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President Obama on Monday leaped into the controversy surrounding Net neutrality, calling on the United States Federal Communications Commission to ensure and protect that neutrality ...

Microsoft on Monday announced that it had begun rolling out its Xbox One November Systems Update, which will be its final major update for the console for 2014. The improvements will deliver new ways for owners to watch TV, personalize the game system, and interact with the Xbox Live gaming community, as well as provide new integration with Xbox One Store and Microsoft's SmartGlass platform...

Texting while driving is dangerous. We know that intuitively; we know it because the statistics say so; we know it because we have seen any number of public service announcements warning of its hazards. A whopping 98 percent of respondents in a recent survey of people who text at least once a day acknowledged the danger of texting while driving --...

I was at Dell World last week, and it is kind of amazing how far the company has come since it went private. Interestingly, much of the big tent content was less about Dell's technology and more about how technology was being used to change the world. This was kind of a scary event in some cases, because we are far from ready for some of the cha...

The most successful phishing attacks manage to dupe their victims a full 45 percent of the time, according to a study released last week by Google On average, phishing's success rate is about 14 percent, but even the most obvious scams still manage to lure 3 percent of the people targeted to a fake website and convince them to turn over personal in...

Welcome to another installment of every tech-loving optimist's and misanthrope's favorite look at the week's most wondrous and pitiful new gadgets. We call it "Gadget Dreams and Nightmares." Ahead, for your delight and dismay, are studies of a wearable walkie-talkie-type communication device, a 360-degree action camera, a tiny 3D printer, a smart ...

Black Lab Linux is a general purpose free distribution for home users and small-to-mid-sized businesses. This particular segment of the Linux OS tries to bridge free OS and preconfigured commercial hardware/software with a flexible set of options.Black Lab Linux is an outgrowth of OS4 OpenLinux, a distro released in 2008 by the same developers. Th...

Natural Machines this week took to the stage at the Web Summit in Dublin to demonstrate Foodini, a 3D printer that can be used to create pizza, pasta, burgers and a wide range of other savory and sweet foods Users begin by choosing the recipe they want to print, either from the Internet-connected device's onboard touchscreen or from their own PC or...

Europol on Friday announced that a team of agents from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Eurojust have taken down more than 400 cybercrime services accessible via the Tor browser They include the dark market Silk Road 2.0. Its operator, San Francisco resident Blake Benthall, was arrested...

Palo Alto Networks on Wednesday reported that more than 400 apps infected with a malicious program it calls "WireLurker" have been downloaded 356,104 times by Chinese Mac owners from Maiyadi, an online app store unaffiliated with Apple The malware does no harm to the Macs it infects but when the computer connects via USB to an iOS device -- an iPho...

Amazon on Thursday announced Echo, a speaker with a built-in voice-activated personal digital assistant. Think of a cylindrical Bose SoundLink Mini married to Siri, Cortana or Google Voice -- or heck, living in sin with all three Echo can conduct Web searches, add items to your to-do list, let you play streaming music, and give you news and weather...

Federal agencies may spend as much as US$10 billion annually on cloud technology by 2018, as the government seeks to take advantage of the operational improvements and efficiencies attributed to the technology. However, deficiencies in contracting for cloud services could compromise the effectiveness of such investments, according to a recent government report.

Google Wallet (pictured above) suddenly has experienced a surge in use, according to an Ars Technica report that cites an unnamed source Weekly transactions are up 50 percent, and the number of new users has nearly doubled from the prior month, the source said....

Microsoft on Thursday announced new Office apps for the iPhone, updated Office apps for the iPad, and a preview of Office apps for Android tablets (sample screen shot shown above) The company released separate Office for iPhone apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint that it said would offer the iPad experience optimized for the iPhone....

Jawbone on Wednesday announced two new fitness trackers: the high-end Up3 wristband and the entry-level Up Move clip device Using a multisensor platform, the US$179.99 Up3 captures detailed information about the wearer's heart rate, sleep stages and physical activity over the course of the day. It also connects with the Up App to deliver Smart Coac...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Tuesday released its Secure Messaging Scorecard, which rates messaging app security based on seven capabilities. Only six of more than three dozen tools the organization audited met all seven security requirements They are ChatSecure, CryptoCat, Signal/Redphone, Silent Phone, Silent Text and TextSecure....

Russian cyberspies -- unlike their Chinese counterparts -- have a reputation for stealth, so it's unusual when two digital espionage operations linked to the Kremlin come to light in a week FireEye early last week released a report detailing how hackers working for the Russian government have been using sophisticated techniques over a seven-year pe...

What are you thankful for? Me... I am very thankful that this year's Election Day is finally over! Why? So I can get some peace and quiet in my life once again. I don't know about you, but my phone has been ringing constantly for weeks, and every call has been a political call. All I can say is... ENOUGH ALREADY! I am so happy this election had cle...

"So simple a child could do it" -- I have heard that expression abused often in advertising. Yet it aptly applies to the Kano computer kit.Kano is a computer and coding kit that is suitable for all ages. Well, to be truthful, Kano's step-by-step instructions in the included booklets and its simplified Linux-based operating system target kids aged ...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation this week renewed its protests against Verizon Wireless' and AT&T's use of supercookies that can't be deleted or disabled to track customers' mobile Web-browsing activities without their knowledge It's not as if the carriers' tracking is new -- Verizon has, by its own admission, been using these supercookies for t...