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Don't you just love big industry events like Mobile World Congress? I mean, you've had whole weeks to enjoy the new phone you got last quarter, and now you'll hear about a bunch of incredibly wonderful stuff that will make that new phone look like your grandmother's favorite car -- you know, the one she fell in love with in the 1960s. Unfortunat...

Salutations, travelers, and welcome to a new iteration of Gadget Dreams and Nightmares, the column that hoists up quality new gadgets for the world to see and condemns those that don't cut the mustard ...

If you dislike your insurance company, you are not alone: Worldwide, less than 30 percent of consumers have positive experiences in dealing with their insurers, Capgemini has found Globally, satisfaction fell 3.7 percent from 32.6 percent in 2013 to 28.9 percent last year, according to Capgemini's World Insurance Report 2015....

The fog shrouding Apple's first major new product entry since the iPad -- the Apple Watch -- won't be lifted on March 9 when Apple is widely expected to tell us more about its forthcoming Apple Watch release. Apple's invite to its media event is characteristically coy, with its vague "Spring Forward," tease, which likely refers to the shift in day...

The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday adopted new open Internet rules by a 3-2 vote along party lines The rules, which affect both wired and wireless access, prohibit broadband providers from unreasonably interfering with or unreasonably disadvantaging efforts of consumers and edge providers to reach each other....

Researchers at Google's DeepMind subsidiary in England have developed an artificial agent they call a "deep Q-network" that learned to play 49 classic Atari 2600 arcade games by just diving in The DQN algorithm performed at more than 75 percent of the level of a professional player in more than half the games, and came up with far-sighted strategie...

SIM card maker Gemalto, whose networks reportedly were breached by hackers from the United States National Security Agency and the UK's GCHQ, on Wednesday said the spies got nothing. The hackers stole cryptokeys for millions of SIM cards, according to The Intercept, which cited documents released by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden....

Healthcare providers have garnered growing interest from hackers in recent months. More evidence of that trend appeared last week in a report on email trust An email that appeared to come from a healthcare company was four times more likely to be fraudulent than an email purportedly from a social media company like Facebook, which is one of the lar...

You may have heard of a company called Geek Squad, but what about PlumChoice or SupportSpace? Even if you don't know their names, you may very well be doing business with them right now. Who are they? PlumChoice, SupportSpace are both relatively small companies that do business with larger companies, providing top-shelf tech support services to cu...

If you favor the OS X environment, Pearl OS might be a Linux distro to feed your fancy.Pearl OS is a revival of the discontinued Pear OS distro. Pearl picks up where Pear left off in early 2014....

Apple must pay patent licensing firm Smartflash US$532.9 million for infringing three patents U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, who presided over the case in Tyler, Texas, ordered Apple to pay the penalty after a federal jury in Texas found that the company's iTunes software infringed Smartflash's patents. The jury took eight hours to decide App...

After well over a year of bitter, often highly partisan debates, and despite dissension within its ranks and opposition from industry groups, the United States Federal Communications Commission is expected on Thursday to vote in favor of rules enforcing Net neutrality The commission wants to regulate ISPs like common carriers under Title II of the ...

Volvo last week revealed the latest developments in its Drive Me project, showing off a complete system that could make it possible to integrate self-driving cars into regular traffic with drivers behind the wheel Volvo is making progress toward its goal of releasing 100 self-driving vehicles to consumers on selected roads around Gothenburg -- Swed...

Yahoo Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos on Monday confronted National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers over the United States government's plan to require built-in backdoors in hardware and software made by American companies. The exchange took place at the New America Foundation's cybersecurity conference in Washington Buildi...

Valve on Monday announced that it's getting into the virtual reality hardware business In a terse tease posted to the Web, the company trumpeted its intentions to reveal its SteamVR hardware system next week at the 2015 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco....

The major headline hacking event of 2014 involved data theft at a highly visible enterprise: Sony Pictures Perhaps just as significant in e-commerce security, but below the conventional news radar, was a 2014 federal court ruling which allows the Federal Trade Commission to continue penalizing commercial firms for failure to protect consumer data f...

I don't know how many old movies there are in which the good guys say, "You're surrounded, come out with your hands up!" Somehow being surrounded is a bad thing -- or at least it was -- until it became a hot trend in the back office. Let me explain Surrounding legacy systems, such as conventional ERP, is proving to be a good idea for a bunch of rea...

Technology wars are predictable. Every new wave of gadgetry brings a fight over who will be the next king of the software hill. The next big battle is brewing over control of the Internet of Things marketplace The IoT is quietly gaining momentum as companies develop software to connect all sorts of consumer products to the Internet. Consumers see o...

Google will place a privacy curtain around sexually explicit images and video on its Blogger platform if users fail to remove the content of their own volition by March 23 Google on Monday started notifying Blogger subscribers about the policy change affecting adult content. The ban targets images and video that are sexually explicit or show graphi...

Google on Monday announced a two-pronged thrust to beef up its efforts in the mobile wallet arena. It has struck agreements with Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility and T-Mobile to preinstall the Google Wallet app, including its tap-and-pay functionality, on Android phones the carriers will offer later this year in the United States....