If you've been waiting for government regulators to step in and do something about apps that collect and transmit your data without telling you, I have some good news for you: The State of California, along with a number of major tech companies, teamed up Wednesday to have come together to strengthen privacy protections in smartphone and tablet apps. more..

We've seen accident after accident of people texting, gaming, or web surfing while walking. The U.S. government is now considering banning all automobile phone calls, including hands free. more..

Asus may finally show off its Padfone at Mobile World Congress next week, after teasing the modular device since last May. more..

Getting a new computer is a bit like moving into a new house: At first, there's plenty of room for everything. Then, a few months or years go by, and you find yourself surrounded by random clutter, wondering where all that free space went. I may not have much advice on de-cluttering your house, but if it's your hard drive space you're looking to reclaim, TreeSize Free can provide you with the answers you need. more..

Microsoft's desktop OS has let users install additional display languages since Windows 2000. This made Windows computers accessible to billions of people, but installing and switching languages on a PC wasn’t easy. Businesses generally assigned only one language to a computer, limiting its use to those who understood that selected language. more..

PCWorld's Damon Brown says yesterday's Office for iPad tease by The Daily is probably just hype, and he's in good company -- Microsoft itself said in a recent New York Times story that the purported screenshot was bunkum. But The Daily's tech editor, Peter Ha, has fired back on Twitter, claiming the screenshot's the real deal. more..

Earlier this month Mozilla laid out a roadmap for its Firefox browser over the course of 2012, and on Wednesday it made good on one key piece of those plans. more..

Reader Dan subscribes to various e-mail lists, and each e-mail he receives contains multiple Web links. Here's his dilemma: more..

Apps that enable companies to reward customers with freebies or discounts for purchases or social-media sharing are relatively new, but already a hit with businesses. Some merchants claim that they offer better ROI than credit card loyalty programs or daily deal sites such as Groupon. more..

Tens of thousands of years ago, a prehistoric squirrel buried a plant for the winter. For whatever reason, it never made it back to dig the plant up, and a team of Russian scientists discovered it a few years ago, according to the New York Times. Germinating the ancient plant did not garner success, so the scientists managed to extract cells from the plant's placenta and grow them into an existing breed. more..