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Canonical last week announced plans to launch the Internet of Toys, an open source initiative calling on toy makers, hackers, Internet of Things fans and innovators to build the next generation of Web-accessing toys The company is partnering with theHybrid Group andErle Robotics for the initiative....

Amazon has become the first stop for nearly half of online shoppers researching potential purchases, according to a report BloomReach released Tuesday Nearly half (44 percent) of some 2,000 survey participants said they go directly to Amazon to search for products.

Distributed denial of service attacks have evolved from protest tool to criminal weapon More than one in three DDoS attacks are used to plant malware or a virus on company systems, and 40 percent of them result in data theft, according toNeuStar's semiannual DDoS attack and protection report released last week....

Europe's highest court on Tuesday ruled that a 15-year-old agreement regulating electronic data transfers with the United States was invalid, potentially striking a blow to thousands of U.S. technology companies that rely on a uniform legal standard do business overseas The European Court of Justice ruled that the U.S. Safe Harbor agreement was ina...

Microsoft on Tuesday held an event in New York City where it unveiled a laptop, a tablet, three Lumia smartphones and a fitness band -- all running Windows 10 -- along with a slew of other products It also announced new apps for Windows 10, including Box, Facebook, Instagram, Flipagram, Candy Crush Soda Saga and Uber. All of the apps will be availa...

Target may be implementing price matching, but there are other ways to compete. Customer experience is the new battleground in retail sales, and winning this battle requires winning over customers with truly personalized service Despite all the advancements in technology, from personalized retargeting to the newest in CRM technologies, personalized...

Slackel is a Linux distro a step away from the mainstream Debian-based Linux OS line. It is based on Slackware and Salix. Users already familiar with that lineage are more inclined to like Slackel. Slackel offers a few advantages not usually found with the Slackware Linux lineup. Slackel is fully compatible with Slackware and Salix. The main diffe...

Adobe on Monday raised the curtain on two mobile apps and a basket of product upgrades at its MAX conference in Los Angeles Both new apps -- Photoshop Fix and Capture CC -- are free, but they initially will be available only to users of Apple's mobile devices....

The spectacular database breach that affected nearly 21 million people highlighted the continuing vulnerability of U.S. government information technology systems, despite the expenditure of billions each year for cybersecurity programs. The breach, which the federal Office of Personnel Management revealed this summer, resulted in the departure of ...

Google on Monday released an over-the-air update for Nexus devices, which includes patches for the latest Stagefright vulnerabilities and other flaws. Android's Stagefright media processing feature, which recently imperiled 1 billion devices around the world, was once again putting them at risk, Zimperium revealed last week....

Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, who has been running the company as interim CEO for the past three months, has taken the reins for good, the company revealed in a document filed with the SEC last week Former CEO Dick Costolo has left Twitter's board of directors, and Adam Bain has stepped into the chief operating officer role....

It's becoming increasingly clear that the nature of the sales profession is changing Salespeople are no longer the ones who introduce products to their customers -- in most cases, especially in business-to-business settings, customers have done a lot of research on their own and are close to a decision before they talk to a salesperson....

Facebook and Eutelsat Communications on Monday announced a partnership to leverage satellite technology to provide Internet access to remote parts of sub-Saharan Africa The initiative, which includes a multiyear agreement with Spacecom, will utilize the entire broadband payload on the future AMOS-6 satellite as the backbone of a dedicated system th...

Amazon last week said it planned to stop selling streaming devices from rivals Apple and Google A pillar of its Prime ecosystem, Prime Video, was incompatible with Apple TV and Google's Chromecast, the company suggested....

For retailers that do not yet accept EMV cards -- credit and debit cards with chips embedded in them -- a spine-tingling deadline arrived last week. Liability for any payment fraud that results from acceptance of old-school plastic shifted to them The magnetic chips in EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) cards will reduce in-store payment fraud, whi...

The best smartphone on the market is the iPhone, right? That is the conventional wisdom. However, if I were to ask about the best shoes, shirt, car, boat or TV, the answers likely would be all over the map -- not just on brand but on type. When it comes to cars, for instance, I personally favor convertibles because they remind me of my youth when ...

Welcome to Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that gladly steps far away from presidential debates to voice partisan opinions on the latest gadget announcements On the rostrum this week is a slew of new Google devices: a refreshed Chromecast; another Chromecast for audio; and the company's first completely in-house-created tablet. We also tak...

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has quit Facebook and shut down his account, sparking speculation as to his motives Is Salesforce at odds with Facebook? Is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg no longer Benioff's BFF?...

Improved performance and some app enhancements to boost productivity highlight the latest version of Apple's desktop operating system, OS X 10.11 El Capitan Apple on Wednesday made El Capitan available for download to its users from the Mac App Store....

Researchers for the Security Intelligence Response Team at Akamai on Tuesday issued a high-risk threat advisory for XOR DDoS proliferation. The XOR DDoS Trojan is used to hijack Linux servers to build a botnet for distributed denial-of-service attacks with SYN and DNS floods, researchers tracking the malware said....