Electronics, Gadgets | featured news

Two iPads, two handheld radios, and two laptops were stolen from Romney aides in San Diego on Friday, 10News reports. The two aides left their rented SUV in a mall parking garage while they got dinner and returned to find their devices — which contained detailed information about the Romney campaign — stolen.

Five years ago, South Korea mapped out a plan to transform its education system into the world’s most cutting-edge. The country would turn itself into a “knowledge powerhouse,” one government report declared, breeding students “equipped for the future.” These students would have little use for the bulky textbooks familiar to their parents. Their textbooks would be digital, accessible on any screen of their choosing. Their backpacks would be much lighter.

HTC’s Thunderbolt, Verizon’s first 4G LTE enabled smartphone, shipped one year ago this month. That’s pretty insane when you think about it. The Thunderbolt was laughably immature, had a battery life of about 40 minutes, and here we are, one year later, and both AT&T and Verizon have a wide portfolio of Android smartphones that can use 4G LTE in most parts of the country while also being able to last for at least an entire work day. According to the bean counters at Strategy Analytics, 6.8 million 4G LTE handsets were sold worldwide during calendar year 2011. Know how many they think will be sold this year? An astonishing 67 million.

Here are six easy, inexpensive DIY solutions for creating apps for iOS and Android devices.

Apple Inc. says it has sold 3 million iPads since Friday when it released the latest version of the tablet computer.

Apple, one of the world’s richest companies, will reward investors with a dividend- and share-purchase program totaling $45 billion over three years, the company said Monday. In a departure from the direction of late chief executive Steve Jobs, Apple will significantly draw from its massive $98 billion cash war chest to initiate a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime in the fiscal quarter beginning July 1.

Mobile technology appears to be increasing the public appetite for news but it's far from clear whether the news industry will profit from that, a study issued Monday concluded.

Apple has finally decided what to do with its cash hoard of nearly $100 billion. The company issued an unusual media alert on Sunday evening saying it planned to announce on Monday morning the long-awaited outcome to a discussion about what to do with its cash balance.

Mike Daisey, the off-Broadway performer who admitted that he made up parts of his one-man show about Apple products being made in Chinese sweatshops, has cut questionable sections from the monologue and added a prologue explaining the controversy.

Ranked No. 16 in the iTunes App Store's "Top Grossing Apps" is an app called "Girl With Clothes." Released March 13, we have some inkling about why this app is such an overnight success. It's probably the monster $160 price tag -- though the vague promise of "intense sexual content" probably doesn't hurt, either.