Whenever a trendy app comes along, there are people who ask, “What is the point of this?” If millions of people are using something, there has to be a reason. In our What Is the Point of… series, we’ll explain it to you.

This week, we’re asking, What is the point of StumbleUpon?

Did you know StumbleUpon was 10 years old? [...]

You may have noticed a change in how Google Analytics is recording and reporting your traffic from Google in the last month; there’s a new keyword in town, and it’s called (not provided). This “keyword” represents any and all keywords used by website readers that found your website through a Google search query while logged [...]

Guess how much of LinkedIn’s new iPad app is actually mobile web and not native.

Go ahead — guess. We’ve had a lot of fun asking people to guess this over the past couple days. They’ll start with 40 percent and edge up to 70 percent, but no one comes close to the real figure: 95 percent.

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As an IT community we are still stuck in the past relative to the strategic nature of cloud. Many of us are looking at the adoption of cloud as just another technology, and are leaving the decisions on how to adopt, own, and manage the cloud up to engineers. But acquiring a cloud management platform [...]

LinkedIn just announced plans to buy SlideShare for $119 million.

It will be 45% cash and 55% stock.

SlideShare allows users to upload documents to the web and have them embedded all over the place.

How does it fit at LinkedIn? Here’s what CEO Jeff Weiner said in a press release explaining the move:

“Presentations are one of the main ways [...]

Sometime in August, Facebook will top 1 billion users. Every few months, Twitter floats a press release that it has added another 100 million users. In quarterly earnings calls during the past year, Google has had to sheepishly admit that it its Google+ social network isn’t growing as fast as hoped. Pinterest is the hottest new social network, in large part because it [...]

Bloomberg reports that Google is negotiating with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the size of a fine for violating the privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser. The fine could amount to $10 million or more. By comparison, Google’s latest FCC fine for public Wi-Fi data collection was a mere $25,000. What did Google do wrong?

Apple seems able to do no wrong. In its most recent fiscal quarter, the giant consumer electronics maker posted a 59% increase in sales and a whopping 94% rise in profits. Such stellar numbers disguise the possibility that Apple’s near future may not be so prosperous, particularly if it falters in China.

Samsung’s flagship Android phone for 2012 has finally been revealed today, after months of speculation, expectation, and anticipation. Check out our very first hands-on photos and video with the Galaxy S III below.

Make Your Own Cloud

For years I’ve said that the next great version of Windows will be a deliverer of cloud service, and I’ve had folks from Microsoft tell me, “Oh sure, that’s what we’re doing, look at how we sync your photos with SkyDrive!” Indeed, syncing was pretty cool from a 2009 perspective, but Dropbox and [...]