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While Smart cars may be good for the environment and financially beneficial to owners, more so than other vehicles, those benefits are wiped out when a gang of vandals tips one over A group of as many as eight people dressed in black tipped over four of the cars in a San Francisco residential area this week.

Every couple of years, it's time to buy a new wireless phone -- and every couple of years, we go through the same decision-making process. What should be the most important part of that process? The answer is not in the advertising. It's not about choosing a phone. Rather, it's choosing the right network -- and there is a difference between major carriers.

In the war against malware, a new strategy is taking shape. The good guys are preparing to demolish the bad guys' most effective weapons: rogue websites The Secure Domain Foundation will tackle the identification and prevention of Internet cybercrime through a series of steps designed to interfere with the way cybergangs operate online....

You should check out The Second Machine Age, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of MIT. It's a thoughtful analysis of the technology progression handed to us by Moore's Law and its effect on every aspect of our lives. Their thesis is pretty simple but also powerful. Early in the computer age, we developed transactional systems designed to g...

Comcast on Wednesday pulled out all the stops in a "public interest" statement on its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable, one day before it has to appear before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee for questioning about the deal Hot buttons such as Net neutrality, consumer choice, better and lower-cost services for business, and competi...

The Micro is the latest consumer-targeted 3D printer to generate buzz after flying past its US$50,000 Kickstarter goal this week It took only 11 minutes for the printer to reach its goal. As of mid-day Wednesday, the Micro had brought in more than $1.8 million from more than 6,400 backers....

Up to now, Google's smart eyeware, Glass, largely has been considered a diversion for gadget lovers, but the company on Tuesday announced a new program to encourage its use in the workplace "Today, there are thousands of consumers out there enjoying Glass in ways that are both practical and inspirational," a Google spokesperson said in a statement ...

Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, defended a Twitter-esque social media site created by the agency, saying it was an attempt to nurture communication on the island -- not, as has been claimed, a way to collect data and incite a revolt Appearing before the Senate and House appropriations subcommittees, S...

Stanford researchers have created a new game controller that can measure a player's emotions. Eventually, developers may be able to use this information to adjust the video gameplay experience, depending on a player's level of engagement The prototype consists of an Xbox 360 controller with the back panel removed. Researchers replaced it with a 3-D...

Microsoft's proposed US$7.4 billion acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone business is moving closer to the finish line, having just won approval from China's Ministry of Commerce. It is a key milestone for the transaction, which sailed through the U.S. and European approval processes with little difficulty or delay. The deal is expected to close thi...

Which came first, the mobile device or the television? OK, that one is easy -- but which comes first now -- the mobile device or the television? The answer is probably television, but it's not quite as obvious, is it? Television is the dominant screen for most consumers today, but signs are growing that the mobile screen might well supercede it at...

Twitter on Tuesday announced a redesign of its user profiles, hard on the heels of its launch of new photo-sharing capabilities late last month Included among the new features in the redesign are larger profile photos, customized headers, and an enlarged presentation of tweets that have been particularly popular. Users also can pin a tweet to the t...

A flaw in OpenSSL that has been around since 2011, the Heartbleed Bug, lets hackers steal information protected by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. ...

Microsoft added to its list of original programming for its Xbox gaming system Monday with the announcement of a new science fiction series called Humans. Humans -- based on the Swedish TV series Real Humans -- is a cooperative effort of Xbox Entertainment Studios and UK broadcaster Channel 4. It is scheduled to air next year exclusively on the X...

Six Hollywood studios have banded together in a copyright infringement lawsuit against Megaupload, the wildly popular (although now shuttered) site that, in its heyday, was ground zero for file-sharing. The suit doesn't specify an amount of damages, but does say that the studios should be entitled to US$150,000 per copyright infringement, as well ...

TheAmazon Fire TV, available for US$99 from Amazon, hasn't yet made any jaw-dropping leaps forward, but it is an excellent set-top box that, in some ways, breaks ahead of the Apple TV, Google Chromecast and Roku competition....

Michael Lewis did not do the securities industry any favors, at least in the short term, with the publication of his new book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. His portrayal of how investment banks use high-frequency trading to leverage the few additional milliseconds this technology provides to grab stocks at optimal prices appears to have been a factor behind federal agency decisions to investigate this activity.

Clari is bursting onto the CRM stage with a mobile sales productivity platform that is coming out of stealth mode, thanks to a US$6 million infusion of funds from Sequoia Capital The product, says CEO Andy Byrne, marries "a beautiful design," with data analytics and mobile technology to create a system that informs reps how to close deals faster, w...

Money will be the biggest problem users of Windows XP will face when Microsoft officially stops supporting it on Tuesday "While many customers have already completed their migrations to a modern OS, some large customers with complex Windows XP deployments may not have their migrations complete by April 8," said a Microsoft spokesperson in a stateme...

The steady stream of reports on government surveillance of Americans has taken a toll on the image of high-tech companies, according to a Harris poll More than two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) feel technology companies violate their users' trust by helping the government spy on its citizens, suggests the poll of 2,000 consumers, which was spons...