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Heading toward Black Friday, Microsoft appears to have a hit on its hands in the important home-gaming sector with the Kinect motion-sensing controller. On Monday the software giant boasted it has sold one million of the devices, which work with its Xbox 360 video-game console, in just 10 days on the market. Microsoft now projects that five million Kinects will be sold by year's end, up from an earlier projection of three million. Ha ...

Black Duck Software announced Tuesday it is acquiring the assets of application development toolmaker SpikeSource. Terms were not disclosed. SpikeSource's technology includes SpikeInsight, a cloud service that developers can use to check code for compliance, security and dependency issues. The company also runs the SpikeForge site, which hosts 17 open-source projects, and related forums. Black Duck plans to use SpikeSource's products as ...

The newly released version of the Mathematica scientific number-crunching software allows users to enter calculations in plain English, the company announced Monday. With Wolfram Research's Mathematica 8, now available, the user can simply type in the desired calculation and the software will interpret the input and, presumably, return the correct answer. The company calls this feature "linguistically controlled computing." "T ...

You're buying groceries and, when it's time to pay, you tap your cell phone on a symbol shown on the cash register. That's a vision of e-commerce that Google hopes to advance in its next version of the Android operating system. On Monday, CEO Eric Schmidt demonstrated this functionality to a Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco. He showed an unnamed new cell phone running a version of the upcoming Android 2.3, code-named Gingerbread. Schmidt ...

Apple's iOS, the operating system for its iPhone, iPod and iPad devices, is one of the fastest-growing Internet technologies ever, according to leading Web analyst Mary Meeker, outpacing the initial growth of Netscape, AOL, and Japan's NTT DoCoMo. In a presentation at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Meeker laid out some staggering statistics on Internet usage, including the tidbit about iOS. Since the iPhone's initial launch in 2007, iOS devi ...

Trend Micro has released a tool that administrators can use to scan dozens of computers at a time for Stuxnet, the malicious software program that has raised widespread concern for its targeting of industrial systems made by Siemens. Trend Micro's security products will detect Stuxnet, but the company decided to build a tool that would let other people not using its products detect the malware, said David Sancho, a senior researcher with Trend Micro. Adminis ...

Former Digg chief executive Jay Adelson has taken the helm at SimpleGeo, a startup that provides software for location-based services. When Adelson assumes the role of CEO, SimpleGeo co-founder and current CEO Matt Galligan will become the company's chief strategy officer. "I approached our board and discussed the idea of moving me into a new role that would allow me to focus on what I'm best at – company strategy, evangelism, ...

Facebook's major messaging announcement may not have been the direct frontal assault on Gmail that many had anticipated, but that doesn't mean that Google doesn't have reason to be concerned. The new e-mail capabilities, combined with the integration of Microsoft Office Web Apps make Facebook a more complete business tool and a more direct competitor for Google Apps. Mark Zuckerberg was up front about the fact that the new Facebook e-mail will ...

Online backup leader Mozy today announced version 2.0 of the service's Mac software. The client works with both MozyPro for business backup or MozyHome for personal use. In addition to a new native Mac interface, the new client speeds up both file scanning and upload times through bandwidth optimization. It also shows users more information about what it's doing. "This release underscores our commitment to the Mac community," sai ...

EMC Corp. has reached a deal to buy Isilon Systems Inc. for $2.25 billion in cash, the latest in a recent spree of acquisitions in the tech sector as companies look to broaden the types of software and equipment they offer big corporate customers and government agencies. Here is a look at some of the acquisitions over the past several months. July 1: Hewlett-Packard Co. completes its $1.2 billion acquisition of smart phone maker Palm Inc. ...