Cassandra Hatton holds a notebook containing the handwriiten work of mathematician and war hero Alan Turing. James Martin/CNET In a beige, nondescript building on the edge of San Francisco’s industrial district, rare-books expert Cassandra Hatton opens a black, book-shaped case with gold lettering etched on its cover and spine. Inside is an ordinary-looking journal containing …

Google says its video tutorial service wasn’t growing fast enough. Screenshot by Donna Tam/CNET Google announced Friday it is shuttering Helpouts because the 1-year old video tutorial service isn’t growing as fast as the company wants. “The Helpouts community includes some engaged and loyal contributors, but unfortunately, it hasn’t grown at the pace we had expected,” reads a blog post …

James Martin/CNET South Carolina’s Department of Corrections punished nearly 400 inmates of using social media over the last three years, with some of the cases resulting in lengthy solitary confinement. The statistics, collected by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and released on Thursday, highlight the state prison system’s strict social media policy and Facebook’s involvement with the removal of inmate profiles. …

Yelp, the go-to site for crowdsourced reviews on nearly every sort of consumer-focused business, is jumping into food delivery. The company said Tuesday that it paid $134 million for food ordering and delivery app Eat24. Eat24, which has relationships with 20,000 restaurants in 1,500 US cities, is already integrated into Yelp’s network. That integration lets Yelp users see menus and …

Facebook Facebook on Tuesday started rolling out a way for people to post items for sale in a group — a new destination for virtual garage sales. The new features include a way to catalog the items up for sale and those you sold previously, and the ability to mark an item as sold. These groups, known as buy/sell/trade groups, …

James Martin/CNET Can Twitter turn your tweets into a money-making business? Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo told investors the social-media giant did just that, despite reporting growth in monthly active users for the fourth quarter that fell short of Wall Street expectations. Twitter said it notched a profit of $79.32 million, or 12 cents a share, after adjusting for items …

RadioShack has tried to rebrand itself as a more consumer-friendly shop. Radio Shack The dismantling of struggling consumer electronics retailer RadioShack may be on the horizon, Bloomberg reported Monday. The brick-and-mortar chain is thinking of selling half its stores to Sprint and then closing the rest, unnamed sources told Bloomberg. There were also discussions over whether Sprint would keep the …

When the power went out during the 2013 Super Bowl, Oreo (@Oreo) made sure everyone remembered that you can still “dunk in the dark.” Twitter/@Oreo It all started with a tweet about an Oreo. When the Super Bowl stadium experienced a blackout in the middle of last year’s game, Oreo sent a tweet to capitalize on the unfortunate turn of …

One of Amazon’s fulfillment centers on the eve of Cyber Monday. James Martin/CNET Looks like Amazon got its happy holidays after all. The company on Thursday reported a profit of $214 million, or 45 cents a share, on revenue of $29.33 billion, exceeding some analysts’ estimates of 17 cents a share on $29.68 billion in revenue. The results show that …

Facebook is adding more Yelp-like recommendation features to its mobile app for iPhone. It’s testing Place Tips in New York. Facebook With Facebook’s latest recommendations feature, you may have to see your friends’ vacation photos, whether you like it or not. The social network announced a new feature for its mobile app that uses your phone’s location services to surface …