Concerns over the U.S. Senate’s Immigration Reform Bill raised by technology groups seem to have been addressed. The top item on most technology companies’ immigration wish list is to allow more highly skilled workers into the country, and, according to the outline, the merit visa does just that. The bill also proposes an increase in the number of green cards offered. This bill has the potential to be the most dramatic overhaul to U.S. immigration law in more than a quarter-century, is a step in the right direction.

Former Apple manager, Richard Williamson, and several managers, designers and software engineers were just hired by Mark Zuckerberg and company.  Facebook has even been hiring employees that extend beyond product creation, including Apple’s former Director of Marketing.  Whatever Facebook plans to do with all these Apple additions is still somewhat in the air (Probably cellphones), but one thing’s for sure, Zuckerberg’s got his eye on the right places for talented employees.

Google’s “Windows killer,” Chromebook, takes up less than 1% of web traffic. Chromebooks have been out for nearly two years, and they topped Amazon’s best-selling list for laptops last Winter. With such a poor showing after two years, it should be interesting to see how Google reacts to these numbers.  A growing lineup of Google’s Windows Killers is likely to increase Chrome OS usage in the coming months.

The parent company of Apple device maker Foxconn, is the latest company to sign up for Microsoft’s Android licensing program. Analysts suspect that the Redmond based technology company generates more revenue from handsets with Google’s Android OS, than it does from sales of Windows Phones. The list of companies that have signed up to pay Microsoft for the right to manufacture Android devices includes Samsung, LG, HTC, Acer, and Barnes and Noble.

Windows 8 touch devices will be joining Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7 in the lucrative two-hundred dollar tablet sector. Executives at Intel are predicting the price drop of Windows 8 tablets, due to advances in processor chips. Intel’s upcoming quad-core “Bay Trail” chip is expected to get the affordable line of Atom chips closer to mainstream Intel chip performance. The Bay Trail chip is expected in products for the holiday season.

Yahoo reported their first quarter performance showed an overperformance of roughly $30 million.  On top of that, the company noted their yearly income is up, rising nearly twenty-million in the past quarter.  Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer has been shifting their business model from the desktop to mobile devices, but this change in strategy has come at a cost. Yahoo’s cash on hand has dropped from over two and a half billion to almost less than one billion.

Twitter is moving closer to it’s goal of becoming your web TV source by incorporating ads on hosted videos. They want to make it so that when content owners put short video on Twitter, a sponsor would pay to promote the content. Then Twitter and the content owner share the revenue. This slow roll out of Twitter’s new monetization scheme will be closely followed as they strive towards becoming your primary source for video.

Time Warner Cable is adding live out-of-home programming to its TWC TV app, which will allow customers to watch TV shows from their Apple devices.  11 live national news, sports and entertainment channels will be available This marks part of a cable-industry shift toward a concept known as “TV Everywhere,” where subscribers can watch television in any location with a wireless connection.

After a delay yesterday, Funny Or Die’s Steve Jobs movie “iSteve” has been released online. The movie stars Justin Long as Steve Jobs and Lost’s Jorge Garcia as Steve Wozniak. The film is the longest video produced by Funny Or Die, with a run-time of nearly 80 minutes. The script for the film was written in just three days and filmed in only five. The filmmakers have joked that the film may not be the best Steve Jobs movie, but that it will be the first!  Other filmmakers are rushing to debut their own films to commemorate the lost icon.  A film titled “Jobs”, starring Ashton Kutcher, is set to debut this year and Sony Pictures is making an Aaron Sorkin-written film based on the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.

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