Latest stories · Page 131

From controversial statements from executives to concerns over its users’ data privacy, it’s been a rough week for Uber. It’s now trying to do some damage control. The company announced today that it has hired a team of privacy experts, including Harriet Pearson, previously IBM’s Chief Privacy Offic

Netflix now accounts for more than a third of all downstream Internet traffic during peak evening hours in North America, according to research firm Sandvine. Netflix’s share of traffic during the second half of 2014 rose to 34.89%, up from 34.21% in the first half of the year, Sandvine found in its

BlackBerry’s more recent smartphones have been targeting faithful fans who love their physical keyboards, but the Canadian company hasn’t given up on full-touch phones just yet. A high-end handset codenamed “Rio” is reportedly set to make its debut in 2015. BlackBerry’s full-touch smartphones haven’

A team of plucky Brits has decided to make its way to the moon using funds gathered from the public via Kickstarter. The rather ambitious plan aims to raise £500 million (around $800 million) for the project via donations made by the public. The planned mission, known as Lunar Mission One, will set

There are serious and growing concerns over how much carbon dioxide is being released into the Earth’s atmosphere and what the long term consequences of that are with regards to climate change. But it’s hard to understand just how much carbon dioxide is being released because you can’t see it. NASA

Meizu may not be quite so well known as other Chinese smartphone manufacturers, Xiaomi for example, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make some cool hardware. Its latest smartphone is the MX4 Pro, launched at a major event in Beijing, which was recently promoted using those unusual vinyl record invit

E-commerce startup Bigcommerce has just secured a fresh $50 million in funding to make sure it continues growing like wildfire, the company announced today. The startup offers a cloud-based platform that makes it easy for small- and medium-sized businesses to create an online store. This is importan

Jaguar Land Rover intends to go for the jugular by coming up against the likes of BMW, Mercedes and Audi when it comes to their latest in-car connected technology, through the unveiling of the spanking new justDrive app. This particular move would go to show just how far Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) are

Robots will need to pave the way to Mars before we humans go, but what if they fall apart? Researchers from the University of Oslo have designed bots that can adapt to unforeseen problems and even 3D-print new parts for themselves. For instance, the crawler shown above actually used to have four leg

IBM has entered the enterprise email market with the launch of IBM Verse, a service the company claims gives enterprise customers, small businesses, and individuals a scalable, social collaboration tool that lives on the cloud and is optimized for mobile and web environments. Verse combines the vari

Just months after Netflix pushed more aggressively into Europe, and several years after the service landed in Latin America, the online video giant is now ready to head Down Under. The company announced its plan to roll out its video-streaming platform in Australia and New Zealand in a carefully des

Uber changed its privacy policy yesterday, but even that may not cover its back this time. Because its top New York executive, Josh Mohrer, has been using an internal tool called God View to track a journalist without her permission. Buzzfeed reports that one of its journalists, Johana Bhuiyan, used

Huawei and Russian operator MegaFon signed an MoU yesterday morning focused on the development of 5G technology, with plans to deploy trial networks in time for coverage at the 2018 World Cup. The 5G-focused Memorandum of Understanding builds on a lengthy partnership between the two companies – goin

AT&T’s Drive Studio is welcoming electronics company LG Electronics to the connected car research fold. The South Korean electronics maker is the latest company to join AT&T’s Drive Studio, a research center focused on connected car technology. The Atlanta, CA-based center has ac

Samsung head of investor relations, Robert Yi, has revealed during a presentation in New York that the company plans to cut the number of smartphone models it produces by 25% to 30% in 2015. With this step, Samsung hopes to fight the falling profits that were recorded in the last financial quarter.

As if there weren’t already enough ways to empty your bank account, Snapchat has gone and launched Snapcash, a new addition to the ephemeral messaging app app that lets you send money to friends in just a few taps. Snapcash has been set up in partnership with payments service Square, and can be used

Ericsson has released its latest Mobility Report, revealing that the ongoing growth of the smartphone market isn’t likely to slow down any time soon thanks to increasing numbers of users coming online in countries like China and India. According to the study, which looks at data forecasts up to the

Nine major tech companies including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and Yahoo, that make up the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, are urging the US Senate to pass the USA Freedom Act that will curb mass data collection by the likes of the NSA. The USA Freedom Act, which might be voted on

As it stands, video games have a maturity rating which is basically an indicator as to how violent or sexual a video game could be. It also helps parents determine if their 7-year old should be playing games meant for older teens. That being said, a report from The Local has revealed that over in [&

Snapchat has begun issuing warnings to users about linking third-party apps to the platform’s API, and will start locking the accounts of those who do not comply. The messaging app is a popular service due to a feature which deletes data including text and images after they have been viewed by

