(Reuters) - Billionaire investor Carl Icahn promised Dell Inc shareholders that the company would buy back up to $16 billion of stock if they join his campaign to stop the computer maker from going private. Time is running out for Icahn. Next month, the company's shareholders will vote on whether to accept a $24.4 billion bid from the company's founder, Michael Dell, and private equity firm Silver Lake, and so far shareholders' reaction to two of Icahn's proposals has been mixed. Icahn has said repeatedly that Michael Dell's bid undervalues the company. ...

Google has filed a motion to end the gag order on the secret FISA court requests that it gets from the government as a part of the National Security Agencies surveillance, which could work considering how recent efforts to reveal the secrets of the secret court have gone. Just the other day, right after we all learned about PRISM, the court granted the Electronic Frontier Foundation a legal victory in its battle to uncover some of the secret courts secrets. Of course, that was just one tiny step in the path toward more transparency. ...

By Diane Bartz WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mississippi's attorney general said on Tuesday he would subpoena documents from Google Inc as part of a probe into allegations the Web search company facilitated the sale of drugs without a prescription and other illegal products. Google responded in a blog post that it had been vigorous in working to limit drug advertisements to legitimate companies that comply with the law and to combat what it called "rogue online pharmacies. ...

A new report suggests that LG is preparing a new smartphone that will support “always-on voice commands.” According to Gotta Be Mobile, the company will launch an Android smartphone in 2014 that will allow users to issue voice commands without being required to touch the screen first. The feature, which is built-in to Qualcomm’s quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, can be activated by saying “hello” to the device. The chip is even capable of learning a device owners voice to prevent others from using the feature. Current voice features such as Siri require users to press a button or enter a specific application before issuing a command.  Despite the “always-on” requirement, Qualcomm has said that the feature won’t impact a device’s

PARIS (Reuters) - Telecommunications gear maker Alcatel-Lucent aims to cut a billion euros in costs and focus on the IP router business and mobile broadband as part of a strategic revamp to be unveiled by its new chief executive on Wednesday, French daily Les Echos reported. The paper said without citing its sources that the impact on jobs would be minimal while the cost cuts would come from general and commercial expenses. It also said that Alcatel-Lucent would aim to divest 1 billion euros ($1.34 billion) of assets in the next three years, without saying which ones. ...

T-Mobile on Tuesday announced the upcoming availability of Sony’s flagship Xperia Z smartphone. The handset is equipped with 5-inch full HD 1080p display, a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and a 13-megapixel rear camera. The Xperia Z is also water and dust resistant, and includes 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. The smartphone will be available from T-Mobile “in the coming weeks.” The carrier’s press release follows below. Xperia® Z from Sony to Make a Splash at T-Mobile this Summer T-Mobile is the only U.S. mobile provider of Sony’s flagship water-resistant smartphone BELLEVUE, WA — June 18, 2013 — Continuing to offer customers a wide selection

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Google Inc asked the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to allow it to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests it receives separately from criminal requests, on First Amendment grounds. In its filing, Google requested the court to allow it to publish the aggregate number of national security requests it receives, including disclosures under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), claiming it as part of its First Amendment right to free speech. ...

By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The online grocery start-up Webvan may have been the single most expensive flame-out of the dot-com era, blowing through more than $800 million in venture capital and IPO proceeds in just over three years before shutting its doors in 2001. Twelve years later, though, Webvan is rising from the dead - in the form of an online grocery business called AmazonFresh. Four key Amazon. ...

By Sruthi Ramakrishnan (Reuters) - Adobe Systems Inc, which makes the Photoshop and Acrobat software, reported a higher-than-expected adjusted quarterly profit as demand rose for Creative Cloud, the subscription-based version of its flagship software package. Shares of the company rose 4.4 percent in after-market trading. They closed at $43.36 on the Nasdaq on Tuesday. Adobe has been shifting to web-based subscription service Creative Cloud from a licensing model since last year. ...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with Samsung president Shin Jong Kyun this week to discuss a potential partnership, Bloomberg reported. Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, is interested in working with Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone vendor, to help boost its mobile advertising sales. The two companies are also said to have spoken about investing in technology startups. Facebook previously partnered with HTC on the HTC First, a smartphone that was skinned with Facebook’s custom Home software. Facebook Home was largely panned by critics and the HTC First flopped on the market. BGR exclusively reported last month that AT&T was preparing to discontinue the HTC First after only a month on the market.

