it famous. Bandai, its creator, has been forcing it grow up.

First it had to enter its terrible teens, then learn how to socialize and even party with the Wii. Now its learning how to be part of a family. The "Tamagotchi Familitchi" lets you raise three of the virtual charges on one screen, generating up to seven families. (We're not sure about their parentage, however, and we don't care to know.)

Learning more life lessons, they can then earn points that can be … Read more