Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration Across Hardware, Software & Services  —  Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi Add Responsibilities to Their Roles  —  Apple® today announced executive management changes that will encourage even more collaboration between …

Ballmer's New Mission for Microsoft  —  Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is betting on one of Microsoft Corp.'s busiest years ever to keep the company relevant in a new age of mobile technology.  —  On Monday, Microsoft formally introduced new smartphones that will use a revamped version of the company's mobile-phone operating software.

Google Says 700,000 Applications Available for Android  —  Google Inc. (GOOG) said there are about 700,000 applications available for downloading onto mobile devices that run the Android operating system, challenging Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s lead in the race for software tools.

Google Adds Power Outage Information To Its Hurricane Sandy Crisis Map  —  As we brought to your attention last night, Google set up what it calls a “Crisis Map” as we waited for Hurricane Sandy to make land-fall.  It has, and damage has been done, including massive power outages in all affected areas.

4th Generation iPad Benchmarks Show 1.4GHz Dual Core Processor, 1GB of RAM  —  John Poole of Primate Labs posts about some 4th Generation iPad benchmarks that appeared in their Geekbench database on Sunday night.  —  True to Apple's claims, the 4th Generation iPad benchmarks about twice as fast as the 3rd Generation iPad.

Nook HD review: a high-def tablet with the heart of a reader  —  Barnes & Noble knows where it stands in the tablet race.  Sure, the company has been plugging away at the space since the day the Nook Color made its transformation into a full-fledged tablet, but the Nook, it seems …

EverySignal's smart social alerts mean you never need to miss an important life moment again  —  The volume of content passing through most social networks is growing more unmanageable by the day.  The average Facebook Newsfeed has become an overwhelming deluge of (mostly superficial) content.

Startup Weekend looks to stamp out 30,000 entrepreneurs in new 4-week training program ‘Next’  —  Call it Startup Weekend on steroids.  —  The Seattle nonprofit today is unveiling a new four-week training program that's designed to get people off their duffs, pursuing that entrepreneurial idea that's been gathering dust for too long.

Microsoft Renews Relevance With Machine Learning Technology  —  SEATTLE — Eric Horvitz joined Microsoft Research 20 years ago with a medical degree, a Ph.D. in computer science and no plans to stay.  “I thought I'd be here six months,” he said.  —  He remained at M.S.R. …

EMC to Acquire Silver Tail Systems  —  Data storage giant EMC just announced that it has reached a deal to acquire privately held Silver Tail Systems.  —  This is the privately held company that specializes in detecting fraud on the Web, and the reason that venture capitalist Marc Andreesseen …

Andreessen-Backed Start-Up ItsOn Raises $15 Million to Help Make Mobile Service More Flexible  —  Just recently, major carriers such as Verizon and AT&T started allowing customers to share a pool of data among several devices.  But that's just the start of how flexible cellular options could be.

UK's first 4G mobile service launched in 11 cities by EE  —  4G networks mean far greater internet speeds while on the move  —  The first UK's first fourth generation (4G) mobile service has gone live in 11 cities.  —  London, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds …

Some say the SEO industry is dying - Conductor bags $20m to try and “transform it”  —  While some are arguing that the search engine optimization (SEO) industry will be dead in a matter of years (including some high-profile people deeply embedded in that very SEO industry), one company begs to differ.

Google's Chrome Remote Desktop Screen Sharing Service Comes Out Of Beta, Adds Real-Time Audio For Windows  —  Google just announced that it is taking its Chrome Remote Desktop screen sharing service out of beta.  As the name implies, the Chrome Remote Desktop app runs in Chrome and allows …

MetroPCS Q3: 1 million LTE subscribers, $193m profit  —  Summary: Fifth-place cellular network MetroPCS, currently in a bid to merge with fourth-place T-Mobile, reports another knock-out quarter — including adding more than 1 million LTE subscribers to its roster.  —  Zack Whittaker