Investors had been clamoring for Research In Motion co-founders Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to relinquish their co-CEO and co-chairman roles, and the company finally announced this past Sunday that Balsillie and Lazaridis were out, replaced by new chairperson of the board Barbara Stymiest and new chief executive officer Thorsten Heins. RIM’s stock plunged more than 13% when Heins introduced himself as the company’s new CEO, due in large part to a video interview during which he essentially told the same story RIM’s former chiefs have been telling for more than a year. The new CEO has since backed away from the company’s old it’s OK, we’re OK message while speaking to the press and analysts, however, and it is no coincidence that

Nintendo users will finally soon have an online experience on par with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. At least that’s the message from…

Pleated-Jeans has posted a series of simple instructions on How To Eat Food.

In 1880, when modern global temperature records began, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were at 285 parts per million. In 2011, they are were over 390 parts per million. That has trapped a lot of extra energy on earth — see “The Radiative Forcing of the CO2 Humans Have Put in the Air Equals 1 Million [...]

On the heels of the news that AT&T delivered its best quarter ever in terms of smartphone sales, the communications company and carrier is releasing its quarterly data on the number of AT&T wi-fi connections made in Q4 and in 2011 as a whole.

AT&T sais that it tripled Wi-Fi network traffic in 2011 versus network traffic for 2010. And the network saw a 550 percent increase in monthly Wi-Fi data uploads from mobile devices on the AT&T Wi-Fi network in 2011, driven by increasing use of cloud services.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress’ Tanya Somanader noted that Apple Inc. is breaking its profit record and sitting on nearly $100 billion in cash, while its Chinese laborers toil in unsafe and even deadly conditions. Here on the other side of the Atlantic, another huge company has decided to lock out its Canadian workers in an attempt to [...]

Olery, an Amsterdam-based startup that offers reputation management and media monitoring tools for the leisure industry, has raised 750,000 euros ($1 million) to boost its international expansion and develop new products.
Founded in 2010, Olery offers …

Glowing purple at The Central Bar in Manhattan is a payphone-sized box, lined with seven small doors, that you wouldn’t recognize. Meet Ju…

Startup America’s Master Challenge showdown is now underway. This fun, friendly competition pits influential tech groups against each other, to see which one can encourage more startups to join the Startup America Partnership. The winning group gets bragging rights, of course, and will be recognized at upcoming events, like Startup America’s Anniversary and at SXSW.

Past challenges included East vs. West and Feld vs. TechStars, for example. This week’s competition, which kicked off just this morning, is between Tech Cocktail and Startup Weekend.

Maryland First Lady Katie O’Malley lashed out against opponents of same-sex marriage while speaking on Thursday at the 24th annual Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality. “[T]here were some cowards that prevented it from passing,” O’Malley said, referring to last year’s unsuccessful effort to pass a bill allowing gays and lesbians to marry. [...]

Politico’s Jonathan Allen and Manu Raju have an interesting report detailing Democrats’ frustrations over Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) decision to join hands with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and offer a bipartisan Medicare premium support plan that, while certainly not as radical as the original GOP blueprint, would likely increase costs for seniors and put the [...]

In little over a month, the “Sh*t [People] Say” video meme has gone majorly mainstream, and it already feels like every corner of the huma…

The Wii U brand is a bit underwhelming. At best it builds upon a very successive product. But at worst the name suggests its simply an add-on rather than a completely revamped system. A new report just surfaced that sources a Nintendo insider stating the company is considering renaming the next-gen Wii.

Nintendo is quickly spiraling down. The Wii U — or whatever it’s to be called — needs to be a hit. Nintendo cannot misplace another piece in Tetris.

The Washington state Senate Government Operations, Tribal Relations & Elections Committee has voted 4-3 to advance the proposed marriage equality bill. A date has not yet been scheduled for the full Senate vote, but both chambers have enough votes to pass the measure into law, and Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) is committed to signing it. Equality [...]

