Google Has Shown Another Living Room Device  —  Google's home-entertainment experiments extend beyond the gadget the company announced Wednesday, which turns TV sets into an extra screen for watching Web videos and other content.  —  The Internet giant in January used the Consumer Electronics Show …

Keeping it simple: Chromecast, Google TV, and the zen of a $35 dongle  —  Google's latest foray into the living room may actually have a chance  —  Google's combined Chrome and Android event yesterday should have had a relatively small impact: the Nexus 7 was already widely leaked and Android 4.3 was a very minor update.

Jeff Bezos Doesn't Care What You Think About Amazon's Quarterly Earnings  —  If you are watching Amazon's quarterly earnings today, probing the numbers for signs of the online giant's continued vigor, feel free.  But honestly, Jeff Bezos doesn't care what you think.

Google ends Chromecast-Netflix promotion ‘due to overwhelming demand’  —  Citing overwhelming demand, Google on Thursday said it has ended a Netflix promotion tied to its new Chromecast TV dongle.  —  The promotion gave users, new and existing, three free months of Netflix's video streaming service …

Feds tell Web firms to turn over user account passwords  —  Secret demands mark escalation in Internet surveillance by the federal government through gaining access to user passwords, which are typically stored in encrypted form.  —  The U.S. government has demanded that major Internet …

No Dice: Zynga Decides to Abandon Real-Money Gaming Efforts in the U.S.  —  In its lackluster second-quarter report today, at the very bottom of its press release, Zynga made a very important strategic announcement, saying that it would not pursue real-money gaming in the U.S.

Samsung posts record $8.5B profit as mobile business shrinks  —  Operating profit jumps 47 percent over a year ago, but profit from the South Korean electronics giant's mobile division declined 3.5 percent from the previous quarter.  —  Samsung lauded sales of its Galaxy S4 in the second quarter.

IDC: Apple, Samsung lose smartphone market share as Lenovo and others see greater growth  —  Apple and Samsung have both reported their financials for Q2 2013 so, as is customary, analyst firms are now putting out their estimates for the quarter.  IDC is out of the blocks …

Laurene Powell Jobs backs ambitious media site  —  Ozy Media will create content for the so-called change generation.  —  FORTUNE — Laurene Powell Jobs, the intensely private widow of Steve Jobs, has teamed up with other Silicon Valley luminaries to back an ambitious new journalism site dubbed Ozy Media.

SolidFire Raises $31 Million, Says Its SSD is Now Cheaper Than Disk  —  SolidFire is on, er, fire this month.  It had a major customer win with Colt and now it tops the month off announcing that it has raised an additional $31 million in funding.  The company also unveiled the SF9010 a huge …

Expedia admits that TripAdvisor and Booking.com are hurting it hard  —  CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was somewhat on the defensive today in answering investor questions on a call for second quarter 2013 for Expedia, the world's largest online travel agency.  —  The company saw a broad negative impact …

The Most Powerful DJ App For Everyone Arrives With djay 2 [Review]  —  djay 2 by Algoriddim Category: Music Works With: iPhone, iPad Price: $1.99 (iPhone), $9.99 (iPad) DJing used to be something only the pros did.  Hardware was (and still can be) incredibly expensive, and the barrier to entry was set high.

3D printing at home could have health risks, says study  —  While industrial 3D printers often use ventilation shafts and filters to evacuate airborne particles, commercially available printers are often set up in environments with little or no thought about the emissions they might be kicking out.

Handwriting Feature Added to Google Translate Homepage  —  Google today rolled out its Google Translate handwriting feature for the Web, allowing users to draw the phrases or words they need translated when a keyboard can't do the trick.  —  Handwriting has been an option …

Apple spent $16 Billion on Apple Shares Last Quarter … Apple's share buyback program is proving to be quite a bit larger than originally conceived.  —  Though its original plan called for the repurchase of 10 million shares in its third fiscal quarter of 2013, Apple instead bought up 36 million shares.

Sky's Now TV box is a £9.99 Roku clone that streams iPlayer and more  —  BSkyB started investing in Roku last year and it's leveraged that involvement to develop this new Now TV set-top box.  Going on sale today for just £9.99 (including shipping), it brings a rebranded Roku 2 XS …

Big Blue Unleashes Big Data Security Intelligence  —  IBM has announced a new solution today designed to help organizations identify security vulnerabilities across a network in real-time, giving security officers up-to-date visibility to sort and prioritize which vulnerabilities to immediately fix that pose the greatest risk to data.