Google has updated its Play Books e-reader apps for iOS and Android to include support for EPUB and PDF files from outside the Play Store. The new feature has been enabled as part of Google's strategy to unite its cloud services, allowing users to either upload their ebooks via its website, or import them from their Google Drive storage. Google says that users will be able to store up to 1,000 files for free, as long as they are under 50MB.

Once uploaded, books will be…

A few months ago I reviewed an external hard drive enclosure I was pretty fond of — the Mercury On-The-Go-Pro. Today I want to tell you about one I like even more: The Oyen Digital MiniPro enclosure. The two enclosures actually are very similar in functionality. They both allow you to take your old laptop hard drives, insert them into the enclosure, and turn those old drives into useful spare external drives. They also both offer one USB 3.0 port and two Firewire 800…

A congressional panel has found that Apple avoided billions in taxes, the New York Times reports, thanks to an intricate network of subsidiaries throughout the globe. The structure of some of these sub-companies in certain countries made them exempt from paying or filing taxes or record-keeping laws.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that Apple kept US$74 billion from the IRS between 2009 and 2012. Apple is not charged, however, with breaking any laws.

Apple has published the full text of its upcoming testimony to the Senate congressional…

A photograph of an internal Best Buy retail calendar screenshot may give us the best clue yet as to the launch day of the iPhone 5. The event in question is an Apple fixture installation and is scheduled for October 21st. The date in question is a Friday which would line up with other iPhone release days.

This not a normal fixture installation either according to a tipster who talked to This is my next. The request for a manager to be on hand at 6am is not the…

View Magazine is a nicely put-together coffee table ebook for the iPad or iPhone that contains photos that are interesting and certainly not run-of-the-mill sunsets and flowers. A variety of photographers have combined to submit some of their favorite work, and they offer some commentary about the images.

There are shots of urban landscapes, people, and nature images, but none are what I would call the standard 'pretty pictures'. That said, the images are striking, and the thoughts behind the images are often illuminating. You won't like everything…

Apple has been making moves over the last year to expand its market share in India after its net profit for their India devision increased 431 percent year to year. Tripling the amount of franchise stores in the country? Check. Trade-in incentives? Check. Now the incentives are continuing with expansions for college students and American Express customers.

The first incentive is designed to draw students into picking up an iPhone. Currently non-student residents who trade-in their smartphones for an iPhone get 7,000 rupees (US$130). Students, however, get…

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Ireland has responded to criticism from Senater Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that Irish tax laws allowed Apple to avoid playing taxes on tens of billions of dollars in profits using Irish subsidiaries. So what did Ireland have to say for itself?

In a statement to RTE, Ireland's national broadcast network, Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore said:

These are not issues that arise from the Irish taxation system. They are issues that arise from the taxation systems in other jurisdictions, and that is an issue that has to be…

Those of us who use Google's Chrome browser for OS X are familiar with how Chrome web apps can be installed and launched from within the browser. Now it appears that Google is working on a way to bring those Chrome apps even closer to the heart of your Mac by creating a Chrome apps launcher for OS X.

Google engineer François Beaufort detailed the plans in a Google+ post, noting that OS X users can actually try out a beta of the Chrome OS…

Microsoft has announced a brand-new game console today, though the company would probably be disappointed to hear that I called it that. The Xbox One is really more of an entertainment center all-in-one — it's designed to connect your games, your streaming media and cable television all together in one set-top box. In some ways, it's a competitor to Apple TV. The Xbox One will also include a new Kinect camera, which will boast Siri-like voice control over all of its functions, and…