Articles by

Amazon is ramping up its drone delivery project and is hoping for Federal Aviation Administration approval to conduct outdoor testing on its own property The company has petitioned the FAA for an exemption from rules barring it from testing the devices....

In the wake of the problem-plagued rollout of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as "Obamacare," similar government health information technology efforts are being closely scrutinized within the administration and by Congress. That's why the Department of Defense recently released the third version of a multibillion dollar proposal for a much-improved military health records information system...

Microsoft just announced the release of the Dragons Adventure World Explorer, or DAWE for short. It is actually very cool and well-timed, because for any of us who have tried to go on a long trip in a car, this should keep the little tykes engaged and quiet It also should get developers excited about creating more games that could turn the family v...

The competition to offer transparent and flexible OLED screens heated up last week, withLG's unveiling of two 18-inch OLED displays One is flexible and the other transparent....

Amazon has been synonymous with excellent customer service since its inception. That stellar reputation could become tarnished, however, if its current flap with the Federal Trade Commission gets out of hand. The FTC on Thursday filed suit against Amazon alleging that its poor controls permitted children to make millions of dollars in unauthorized...

There may yet be life in Aereo After the Supreme Court appeared to deliver a death blow to Aereo by ruling its service was unlawful, the company has latched onto a part of the court's decision in an effort to stay alive....

Companies providing the world's critical infrastructure are woefully unprepared for cyberattacks despite the increasing threat level, evidenced by the release of the Stuxnet worm and the Shamoon virus in recent years, a survey conducted jointly by the Ponemon Institute and Unisys has found Nearly 70 percent of the 599 surveyed oil, gas, utility, en...

The United States Federal Trade Commission has filed suit against Amazon over billing kids for unauthorized in-app purchases that in many cases they did not know they had made The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Washington, accuses Amazon of violating Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive...

Half a dozen companies this week announced a new organization to ensure that the billions of devices that will be added to the Internet in coming years will be able to communicate with each other The Open Interconnect Consortium was launched to define the connectivity requirements and improve the interoperability of some 200 billion devices expecte...

As much as we may wax on about engaging, enchanting and delighting our customers, most of them are not expecting such an experience. In most cases, their purchase is prelude to something else pleasurable (in the case of B2C) or profitable (in the case of B2B). They want to get what they need and go If there's some service they're purchasing in addi...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday mapped out his vision for the company's future, emphasizing cloud and mobile computing, in a letter to all employees. The letter also appeared on the company's website "More recently, we have described ourselves as a 'devices and services' company. While the devices and services description was helpful in sta...

While the ever-expanding class of wearable fitness devices out there can tell users how many calories they've burned while undertaking any particular activity, realistic estimates of calories taken in have been few and far between. Enter a new microwave oven currently in the works at GE Global Research that will tell users just how much energy is ...

With tensions deepening between Amazon and publisher Hachette, Amazon sent a peace offering to authors caught in the middle of the dispute. While negotiations drag on, authors should receive all of the revenue from their e-book sales, Amazon proposed in a letter to some authors and agents from David Naggar, VP of Kindle content and independent pub...

It's been known for years that the U.S. National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have targeted Muslim Americans What hasn't been widely known is that their targets included lawyers and some who have served the United States at the highest levels, which was revealed in an Intercept.org report....

Editor's Note: At ECT, writers and editors often banter about topics, puzzling out angles. For today's column, we decided to share that banter between columnist Chris Maxcer and managing editor Mick Brady Hey Mick!...

We've been hearing all about these amazing new smartwatches. They are the remote control for our smartphones. They make doing regular tasks quicker and easier. They are said to be the most exciting new product since the smartphone. If that's the case, then why have they not taken off yet? Ah, the million dollar question: Are smartwatches going to b...

Texas attorney Jason L. Van Dyke recently filed a lawsuit against nude-photo-sharing site Pink Meth and included the Tor Project among its defendants Pink Meth is an "involuntary pornography" site, the suit charges, enabling users to post nude photos for the purposes of getting revenge on those pictured. It's accessible only to users who have downl...

The Beijing First Intermediate Court ruled against Apple in a case that pitted it against a Shanghai-based firm and the country's State Intellectual Property Office's Patent Review Committee. The court found that the intellectual property rights of Zhizhen Internet Technology, a company that holds several voice recognition patents, were valid.

Doing a factory reset to wipe the data off smartphones does not work, and the data can be recovered, warned Avast The company recovered tons of data, including more than 40,000 stored photographs, from 20 used Android phones purchased from eBay....

People need to work less than 1 percent of the time they do to fulfill their basic needs -- housing, security and opportunities for their children -- Google cofounder Larry Page suggested recently, reviving a Utopian vision that has long been a staple of sci-fi as well as technologists' vision of the future "The idea that everyone needs to work fra...