The New York Times recently published an article discussing the unsafe working conditions in the factories Apple employs to build its products. It’s no secret that several factories belonging to Apple’s ODM partners have harsh working conditions; there are rumors of anti-suicide pledges that Foxconn workers have to sign, and safety is obviously a concern following multiple preventable explosions at Foxconn plants. While much has reportedly been done to improve working conditions at these plants, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently assured his employees that the Cupertino-based company does care about the workers in each of those factories. Read on for more. “Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly,” Cook said in a letter

On Monday of this week, RIM’s new CEO made a statement that set off a bomb on the blogosphere, and I’m not sure he understood its repercussions at the time. “I don’t think any drastic change is needed.”

If you’ve been paying attention to RIM and its numbers, you know that what the company desperately needs is change. Sales are declining, platform market share is dwindling, and the BlackBerry brand, to a large extent, has lost the power it once had behind it. So in a recent interview with CrackBerry, Heins made sure to clarify exactly what he meant by “no drastic change is needed.”

Cliche and uncreative as it may be, Graceland is one of my all-time favorite albums, so I was intrigued by the idea of Paul Simon traveling back to South Africa, reuniting with the musicians he worked with to make the album—and perhaps most importantly, sitting down with Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid, [...]

MIAMI, Florida — As Mitt Romney spent yesterday promising to create conditions deplorable enough for undocumented immigrants that they will engage in “self-deportation,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) warned that his party’s rightward shift on state-based immigration legislation “turned off” Hispanic voters. ThinkProgress asked Bush about Alabama’s new anti-immigrant law, HB 56, which includes [...]

According to the latest report from Strategy Analytics, Apple has now overtaken Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume. Apple achieved 23.9% market share during Q4 2011, narrowly beating out Samsung’s 23.5% share.

In addition, Apple shipped 37 million units in Q4, again going neck-and-neck with Samsung and its 36.5 million units shipped during the same time.

As climate scientists come under personal, political, and even legal persecution for their research, the scientific community is starting to fight back. With the leadership of Dr. Scott Mandia, the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund has been established as a project of the non-profit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. “The Climate Science Defense Fund will [...]

MIAMI, Florida — Conservative economist Doug Holtz-Eakin, who served as John McCain’s chief economist during his 2008 presidential campaign, told ThinkProgress this morning that “things are picking up” and he expects the economy to grow at a significant clip this year and next. Holtz-Eakin projected that by the end of 2012, GDP growth above 3 [...]

Mashable founder and CEO Pete Cashmore sat down with Facebook‘s Vice President of Partnerships Dan Rose as part of Mashable’s…

In last night’s GOP debate, Newt Gingrich slammed Mitt Romney for a Romney campaign ad which accuses the former Speaker of calling Spanish “the language of the ghetto.” Romney, whose voice appears in that radio spot taking responsibility for its content, responded that he does not review his own ads before they air. Gingrich was [...]

by Zach Rybarczyk As the third-largest coal producer, Kentucky generates about 94% of its electricity from the resource. As a result, the state has some of the lowest electricity prices in the country. But that’s not the true cost of energy. According to a health impact assessment by the Kentucky Environmental Foundation that examines research [...]

On Tuesday, Facebook announced Timeline will soon be activated for all users.
On the other hand, some Mashable readers have had Timeline enabled since…

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world…

Mitt Romney 2012 tax returns reveal that the former Massachusetts governor donated more than $4 million to the Mormon Church, which is actively opposing marriage equality around the country, and gave “at least $35,000” to anti-gay groups like the Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI) and the Beckett Fund through his charitable foundation. As Rachel Maddow and [...]

Apple is once again the top smartphone vendor in the world by shipment volume according to a report released late Thursday. Market research firm Strategy Analytics noted that total fourth-quarter smartphone shipments grew 54% year-over-year in 2011 to hit 155 million units. After losing the No.1 spot to Samsung in the third quarter last year, Apple once again shipped more smartphones than any other company in the December quarter, earning it 24% of the global market. Read on for more. Apple shipped 37 million smartphones last quarter, narrowly edged Samsung out of the top spot. According to Strategy Analytics’s estimates, the South Korea-based consumer electronics giant sold 36.5 million smartphones into distribution channels during its huge fourth quarter, representing a