Latest stories · Page 184

Spritz is a company that makes a speed-reading technology which allows you to get through a mass of text, reading every word, in a fraction of the time it would take if you were turning the pages of a book or swiping through a Kindle. The basis of Spritz’s concept is that much of the time [&he

Sure, Sharknado and Sharktopus are fun to watch with friends on a weekend, but they also prove that sharks still get a bad rap. Clearly, what we’ve learned about the animal’s behavior since Jaws came out isn’t nearly enough, so a group of researchers are attempting to find out more

This year Reddit is contributing more than memes to society, it’s passing out cash. In a blog post today the site announced plans to donate 10 percent of its advertising revenue for the year to non-profits. At the end of the year, the site plans to open up a virtual suggestion box where users

Steam Family Sharing, the service that allows for sharing of a Steam library between multiple individuals and computers, is now available to all Steam users. The service can be enabled for up to five Steam accounts to share a single collection of games across as many as 10 different computers. Durin

A couple of weeks ago, BlackBerry updated its popular BBM app to version 2.0 with a number of new features, including BBM Voice and BBM Channels. Now, the company has announced that even more enhancements are coming soon to the app. These new features and improvements include the ability to share ph

The cryptocurrency craze spun into a new realm of ridiculous with Kanyecoin, Dogecoin, Ron Paul Coin and the bounty of other clone-coins that sprung up to ride the Bitcoin wave. But the latest altcoin to enter the market, Auroracoin, wants to take the futurist trend back to its cryptoanarchist roots

A trailer released this week for Affordable Space Adventures teases an atmospheric stealth puzzle game headed to the Wii U with the budget conscious space traveler in mind. Affordable Space Adventures puts players in the cockpit of Uexplore’s Small Craft, whose “intuitive and simple Head

IBM recently sold its x86 server business to Lenovo, and that unfortunately has consequences for the company’s workers. The computing pioneer has confirmed that it’s cutting jobs as it concentrates its efforts on “cloud, analytics and cognitive computing.” While IBM isn&#8217

If you have a Nintendo 64 kicking around, it’s probably not hooked up to your television. It’s not that you don’t love the classic console, it’s just that manymodern sets don’t support the machine’s archaic video cables. Don’t worry, it can be fixed. RetroAc

Comcast is buying FreeWheel, a company whose service is designed to help TV networks, film studios, and other content companies sell and manage in-video ads across numerous Web sites and devices. FreeWheel’s setup automatically allocates ad inventory, keeps track of ad revenue, and accounts fo

When first discovered by Trusteer in 2012, the Tilon banking malware received its name because of some similarities with the Silon banking Trojan. As Silon before it, Tilon performs Man-in-the-Browser attacks by injecting itself into the browser and thus gaining control over the traffic going to and

What if you could turn the music down on your phone by just waving your hand? That’s the idea behind AllSee, a new gadget under development by computer scientists at the University of Washington. Built by the same guys who created the gesture-recognition in the Galaxy Nexus, the tiny sensor wo

Chances are that you have a set of five or 10 places you go to on a regular basis. ETA is an app that shows your current estimated drive times to those places from where you’re at. When you first open ETA, you’ll need to go in and add your favorite locations. After that, every time [&hel

For those who don’t know, Project Tango is a Google-built prototype smartphone jam packed with Kinect-like 3D sensors and components. One of Mountain View’s software partners involved in the project, FlyBy Media, has built what it’s calling the first consum

Back in 2013, Lenovo thought that it would be a good idea to hire celebrity Ashton Kutcher to be one of their product engineers. This is not the first time we’ve seen tech companies use celebrities to help raise awareness for their products. In the past we’ve seen BlackBerry hire Alicia Keys, Intel

Tor, a privacy tool-maker, plans to create a secure messaging service that encrypts all user communications by default. The service will be bundled with the default Tor package, which includes a variety of programs and services meant to preserve their users’ online anonymity. Those tools are often u

A number of IBMers are trying on the new identity of “ex-IBMers” today as the company’s 2014 downsizing has come to pass. IBM won’t say how many people. And you can’t count it up because the company has, for the first time in years, eliminated a document that was part o

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange and its owner Mark Karpeles, seeking damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars and the return of bitcoins to users whose accounts were frozen on the site. The lawsuit lays out a number of claims against Mt. Gox, chief am

Raspberry Pi has claimed itself an early birthday present today, praising a newly announced move by Broadcom after hearing the long-lamented plight of developers: it has released the full source for its VideoCore IV graphics, opening it up to bug fixes and more. In light of this, Raspberry Pi is off

Technology can solve big problems — the least of which is falling asleep during a movie and losing your place. Thankfully, Netflix staffers have created a solution for this by hacking a Fitbit device. Netflix staffers created a way to pause a video based on a Fitbit device’s sleep tracki