Earlier this year Huawei officially announced the Ascend P7 handset which is why it is not hard to believe that Huawei could be potentially working on its successor, the Huawei Ascend P8. Now we can only assume that the handset will be launched next year around the same time as the Ascend P7, or may

Toyota has announced that it’s upcoming fuel cell vehicle will be called the Mirai and that it’s building a network of hydrogen stations in the US Northeast to support it. The $69,000 vehicle is due to arrive in the US in 2016. The Japanese automaker proclaimed that “the future has

You might not see quite so many security guards on the beat in the future. After roughly a year of work, Knightscope is almost ready to deploy the K5, a human-sized autonomous robot that’s designed to take care of the more mundane parts of security patrols. The machine only needs a bit of init

The arms race in terms of computer power is not one that is set to cease and desist anytime soon. If anything, it does look as though the competition is going to get a whole lot fiercer down the road. What you see above is just for illustration purposes only, depicting a venue that houses […]

Mobile ride hailing startup Uber is expected to hit an annual revenue run rate of $10 billion by the end of 2015, sources told Business Insider’s Henry Blodget. Uber keeps 20 percent of every transaction, which means Uber will be netting about $2 billion on $10 billion gross revenue. What’s more, mo

Rosetta’s lander Philae, which made a historic touchdown on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko earlier this week, has run out of battery power, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Saturday. In a blog post, ESA said that the lander is now in “idle mode” and it is unlikely that communication will be

It looks like Uber is taking another step to separate its service from any other car ride. The company will announce a partnership with Spotify on Monday to let passengers stream music of their choosing as they ride in style to their destination, according to two separate reports from The New York T

The fallout from President Barack Obama’s push to reclassify internet access as a public utility was immediate, and no one reacted faster the nation’s telecom giants. Most issued remarks that characterized the move as a huge mistake, but AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson went one better, h

It’s official: the US Navy has entered the future. Vice Admiral John Miller tells Bloomberg that the USS Ponce, an amphibious transport, has been using the Navy’s Laser Weapon System in the Persian Gulf since late August. The high-tech arsenal is no threat to larger vessels, but it&#8217

In late October, researchers discovered that AT&T and Verizon attach tracking numbers to the web traffic coming from their customers’ phones, in order to keep an eye on their online habits. Now, Ma Bell says it’s stopped doing so — the company claims it has only experimented us

Early last year, DirecTV registered a slew of 4K-branded trademarks to slap on its eventual UHD content roll out. None of those trademarks bubbled to the public eye, but the content, at least, is finally here: starting this week, customers with the Genie HD DVR will be able to stream 20 movies from

After more than two years working as the CEO of one of the most popular websites in the world, Yishan Wong was exhausted. “I’m basically completely worn out, and it was having significantly detrimental effects on my personal life,” Wong confessed on Q&A site Quora, a few hours

The Firefox browser, lagging its well-heeled rivals, will soon be serving up an array of ads to one and all. Mozilla, the nonprofit group that develops and updates the popular Internet browser, said Thursday that it will begin placing ads where thumbnails of your frequently visited websites would no

The US Department of Justice is putting devices that emulate cellphone towers in Cessna aircraft and flying them around the country to track the locations of cellphones, a practice that targets criminal suspects but may also affect thousands of US citizens, according to a news report Thursday. The p

BlackBerry fans who want their trackpad back can now pre-order the BlackBerry Classic ahead of its December debut. The device will be available in the U.S. and the U.K. initially, and it’s priced at $449 and £349 respectively. The Classic is essentially a BlackBerry Q10 with the traditional BlackBer

After first announcing its plans in January, Sony revealed a new online live TV streaming service on Thursday called PlayStation Vue. Sony says the new service “reinvents the television experience.” It’s not clear what that means beyond switching to an Internet-based delivery platf

Rival IQ, a digital marketing analytics company, today announced additional funding of nearly $1 million from existing and new investors designed to fuel the software company’s continued growth and product expansion. Founded by veterans of the Seattle startup scene in January 2013, Rival IQ ha

It’s been rumored for months, but Netflix has finally confirmed that it’s working on its first original TV series from the UK. Given its origins, it should come as no surprise that the show is about none other than the Queen, exploring her relationships with some of Britain’s most

Developers of ‘the world’s first smart earring’ are hoping to raise over $30,000 on the Kickstarter crowd-funding website as part of a vision to “take fitness monitoring to the next level”. With most fitness and activity tracking devices typically worn on the wrist, developers of the Ear

Scopely, a Los Angeles startup that’s built a platform for distributing and monetizing mobile games, is announcing that it has raised $35 million in Series A funding. Co-founder and CEO Walter Driver alternately described his goal as creating “the HBO of mobile games” and “the HBO of touchscreen ent