Expedia Inc. has acquired its travel-focused rival Orbitz Worldwide Inc. for $1.6 billion. The deal will see see Expedia acquire Orbitz at $12.00 per share in cash, a premium of approximately 29 percent over the average share price for the five days up to and including February 11th.  The Boards of Directors of both companies have approved the ...

A bill before the Utah State Legislature could eventually see Bitcoin being available for use in everyday transactions with the State Government. H.C.R. 6: Concurrent Resolution on Payment Options for State Services was drafted by Utah State Rep. Mark K. Roberts (R) and proposes that the “Legislature and the Governor proposes the creation of the Council on Payment ...

Can you claim copyright over the audio of a cat purring? EMI Music Publishing Ltd. and music rights management company PRS for Music Ltd. seem to think so, with both claiming via YouTube’s Content-ID system that they own the rights for a one hour long video that features nothing more than a 12 second repeating audio clip of ...

Twitter Inc. has acquired social media talent agency The Niche Project Inc. (Niche). Although the price was not officially disclosed, reports suggest that it was $30 million with possible earn-outs and employment contracts taking the price closer to $60 million. New York and San Francisco-based Niche is self described as a “leading network for social network ...

Microsoft has officially confirmed that it has acquired Sunrise Atelier Inc., the maker of the Sunrise calendar application. The acquisition price was not disclosed, but was rumored to be around $100 million when news of the acquisition first surfaced February 5th. Sunrise offers a suite of calendar products for both mobile and desktop users that connects with and ...

Twitter Inc. Chief Financial Officer Anthony Noto had his Twitter account hacked Tuesday, possibly highlighting once again the microblogging platforms ongoing security issues. Noto’s account, established in 2009, starting tweeting spam messages at mid-morning PST, with targeted messages at users that included “this pic of you is funny!” and “I can’t stop laughing!” along with ...

The United States Government is setting up a dedicated cybersecurity agency following a year of high profile hacking attacks in 2014. The new agency, to be called the Cyber Threat and Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC) falls under the control of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and will centrally coordinate analysis of cyber ...

Google has extended its Knowledge Graph into health with the search giant to offer curated medical answers in health search results. The feature works like similar results from Google’s Knowledge Graph in where you ask a question and get an immediate result at the top of the search results, versus links to sites where you can ...

Kenyan Bitcoin exchange BitPesa has raised a $1.1 million in a second round of funding that was led by Pantera Capital and included Crypto Currency Partners, Stephens Investment Management, Bitcoin Opportunity Corp., and Future/Perfect Ventures. As part of the deal Dan Morehead of Pantera Capital will take a seat on Bitpesa’s Board of Directors. Founded in ...

Popular image sharing service Imgur has celebrated its sixth birthday with an announcement that they will be dumping their Pro service, and making the previously paid features available for all users for free. In a blog post the company said they’ve “decided that you’re the one who deserves a gift [hence] we’re phasing out Pro subscriptions…and ...