Drew Rafferty

Looking back on his first year at the helm of the network monitoring company, Boundary CEO Gary Read (pictured) sees progress by all sorts of metrics, but still has his eye on the future. Whereas application-performance-management providers such as Ap... - Drew Rafferty

Ever had the urge to go out to dinner at a restaurant but couldn’t find anyone to dine with? Social dining startup Grubwithus might just have an app for you. Over the weekend it launched GrubTonight, an iPhone app that allows strangers in the same c... - Drew Rafferty

VMware’s future is all about hybrid cloud, software-defined data center and end-user computing, and not so much about other things in its portfolio which will be “de-emphasized” this coming year, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger told analysts on the com... - Drew Rafferty

The company that coined the term AirCard will make AirCards no more. Sierra Wireless is selling its 3G/4G modem business to NetGear, which take over the manufacture of its line of mobile hotspots, wireless dongles and data cards. NetGear will pay $138... - Drew Rafferty

Summary: Twitter has acquired Crashlytics, a company that works to improve mobile app performance and reduce bugs and crashes among other popular startups. The two companies announced Monday that the Cambridge-baseds startup will be joining up with Twi... - Drew Rafferty

When it comes to the future of the web, there are a few incubator-style seed investors that are worth paying attention to, and New York-based Betaworks is likely at or near the top of that list — founder and CEO John Borthwick has been an early prop... - Drew Rafferty

While Lucasfilm originally planned to bring Star Wars Episode II and III back to theaters in 3D this fall, it's just announced that will not happen. In a statement posted on the official site, it says "we will now focus 100 percent of our efforts on ... - Drew Rafferty

German music rights group GEMA has filed a lawsuit against YouTube, alleging that the video site is misleading users about the details of an ongoing licensing dispute between the two parties. The lawsuit is the latest escalation in that dispute, which... - Drew Rafferty

West Virginia Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller introduced the Violent Content Research Act of 2013 on Thursday as part of President Barack Obama’s legislative push to combat gun violence. Will the NAS study find something previous studies into the ... - Drew Rafferty

Innovation could utterly transform the way meat is created and consumed in the world, making it more efficient and removing some of the problems like greenhouse emissions. While I didn’t get a chance to attend The Intersection conference at the Goog... - Drew Rafferty

Marissa Mayer continues to make her mark at Yahoo. The company today reported revenue of $1.3 billion for the fourth quarter, a two percent increase over the same period last year and the first revenue growth in four years. Revenue for the full year c... - Drew Rafferty

Facebook's got a fresh update for its main iOS app, and version 5.4 has some pleasant additions coming your way. The social network is throwing in the ability to send voice messages (which has been available on Android for a little over a week) and s... - Drew Rafferty

The season premier of Britain’s popular Top Gear series just debuted and is proving to be quite the spectacle with some record-breaking events already taking place. Warning: The following contains spoilers for the upcoming season premiere of Top Ge... - Drew Rafferty

Oh man, Vine is fun. It is already apparent that with creativity and planning you can produce something approaching an epic experience in a 6-second video. Vine is a perfect enhancement of Twitter's casual "what's happening now" social base. With sto... - Drew Rafferty

Localytics has released a report detailing the market share of Android tablets in the United States,and Amazon’s Kindle Fire is enjoying an impressive lead. Localytics, an analytics firm that specializes on the mobile market and its trends, has rel... - Drew Rafferty

The year was 1999 when Research In Motion first unveiled its initial BlackBerry email pager, the beginning of a strong product brand that continues to this day. In that time, the ubiquitous BlackBerry has grown beyond a simple email machine to capabl... - Drew Rafferty

Details are emerging about the highly anticipated game franchise called Destiny from Bungie – creators of Halo. News leaked out earlier this week about the new game and Bungie posted on their company blog the following. “We weren’t quite ready, but we will be soon, and we can’t wait to finally show you what we’ve [...] - Drew Rafferty

The new Twist app will not necessarily help you get to a destination on time (that part is up to you), but if you are on island time, as they say, and will be arriving late, at least your pre-determined contacts will be notified. The app’s playful motto is “It’s about time!” And indeed it is. The Mobile Malaise You love your smartphone — of course you do. But don’t... - Drew Rafferty

