Computers

Intel is talking Haswell power savings just weeks before the launch.

Mobile technology is giving businesses a new means to function: Mobile technology is giving businesses a new m...

Ohio House Bill 7 was passed by the Ohio State Senate on Wednesday, effectively closing down all Internet Cafes in the state and putting an estimated 6-8K employee out of work. The main concern was not so much the Internet as it was with sweepstakes games which financed the stores. "In our office we always believed these places were illegal. Now we're armed with a court decision which makes this crystal clear," DeWine told reporters at the time. Comments

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that Google is working on a “multi-pronged effort” to build wireless networks that could connect more than a billion people in emerging markets. According to unnamed sources, the company wants to connect people outside of major cities in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia through a combination of frequencies used for television broadcasting, special balloons or blimps transmitting on non-TV broadcast frequencies, and potentially through satellite transmissions. Making wireless speed faster in urban centers is also a potential goal for the project, the WSJ's sources said. Sources also said that Google might be looking to team up with local telecommunications companies to achieve greater wireless coverage, but it is still unclear whether any deals are on the table yet. The WSJ said that Google is talking to regulators in South Africa and Kenya to create a network through television broadcast frequencies, and that “some wireless executives say they expect such changes to happen in the coming years.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

A proposed law dealing with changing the identification number on a cell phone would make the act a criminal offense punishable by five years in jail. The bill was introduced by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and is aimed at deterring the high instance of cell phone theft, which in many areas is responsible for 50% of all reported crime. The Mobile Device Theft Deterrence Act of 2013 makes changing the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number in a phone a crime. The IMEI number is a unique identification number in every cellphone and is exchanged when a mobile phone signs on to a mobile network. Comments

While other PC manufactures are languishing in poor sales numbers for the first quarter of 2013, Lenovo has seen a rise of 90% on the year's sales. PC sales for the majority of the major manufacturers have been dismal this year to say the least. Some blame the downturn on the economy; some blame the rise of tablets and some blame the lukewarm reception to Windows 8. None of that seems to have mattered to Lenovo who had to be the one who skewed the bell curve for the rest of the industry. Of first-quarter consolidated revenues, US$4.2 billion, or 53.8%, came from notebook sales and US$2.4 billion, or 30.8%, from desktops, Lenovo indicated. Comments

Intel has scored a mobile win with Samsung and will power at least one Galaxy tablet in the near future says VentureBeat. The site’s sources on Saturday confirmed our own reports from earlier this week when benchmarks of an Intel-powered Galaxy Tab appeared online. There could be several tablet variants from Samsung and others could use Samsung’s own chip. Even if Intel powers just one Android tablet made by Samsung, it would be big for the Intel Atom team. Since debuting the Atom chip five years ago, it has typically been used in low-end PCs such as netbooks. Over the past year, Intel managed to get Atom silicon inside a few smartphones, but none of those devices have gone on to be major sales hits. The chip does power Windows 8(msft) tablets as well. In this case, Samsung is one of the top Android tablet makers, giving Intel a chance to prove its Atom has the right blend of power and efficiency to compete in the growing mobile market. I noted earlier this week that Samsung could be considering the move in order to keep its Exynos chips available for higher demand devices such as the Galaxy S 4 smartphone: “So why would Samsung, which makes it own chips for smartphones and tablets, consider an Intel inside its newest Galaxy Tab? Samsung could be keeping the Exynos for its own handsets, such as the new Galaxy S 4, because it sells more handsets than tablets. The company’s tablets wouldn’t like suffer any performance hit by using Intel’s silicon either; at least not if the early benchmarks are valid.” The timing of a potential Intel Atom design win is a little surprising to me. The company will debut the next generation of Atom chips called Silvermont in the second half of this year, promising three times the computing power or five times the power efficiency of the current Atom processors. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM ProMobile first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlookMobile 2012 and beyond

Dish Network has regrouped and put together a new consortium of financial backers to pursue the purchase of Sprint Nextel Corp. The offer to purchase Sprint is reported to be worth $25.5 Billion. Dish is competing with Japan's Softbank Corp. who put in a bid to purchase a major portion of Sprint last October. The Sprint acquisition, should it go through, is expected to generate positive synergies for both the companies in terms of countering stiff competition from market leaders like AT&T Inc. (T) and Verizon Communication Inc. (VZ), which dominate nearly 35% of the U.S. market. Comments

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Vooza, “the world’s most unbelievable tech startup.” Been following the Tumblr/Yahoo deal? Notice how every company that gets acquired says the same things (we’re in it for the long haul. Nothing’s going to change. The new management “gets it.”), but then reality sets in and things get hazy? In this video, Vooza’s CEO reveals the TRUTH about what happens when you get acquired. Vooza is a video comic strip about the startup world that’s been buzzed about by David Karp, Dennis Crowley, Jason Fried, and other tech bigwigs. Join Vooza’s email list for exclusive VIP access to more Vooza.

Despite Amazon being a mega-marketplace for just about anything, it's the company's reading-centric initiatives that are largely defining it these days. And now, Amazon Publishing is introducing yet another product in that category with Kindle Worlds. It's a new publishing model for independent authors, and it's described as the first commercial...