It isn’t just the US federal government that’s struggled to set up a health insurance marketplace. A number of states that have attempted to set up their own have run into problems too, and now one of the more successful states thinks that it can come to their rescue. “We were appr

A rural Alabama town and a suburban area of Florida may be on the cutting edge of a historic shift away from traditional circuit-switched phone service, if AT&T wins approval to run trials in those areas. The carrier plans to test a transition from its circuit-switched TDM phone network to wirel

Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile have thrown their names into the Samsung Galaxy S5 hat. The two prepaid Sprint brands on Friday announced intentions to carry the flagship device in the second quarter of the year. Neither carrier was ready to disclose a price or specific date. Historically, high profi

Heavy Internet users, like those who stream lots of high-definition video or download video games regularly, should pay more for bandwidth compared to people who don’t. That’s the opinion of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, who said this week that the concept of flat-rate Internet we’ve

This is a huge blow for ride-sharing startups in Seattle. The City Council of Seattle voted today to severely limit ride-sharing services, including UberX, Lyft, and Sidecar, according to a report from the Silicon Valley Business Journal. The preliminary ruling, which is not final and will be voted

Virgin Media has launched a new broadband service offering a top speed of 152Mbps — over ten times faster than the UK’s average broadband speed of 14.7Mbps. The new 152Mb top speed means that customers can download an entire TV show in one minute, but the ultrafast service really comes i

When shopping online, it seems most of us are doing so via our tablet or smartphone. New research shows that 87% of mobile device owners use theirs for shopping, up nearly 10% from the previous year. In addition to just browsing or getting product info, we’re also pretty vocal about our purchases. T

Talking on a cellphone while driving, get a ticket. Text while driving, get a ticket. Glance at that all-powerful map on your iPhone while driving? No problem. That was the conclusion Thursday of a state appeals court in Fresno, which for the first time in a California case found that drivers can us

BlackBerry’s new head of Enterprise and BBM, John Sims, has only been on the job for a few months but he already seems to be detailing his plans. He laid out to CNET some of his plans and goals for BBM and how 40% of BBM users are now on other platforms. He also said that he […]

Do you play a lot of Candy Crush Saga or Clash of Clans but almost never spend any money on in-app purchases? If so then you’re free riding on the backs of a tiny number of users who are spending ungodly sums on virtual goods that enhance their enjoyment of their favorite games. Re/code reports that

Expanding the notion of privacy rights in the digital age, Texas’ highest criminal court ruled Wednesday that police improperly searched a Huntsville student’s cell phone without a warrant, even though the device had been sitting in a jail property room. The 8-1 ruling by the Court of Criminal

Online retail giant Amazon is reportedly speaking to major music labels about launching its own streaming music service, according to a Re/code report that cites unnamed industry sources with knowledge of the talks. Amazon currently offers its Prime membership, which costs $79 annually. In return, P

In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia was lost when an accident at launch conspired to destroy it upon re-entry. It was a great tragedy, and one that spurred NASA to develop a contingency plan which could have saved the stricken crew. It reads like a movie script that would make Apollo 13 look like a

Call it the rebuttal to the rebuttal. Carl Icahn on Wednesday fired off his second open letter to eBay shareholders this week, reiterating a call for the ouster of board members Marc Andreessen and Scott Cook and once again demanding the company spin off its PayPal unit. Apparently he was unmoved by

Two weeks ago, viewers of game streaming site Twitch.tv started playing a massively multiplayer session of Pokémon where each comment in the chat window translates to a button press on the gamepad — and somehow the resulting mess of over 10 million button presses has turned into successful gameplay.

China’s leading search engine, Baidu, reported flat profit growth for the fourth quarter as the company continued its spending spree on research and product promotion. For the period ended on December 31, Baidu’s net profit was 2.8 billion yuan (US$454 million), representing a 0.4 percent year-over-

About a week ago, LG announced Knock Code which was an evolution of the company’s Knock On feature. Basically what it does is that it allows users to “knock” a pattern on their phone in order to unlock it, even if the screen was off. LG claims that Knock Code is safer than Touch ID, especially when

Boeing’s mysterious smartphone, the one that was supposed to have come out by the end of 2012, is now out of the bag. Boeing today posted a full breakdown of Black, a device aimed at defense and security customers. The FCC also published specifics on the hardware and software, including detail

Sony is planning to close 20 of the 31 extant Sony Store locations in the U.S. by the end of the year, the company announced today. This restructuring of Sony’s U.S. retail portfolio is part of company wide cost-cutting efforts that Sony announced earlier this month. That plan calls for 5,000

If there was any device we could stand to be a little smarter for us, it’s our cars. They cost thousands of dollars upfront, are financially draining to maintain and we put our lives at risk on the assumption that they work, yet most of us know very little about how they do so. Cars are […]