Articles by Katherine Noyes

Microsoft on Friday ended retail sales of Windows 8, meaning that the only way the much-maligned operating system will be available from now on is preinstalled by PC vendors Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate are no longer available at all as of Oct. 31, either for purchase directly by consumers or preinstalled....

Microsoft's Kinect motion controller may have been intended to keep gamers moving and free from handheld devices while in the throes of play, but some intrepid explorers have been using it for a different purpose altogether: hunting ghosts Thanks to its skeletal-tracking and infrared-sensing capabilities, Kinect can "see" as many as six players in ...

Andy Rubin, the creator of Google's ubiquitous Android mobile platform, has left Google, the company confirmed on Friday "I want to wish Andy all the best with what's next," said Google CEO Larry Page. "With Android he created something truly remarkable -- with a billion plus happy users. Thank you."

The U.S. Postal Service didn't adequately follow its own rules last year, when it secretly recorded and shared information about some 49,000 pieces of mail to further criminal and national security investigations, according to an audit report from the USPS Office of Inspector General Though originally released in late May, the audit report was not ...

Lowe's on Tuesday announced that it soon will add two robots to the customer-service staff at one of its San Jose, California, stores Called "OSHbot," the robots will assist customers at the Lowe's-owned Orchard Supply Hardware store by directing them to specific products and providing real-time information about promotions and inventory....

IKEA last week introduced a new desk that can be raised and lowered with the push of a button to accommodate both sitting and standing positions Part of IKEA's Bekant line, the desk serves as a hybrid alternative to traditional desks designed purely for sitting or standing, giving users the flexibility to have both options in one....

After declaring its intent when it launched roughly a month ago, Ello on Thursday made its ad-free philosophy official by incorporating it into a new company charter Now converted to a public benefit corporation, the social network has stipulated not only that it will never make money from selling ads or user data, but also that any new owners wil...

Privacy expert and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ashkan Soltani will be the Federal Trade Commission's new chief technologist, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez announced Tuesday Soltani will succeed Latanya Sweeney in the position beginning in November. Sweeney is returning to Harvard University, where she founded and directs Harvard's Data Privacy...

Magic Leap on Tuesday announced that Google was the lead investor in a US$542 million round of Series B funding for its secret endeavors Also participating in the financing round were Qualcomm, Legendary Entertainment, KKR, Vulcan Capital, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz and Obvious Ventures....

Kickstarter on Friday suspended a crowdfunding campaign for Anonabox, a portable networking device designed specifically to run Tor. The campaign for the privacy-minded router, which launched earlier last week, was wildly successful. In just a few days, it reportedly garnered more than US$600,000 in pledged funds from thousands of backers. The Ki...

The BBC will publish and continually update a list of its published articles that were removed from Google searches under Europe's "right to be forgotten" rule David Jordan, director of editorial policy and standards for the BBC, announced the move earlier this week at a public meeting hosted by Google. The decision is a reaction to the European Co...

Backlash against the #Gamergate movement escalated several notches this week, thanks to high-profile accounts in The Washington Post and The New York Times, along with a public statement from the Entertainment Software Association "Threats of violence and harassment are wrong," the ESA said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson D...

The August Smart Lock will become available for purchase at Apple retail stores in the United States starting this week, the company announced on Tuesday Priced at US$249.99, the smart device uses Bluetooth and a mobile app to create a virtual key....

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has come under fire for comments he made on Thursday suggesting that women should trust in karma rather than ask for pay raises "It's not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along," Nadella told a predominantly female audience at...

Ads soon will arrive on Snapchat, company spokesperson Mary Ritti on Thursday confirmed for the E-Commerce Times The ads will not target individual users. Rather, they'll appear in a more generalized fashion within the service's Snapchat Stories feature among shared photos and videos, CEO Evan Spiegel said Wednesday at the Vanity Fair New Establish...

AT&T Mobility will pay US$80 million for refunds to consumers who were unlawfully billed for unauthorized third-party charges in a practice known as "mobile cramming," the Federal Trade Commission announced on Wednesday AT&T billed customers for hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription charges -- typically in increments of $9.99 per month --...

AT&T Mobility will pay US$80 million for refunds to consumers who were unlawfully billed for unauthorized third-party charges in a practice known as "mobile cramming," the Federal Trade Commission announced on Wednesday AT&T billed customers for hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription charges -- typically in increments of $9.99 per month --...

AT&T Mobility will pay US$80 million for refunds to consumers who were unlawfully billed for unauthorized third-party charges in a practice known as "mobile cramming," the Federal Trade Commission announced on Wednesday AT&T billed customers for hundreds of millions of dollars in subscription charges -- typically in increments of $9.99 per month --...

The open source community is "quite a sick place to be in," Red Hat engineer and Systemd developer Lennart Poettering said Monday in a post on Google+ "The open source community is full of [assh*les], and I probably more than most others am one of their most favorite targets," Poettering added. "I get hate mail for hacking on open source. People ha...

Microsoft Research on Sunday demonstrated RoomAlive, a new technology that can transform any room into an immersive and interactive gaming display Based on a scalable multiprojector system that adapts gaming content to the physical space, RoomAlive allows users to touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that becomes seamlessly integ...