Intel, one of the most hardware-centric companies in technology, placed a massive bid to purchase McAfee on Thursday for $7.68 billion in cash. The acquisition is chipmaker’s biggest to date, and represents a big, diversifying bet that the future of computing is in software and services.

Foxconn Technology Group — the Chinese company which manufactures hardware for Apple, Dell, HP, Nokia and Sony — has been hit by a dozen suicides at its plants this year. It has begun holding rallies at all of its factories to raise moral. The theme? "Treasure Your Life, Love Your Family, Care for Each Other to Build a Wonderful Future."

If the second coming happened right now, Jesus would probably show up as an app. It seems everything these days is an app, or awaiting approval, so don't be surprised. You read it here first. What's funny is that we've had a killer app for the internet all along, no need for a second coming. It's called the web.

Two roads diverge on a tablet screen. One is the path to the native app, the other leads to the open web. Luckily, you can take both. But if you had to pick one — native app or web app — which would you choose? Your decision will make all the difference in how you approach your design, development and distribution.

As wind power gains U.S. market share the domestic manufacturing sector may benefit in tow: According to a recent report from the World Resources Institute, off-shoring wind industry manufacturing to places where labor is cheap has no significant cost benefit over domestic manufacturing, because of transport costs.

Google and Verizon made tsunami-like waves on Monday by proposing an additional paid, closed internet to complement the free, open one we have today. That's putting massive pressure on the government to do something about net neutrality, whether or not that means following the Google/Verizon proposal. Perhaps the answer could be to allow ISPs to balance traffic loads, while barring them from accepting payment for doing so.

The Google-Verizon deal has launched a thousand blog posts and stories. Here's some of the reactions from the top news sites and blogs.

In 2007, Google put $4.6 billion on the line to defend wireless openness. On Monday, in a joint statement with former nemesis Verizon, Google said those rules weren't necessary. Here's the economic truth behind the stunning reversal.

Intel agrees to play nicer with PC makers to settle an FTC lawsuit, alleging the chipmaker illegally stifled rivals. The outcome: an order to stop unfair incentives, but no fine.

Microsoft's Bing Maps now offers an OpenStreetMap data layer. Bing users can download the new feature from the App Gallery that makes the maps from the popular open source project fully searchable in the browser.