Looking Back and Springing Ahead  —  The following is a post from Frank X. Shaw, Corporate Vice President of Corporate Communications at Microsoft.  —  Last week was the official start of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere.  While some folks were out doing “spring cleaning,” …

At Y Combinator, Social is Out, Revenue is In  —  Y Combinator, the best-known “incubator” of technology startups in Silicon Valley, is showing further proof that the social-networking craze has died down and more founders are tackling “boring” problems that generate cash.

Apple's broken promise: why doesn't iCloud ‘just work?’  —  Frustrations mount as developers deal with Apple's inability to manage another cloud service  —  iCloud, perhaps more than any Apple software product, is meant to “just work.”  When Apple introduced iCloud, it made clear its hopes …

New Flipboard: News and Posts Handpicked and Shared  —  One of the best ways of following topics that are interesting to you is Flipboard, a popular app for Apple and Android mobile devices that automatically turns social-network posts and news from online publications, into beautiful, magazine-like pages you “flip” through by swiping.

One in Five BlackBerry 10 Apps Is Really an Android App  —  One of BlackBerry's key goals is getting developers to write apps designed to take advantage of its all-new operating system.  —  But, knowing that not all developers are ready to bet on a native app, the company has offered …

Existing iPhone 5 handsets cannot have AWS support enabled, but Apple is shipping the new A1428 carrier-unlocked on April 12th  —  Starting April 12th, Apple retail shops as well as Apple's online store will begin selling the new and gently tweaked A1428 model of the iPhone 5.

How the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing  —  This story was co-produced with NPR.  —  Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free.  You'd open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any needed changes and be done.

The power of the RSS reader  —  With the decreasing use of RSS readers over the last few years, which will probably be accelerated by Google Reader's shutdown in July, many are bidding good riddance to a medium that they never used well.  —  RSS is easy to abuse.  In 2011, I wrote Sane RSS usage:

Microsoft lands design patents for the Surface tablet's Touch Cover keyboard  —  Microsoft would certainly argue that its Surface tablet design is iconic.  The company is doing more than simply extolling the virtues of kickstands and VaporMg casings, however.

Here's Why Marissa Mayer Is About To Spend ~$200 Million On A YouTube Wannabe  —  Last week, Amir Efrati and Sam Shechner of the WSJ reported that Yahoo is close to acquiring a controlling stake in the YouTube-of-Europe, Dailymotion, at a valuation somewhere around $300 million.

Dark Sky developers launch Forecast, aim to bring weather predictions to your favorite app  —  The developers of Dark Sky — the short-term weather app that tells you exactly when it's going to rain — have released a new, more powerful version of the service called Forecast.

How are Java attacks getting through?  —  Were you aware that Java is increasingly being viewed as a security risk?  Of course you were — recent high-profile attacks have firmly established the trend, so we're not going to do yet another roundup here.  —  Instead, let's drill in and try to understand the core problem.

Visual Identity Platform Vizify Launches Out Of Beta, Now Lets You Share Graphics Via Social Media Cards  —  The Portland-based Vizify came out of TechStars' accelerator in 2011 with the goal of helping everyday people turn their personal data — the stuff that's fragmented across scores of profiles …

Tablets to outship desktops this year, notebooks next year  —  According to the latest data from IDC, global shipments of smart connected devices exceeded a billion units in 2012, an increase of 29.1% from the previous year and representing a value of $576.9 billion.

Store Combats Showrooming With $5 ‘Just Looking’ Fee  —  While some bricks-and-mortar chains are trying to curb showrooming — using a retailer to check out an item in person before buying it online — with price-matching or store-exclusive brands, one business has come up with a possible solution …

With new Sparc systems, Oracle begins shift to single chip architecture  —  Oracle is expected to gradually converge its two Unix server families onto its own Sparc processor design  —  Oracle has announced a batch of servers based on new Sparc processors and in the process has begun …

eBay's ‘Sell It Forward’ Tests Donations  —  eBay is reinvigorating its core market with a host of new experiments—many of them aimed at bringing in more goods for sale.  —  The latest, a program called Sell It Forward, literally has people mailing it in.

UK government sets up cyber security fusion cell  —  The UK has set up a cyber security “fusion cell” for cross-sector threat information sharing.  The intention is to put government, industry and information security analysts side-by-side for the first time.

Apple in court in China over ‘Siri’ claim  —  SHANGHAI — Apple appeared in a Shanghai court on Wednesday, accused by a Chinese firm of copying software used for the “Siri” personal assistant on its hugely popular iPhones.  —  The Californian company's products are big sellers in China …