Patents shift hands almost as often as companies change their lunch menus. Mobile, software, and hardware patents are of particular importance as both deterrents and protection against the litany of lawsuits, frivolous or not, that chase big tech companies on a regular basis. Companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Motorola (who just sold 17,000 patents as part of their deal with Google) stockpile patents, spending lots of money in order to save lots of money. It’s much like insurance – you pay a little now over time to prevent the big hits from coming all at once.. This graphic by Visual.ly attempts…

Under 7 seconds. That’s how long an SSD-equipped Windows 8 PC takes to boot. It’s something that is unheard of in most light-weight mobile operating systems, let alone a full PC OS. The new-found speed has a comical drawback: one would need gamer reflexes to interrupt the boot process and enter setup or BIOS mode, so the features have been removed. There is currently a 200ms window in which to let the PC know you want to interrupt and enter boot setup. It’s not enough time to flash, so trying to enter these modes means doing so after it’s already booted. Here’s a video that shows the intense speed. Related…

I don’t know about anyone else, but I think Apple has a huge “underground” stronghold on social media – and they don’t pay a damn thing for it. Apple for some reason or another has an unparalleled ever surrounding hype about itself that just attracts everyone in the technology era. Especially now with the Worldwide Developers Conference coming up the second week in June, I am seeing an increasingly steady trend of Apple product rumors. As a social media marketer, it is unbelievable to me that Apple is able to have users do it on their own for them. That is part of why Apple is as successful…

It was only a matter of time. Google Chrome, the internet browser they introduced in 2008, has been growing like crazy, passing Firefox to become the 2nd-most popular browser worldwide in the last quarter of 2011. Last week, it took the top spot from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which has held that position for what seems like decades. Global traffic analytics company StatCounter has been tracking the data for years. Following Firefox are Safari at #4 and Opera at #5. One asterisk on the numbers: Firefox allows users to block their usage data making it invisible to StatCounter. With some estimating…

Microsoft is throwing its hat into the niche-social arena by going after students in a bold and likely-futile move with so.cl (pronounced “social”). “With So.cl you can share your search and help others discover what they might be looking for,” they say on their website. “Fun commentary and discussions usually follow.” This is a bad idea. People do not want to share their search. College students are hooked in to Facebook and have study groups already positioned there. Microsoft does not have the clout to be able to muscle their way into social the way Google has and the way Apple could, not because…

They say you can tell a lot about a company by the type of people that work for it. Are they young or old? Conservative or liberal? Creative or analytical? These and other data points about employees can help to create a profile of a company, which is exactly what Kiss Metrics did with Google and Microsoft. By examining some of the habits, preferences, and demographics between the two competitive companies, a clearer comparison profile can be established. We learned that Google employees are less likely to be married or have children while Microsoft employees were less likely to buy Doritos or make…

It could be a play to increase the number of Internet Explorer users. It could be a differentiator between them and Playstation. It could be both. Either way, Xbox 360 users may soon have a Kinect-driven full version of Internet Explorer available to them for full web browsing in between games of Call of Duty. By applying voice and gesture control, Kinect integration may have people surfing the web while waving wildly and screaming madly. There is no time frame laid out at this point, but expect to hear something before E3 in June. Related articles Rumor: Kinect-enabled Internet Explorer browser…

With any payment plan, you will likely pay more than you would if you bought the product up front. That’s the case with the latest offer from Xbox, but don’t expect people to shy away from the deal that includes a $99 Xbox 360 bundle with Kinect. To get the deal, one will need to sign a 2-year agreement for Xbox Live at $14.99 a month. This makes the total package come to $459 spread out over 3 years. By contrast, if someone paid $299 for the standalone Xbox 360 + Kinect and prepaid for 2 years of Xbox live for $120, they would spend $419. There are bargains available on both the bundle (we found one for $259) and…

There is value in Yahoo. It’s real and tangible. While conventional wisdom would look at the trends and the follies of the beleaguered tech firm as a sign that they would be a bad investment, there’s another perspective that knows that now is the best time to buy. I know. I’ve been there. No, I’ve never worked for a huge tech firm. I have, however, been a part of a company with loads of potential but other challenges that made us ripe for acquisition at a bargain-bin price and the results were incredible for everyone involved. Today’s Yahoo has seen a string of CEO and board follies that make AOL leadership…

There’s a reason why mothers shouldn’t judge their children in beauty pageants, why chefs rarely run the business side of restaurants successfully, and why Steve Jobs had to be fired and rehired before making Apple the biggest tech company in the world. Pride and prejudice get in the way of sound decisions sometimes, and when Yahoo didn’t take the $44.6 billion offer from Microsoft in February, 2008, many people pointed to co-founder Jerry Yang as the reason they hesitated and eventually lost the opportunity. As Yang himself said, the consolation prize of working out a search deal with Microsoft…