NEW YORK (AP) — It's a message busy New Yorkers hate to get: the low-battery message on your cellphone when there's no charger in sight.

Industry watchers began talking about an imminent slow-down in the high-end smartphone market back in 2011, but 2012 was still a huge year for pricy smartphones with cutting-edge specs. According to market research firm Berg Insight, sales of high-end smartphones from the likes of Apple and Samsung with retail prices above €400 before subsidies grew to 250 million units in 2012, up from 150 million in 2011. Of those, Berg says 40 million smartphones were flagship phones powered by cutting-edge quad-core processors. While specs will continue to get more impressive in the coming years at the top of the smartphone food chain, the firm believes we’ve already found the sweet spot: The majority of the 1.5 billion smartphones expected to be

By Jennifer Saba (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Tuesday it now has 1 million active advertisers globally who used the platform in the last 28 days, a milestone for the company that is seeking to revive its revenue growth. A vast majority of those advertisers are small business owners who have flocked to the world's No. 1 social network. Facebook executives are hoping to net even more small advertisers since 16 million local businesses, ranging from jewelry sellers to clothing stores, set up free pages on the network. ...

While you may be tempted to install the recently released beta version of iOS 7, you may also be worried that it could brick your iPhone. Never fear: 9to5Mac points us to a new demonstration program from consumer electronics website Recombu that lets you preview iOS 7 without any risk of wrecking your device. How does it do this, you ask? By hosting the entire thing inside your web browser. While this obviously doesn’t give you the exact same experience as actually using iOS 7, it does give you a nice look at the new user interface and lets you see how the redesigned core iOS apps look. 9to5Mac notes that “if you’re using Firefox or Chrome, you can also

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Chinese network equipment and cellphone maker Huawei Technologies Co said it "has no plans to acquire Nokia", responding to a Financial Times report that it would consider buying the Finish phone maker. The denial came from Huawei's vice president for external affairs, Bill Plummer. The story on the FT website on Tuesday had quoted the head of Huawei's consumer business, Richard Yu, as saying: "We are considering these sorts of acquisitions; maybe the combination has some synergies but depends on the willingness of Nokia. We are open-minded." Nokia declined comment. ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A woman who worked as a stunt double for Angelina Jolie sued Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in Los Angeles on Tuesday, claiming she's a victim of a phone hacking scheme to obtain information about the actress.

Chat with Yahoo! News technology editors and the co-founders of Whistle, the new wearable health gadget for pets.

The video game industry continued its downward spiral in May. According to research firm NPD Group, retail sales of hardware, software and gaming accessories in the U.S. fell 25% to $386.3 million last month, their lowest level thus far in 2013. Hardware and software sales fell 31% year-over-year to $96 million and $175.1 million, respectively, while sales of gaming accessories declined 6% year-over-year to $115.3 million. Including sales of used games, rental and digitally delivered content, micro-transactions, subscriptions, mobile apps and social network games, consumers spent a total of $787 million on video games in May. Nintendo’s 3DS was the top-selling platform across hardware and portables, edging out the Xbox 360. The 3DS console had its best year-over-year performance with software sales

Don’t mess with Texans’ email. Ars Technica reports that Texas has become the first state in the United States that requires law enforcement officials to get search warrants before snooping on citizens’ emails. The law only applies to state and local law enforcement officials, however, and won’t apply to federal officials who can still access emails without a warrant once they’ve been opened or if they’ve sat unopened in a user’s inbox for more than 180 days. The new Texas law comes at a time when electronic privacy has become a hot-button issue in the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s vast data collection program.

Don’t mess with Texans’ email. Ars Technica reports that Texas has become the first state in the United States that requires law enforcement officials to get search warrants before snooping on citizens’ emails. The law only applies to state and local law enforcement officials, however, and won’t apply to federal officials who can still access emails without a warrant once they’ve been opened or if they’ve sat unopened in a user’s inbox for more than 180 days. The new Texas law comes at a time when electronic privacy has become a hot-button issue in the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s vast data collection program.