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As I'm writing this, a few more hoverboards have caught fire, and they now are banned on most domestic airlines, suggesting that shipping these things fast could be a problem. Australia even has put out a specific warning on hoverboards. ...

Welcome, dear friends, to another edition of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that plunges into the muddy waters of the latest gadget announcements in the hopes of plucking a pearl or two In our pool of enlightenment this week are the first official Apple iPhone battery case, a palm-sized 360-degree camera, and possibly the safest drone aro...

Google has filed for a patent on needle-free blood-drawing technology, described in a USPTO application published last week Application 20150342509 suggests four potential implementations of the technology, including its use in a device that has an evacuated negative-pressure barrel with a membrane sealing an aperture at the far end containing an a...

GeckoLinux is a custom spin of the openSuse project. It offers an impressive variety of options and easier operation than typical Suse-based Linux distros provide GeckoLinux is a newcomer. I mean very new. Its first release was last week. You shouldn't view this distro as a wailing infant, however. It's based on openSuse Leap 42.1 and was leapfrogg...

Twitter on Thursday revealed it's testing the expansion of promoted tweets aimed at logged-out users The company has been searching for ways to monetize the patronage of the roughly 500 million logged-out users per month who hop off Google for a moment to read tweet or two. The glue here is more tweets, more content....

FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday told members of a U.S. Senate committee that high-tech companies may need to adopt a new business model regarding encryption in order to get on the same page with law enforcement "Encryption is getting in the way of our ability to have court orders effective to gather information we need in our most important w...

Sage Software on Wednesday announced that it has launched Sage Live on the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace Sage Live, built on the Salesforce AppCloud, gives small businesses real-time data connecting CRM, accounting and financial data, and can scale with a business....

Walmart on Thursday introduced its own mobile payments solution to let customers make in-store purchases with an Android or iOS smartphone. The move will make it the only retailer to compete with third-party mobile payment systems Walmart currently is rolling out the feature through its Walmart mobile app in select stores in the northwest Arkansas ...

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer said last week that Psychonauts will get a sequel -- if fans prove they want it badly enough. Appearing at the Game Awards in Los Angeles, he kicked off Double Fine's Fig campaign for Psychonauts 2, urging fans to pitch in US$3.3 million toward development of the new title.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday posted a message of support to Muslims in the Facebook community and around the world Zuckerberg's post stands in stark contrast to presidential candidate Donald Trump's verbal attacks on all Muslims, including his call earlier this week to ban them from entering the United States.Supporters cheered when Tr...

Australian police on Wednesday afternoon raided the home of a shadowy figure who just hours earlier had been outed as one of the original founders of bitcoin digital currency in two separate media reports. Identified in multiple media reports, Australian entrepreneur Craig Steven Wright was said to be the man who for years had been known as "Satos...

IBM on Tuesday revealed that it has acquiredClearleap, a company that develops cloud middleware for streaming video between endpoints Clearleap's scalable video platform can support millions of concurrent users in the event live broadcasting is in high demand. Customers of the company, which recently raised $40 million in funding, include the NFL, ...

Apple on Tuesday released a new version of iOS, and while it was largely a maintenance release of the mobile operating system, the upgrade included some treats for music and news enthusiasts The release, iOS 9.2, improved Apple Music, the company's streaming music service, in a number of ways....

Can you imagine Microsoft and Apple actually liking each other? Who'da thunk such a thing was even possible? However, the holiday spirit is alive and well at Microsoft. The company flew a bunch of workers from around the country into New York City for something very special Microsoft workers and a local NYC children's youth choir met at Microsoft's...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Tuesday reintroduced a bill that would require technology companies to alert law enforcement of certain activities that might be related to terrorist threats. Cosponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the Requiring Reporting of Online Terrorist Activity Act would mandate that technology companies notify authorit...

Chances are, you know an Apple fanatic -- someone whose iPhone, Mac or iPad is a prized possession. If you don't know a true fanatic, you probably know a fan -- or barring that, someone who might appreciate an Apple-made gift this holiday season. To help you cut through the chaff, from one Apple fanatic to... someone else entirely, I've put togeth...

Mozilla on Monday launched Focus by Firefox, a free ad blocker for Safari users on iOS 9 It lets users block the same trackers blocked by Private Browsing with Tracking Protection in Firefox for the Windows, Mac, Linux and Android platforms. The protection is based onDisconnect's open source block list....

Square Enix last week offered some tidbits about its upcoming Final Fantasy VII remake, which likely will be episodic in nature with the emphasis on action toned down The company revealed the first gameplay footage of the remake at the PlayStation Experience 2015 event in San Francisco....

Yahoo on Wednesday announced that its board of directors decided to suspend plans to spin off its Alibaba holdings and instead will undertake a reverse spinoff, transferring its other assets and liabilities to a newly formed company The stock of the newly formed company will be distributed pro rata to Yahoo shareholders, resulting in two separate p...

This year we traded in terminologies going from big data and analytics to digital disruption as the market-moving meme. I am not sure either one hits the spot, but they give me something to write about. Other things happened in 2015 too, but I'm just going to focus here It seems to me we focus on the symptoms and not the root causes too often in th...