To the delight of publishers and advertisers alike, tablets are becoming as utilitarian as toenail clippers. First, Amazon’s Kindle Fire undercut the iPad’s price by about $300. Now, a new tablet running Google's Android 4.0 and priced at under $100 is reportedly on its way to the states. Already available in China, Ainol's Novo7 tablet has a 7-inch capacitive screen and runs on a 1GHz single-core MIPS processor, according to a press release from MIPS Technologies and chip-maker Ingenic. “For its price, the tablet also has a surprisingly vast feature list,” writes PCMag. “The Novo7 includes cameras on the front …

With Yahoo’s future less certain than even, it’s no surprise to see employees heading for the door. Yet, to hear exactly why staff are leaving, and in their own words, is especially damning. Take Greg Cohn, who just left Yahoo, where he most recently served as senior director in charge of generating revenue for new initiatives. Regarding Yahoo’s woes, Cohn tells The Wall Street Journal: "If you're not growing, if you're not giving people challenging things to work on, if you're not holding out the promise of creating some personal wealth during one of the frothiest technology markets in modern …

Mike Kerns, Yahoo’s head of social and personalization, can’t say enough good things about the integration of Facebook’s Open Graph service. "The numbers have beaten all of our expectations," Kerns tells blogger Robert Scoble. To date, over 10 million people joined Yahoo News through the service, while Yahoo has recorded a 600% increase in traffic from Facebook to Yahoo. Kerns has also seen a marked increase in users under 30-years old. “I think this could be the future of Yahoo's strategy,” writes Scoble, adding, “These numbers show that this is a strategy that Yahoo should expand on.” Three months ago, …

Mozilla and Google are reportedly renegotiating an ad-revenue sharing deal based on searches that Mozilla sends to Google. Last renewed in 2008 for three years, the deal was set to expire last month. But, it didn’t. "We can confirm that we still have an agreement with Mozilla," Google said in a statement to CNET, this week. Meanwhile, Mozilla tells CNet: “Our search relationship with Google remains positive for both of us. We are in active negotiations … We have every confidence that search partnerships will continue to be a strong and growing generator of revenue for the foreseeable future.” The …

The BBC just aired a one-hour profile on Mark Zuckerberg, in which the Facebook founder is asked whether he considers Google+ is threat?  “Yeah Google’s a great company, and I think we want to look at and learn from everything that they do,” says Zuckerberg. “But at the same time, people have shared a lot on Facebook and have already told a lot of their life story on Facebook. And we think that we have by far better tools for doing that.” Still, as TheNextWeb notes, “The question was met with a wry smile that almost dismissed the question before he’d …

There is a new digital divide in this country, and it’s got everything to do with the speed of Web connections. So argues Susan Crawford, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a former special assistant to President Obama for science, technology and innovation policy. “Increasingly, we are a country in which only the urban and suburban well-off have truly high-speed Internet access, while the rest -- the poor and the working class -- either cannot afford access or use restricted wireless access as their only connection to the Internet,” she writes in the NYT. “As …

Did Facebook buy -- or is it about to buy -- location-sharing start-up Gowalla? That’s what CNNMoney.com reported on Friday, but neither company would confirm it. Yet in a letter to investors leaked to AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, Gowalla CEO Josh Williams isn’t exactly denying the deal. “The ink on the deal is not dry, so our holding pattern is that we do not comment on rumors and speculation,” Williams explained to investors, according to a source. “I have another email penned that was ready to send [sic] you today, assuming you would get this news before the story was officially …

Quanta, the company that makes Amazon’s Kindle Fire, has so far shipped between 3 million and 4 million of the tablets, according to Chinese-language publication DigiTimes. What’s more, the paper’s sources say that Amazon continues to “increase its orders for [the] Kindle Fire and aims to see total OEM Kindle Fire shipments reach five million units by the end of December or early January.” Also of note, Wintek, a top supplier of touch panels for the Kindle Fire, recently raised its internal forecast of shipments to Amazon, while industry sources suggest to DigiTimes Wintek will ship about 3 million to …

With an eye on Zynga and its enviable Facebook status, Electronic Arts has acquired a small social games company named KlickNation. Though not a huge deal, “the industry is in a talent war, with the leading social games company, Zynga, gobbling up many of the smaller social games studios across the country,” explains AllThingsD. Electronic Arts is the second-largest game developer on Facebook after Zynga, with its most popular game, The Sims Social, attracting 30 million monthly active users. “Still,” as AllThingsD points out “the Sims game has failed to top two of Zynga’s most popular games, CityVille and FarmVille.” …

Another day, another (near) government approved Google acquisition. Sources tell Bloomberg that U.S. Justice Department staff attorneys have recommended the search giant’s $400 million acquisition of AdMeld for antitrust approval. “The staff urged approval after a detailed analysis found that AdMeld’s competitors in online display advertising were strong enough to offer companies alternative ways to advertise,” Bloomberg writes. Senior department officials could still stand in the way of the acquisition’s finalization. AdMeld specializes in helping Web publishers increase revenue by managing display ads from hundreds of sources, including ad networks. Meanwhile, as Bloomberg notes, the AdMeld recommendation differs from the …