The Out of Print Kickstarter campaign has a little more than a week to go, and the company’s aim is to “put the ‘book’ back into eBooks.” The eBook Trend Like it or not, eBooks are here to stay. Although the numbers are difficult to pinpoint, there is no question that eBook sales are on the rise. And by all accounts, they will continue to do so. For the younger generation,... - Drew Rafferty

There are some great places on the Web to get a free education, like the Khan Academy, MIT’s Open CourseWare, Skillshare, Goodwill’s LearnFree, and of course, iTunes U. And to learn coding from the ground up, there is Codecademy. e-Learning The Web has for a long time been a great source of free information, but until recently, there have not been many places that offered structured, well-organized learning materials and... - Drew Rafferty

Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich helped passed a law yesterday that makes warning labels on cellphones mandatory and also designates the creation of a national research program to study how cellphone radiation is linked to human health. H.R. 6358, or the Cell Phone Right to Know Act, would also require the Environmental Protection Agency to update the standards for specific absorption rate (SAR), which is the amount of radio frequency energy... - Drew Rafferty

Opower has partnered with Facebook and the NRDC to develop a social energy application to help consumers compare their energy usage with friends and against national averages. In a spirit of “openness and transparency,” Facebook this week also set a corporate example by making public the carbon footprint of their data centers. Opower Opower works with 70 utility partners and 10 million homes across the United States, and the idea is... - Drew Rafferty

Palo Alto, California–based Corona Labs is a venture-based startup that is developing powerful cross-platform solutions for mobile developers. The Problem As the world goes mobile, developers must increasingly deal with the complexities of designing products that can function across multiple platforms. Indeed, if you are an app developer, or thinking about becoming one, of the biggest challenges you will face is device fragmentation. OpenSignalMaps, developers of the app by the... - Drew Rafferty

Microsoft has unveiled the new Hotmail, and wouldn’t you know it, it is a thing of beauty. Old Hotmail If you are like me, you likely have a Hotmail account you use as a default for your all Web surfing and signups — not your account of choice, but the one you send into the trenches, the fodder. In other words, you know it is quite possible that account may... - Drew Rafferty

It has been almost a week since Apple’s latest OS X update, Mountain Lion, was released, and though it has already seen over 3 million downloads, there are some mixed reviews, the usual backlash, and some plain misinformation. That is why we decided to give you a brief (very brief) lowdown of Mountain Lion OS X. Mountain Lion Mountain Lion represents the ninth major release of Apple’s OS X operating... - Drew Rafferty

Having to build your own app may seem like a bit of a chore, but Mobile Roadie offers some easy solutions to make the process relatively painless. “Should I go mobile?” The question is not should but when. Mobile use is on the rise. The Internet analytics firm comScore reports that smartphones have now captured 42 percent of the market in the United States and 44 percent of EU5 (comprised... - Drew Rafferty

GM’s recent partnership with car-sharing startup RelayRides is both a sign of the times and perhaps a glimpse into the future. Car-Sharing Apps Car-sharing apps like Getaround, Wheelz, and Zipcar have started to pop up all over the North America. They all offer similar services, with some key differences in terms of how cars are exchanged and who the service is targeting. For example, Getaround operates out of the Bay... - Drew Rafferty

The Dutch company Plant-e is developing an electrochemical system that harnesses the energy produced by plants through the process of photosynthesis. In a time when energy and environmental concerns are at the forefront (or should be), companies like Plant-e provide viable solutions for sustainable living. The Power of Plants Plants are natural power ‘generators’. Through photosynthesis, a plant harnesses the light energy from the sun and converts it to chemical... - Drew Rafferty

Nest is an intelligent thermostat that never stops learning. Not only will it help you save money on your energy bills, but it will also help you save the environment (and it will pay for itself in less than two years). Turning Down the Knob Approximately 10 percent of all energy in the United States is controlled by thermostats, which is equivalent to 1.7 billion dollars of oil per year,... - Drew Rafferty