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Mobile technologies may tend to focus on life's present and future, but Foursquare this week launched a feature that gives users new insight into the past. Specifically, the location-based social networking service on Thursday introduced the Foursquare Time Machine, a tool that allows users to retrace the steps of their past check-ins through a digital visualization...

Well, this was bound to happen U.S. lawmakers said Thursday that the House Intelligence Committee -- the same House Intelligence Committee that trashed Chinese telecommunications companies last year -- will conduct a "thorough scrub" of connections between China and Eric Snowden....

In a hotly contested case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, the Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously decided that some of Myriad's patent claims were invalid for claiming products of nature. However, the Court also held that other Myriad patent claims were perfectly valid. ...

Verizon is on the hot seat. It is at the center of the story about releasing customer information to the U.S. National Security Agency. As it turns out, there is more than one story here. There is the Verizon story and the Prism story. While Verizon does make information about every call available to the NSA, the actual conversation is still priv...

Nuclear Power, Part 1: A Smaller, Safer Future There's no denying that safety and effectiveness are both critical concerns when it comes to nuclear power, and that's just as true for investors in the technology as it is for those who rely on the energy it generates....

In a decision that could make it more affordable for women to be screened for breast cancer, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that human genes cannot be patented The court's rationale, essentially, is that human genes occur in nature, making them unpatentable. Complementary DNA, on the other hand -- a synthetic DNA known as cDN...

Time Warner Cable appears to have come up with a strategy to help stem the flow of cord-cutters -- that is, people abandoning pay-TV for the free or lower-price content available on the Internet. The company is offering incentives to content providers to withhold certain properties from online entertainment platforms, according to a Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources. ...

A coalition of United States officials, institutional investors and consumer advocates on Thursday launched the Save Our Smartphones Initiative nationwide With smartphone-related crimes, some of which are shockingly brutal, on the rise in the U.S., law enforcement officials have cranked up the pressure on the cellphone industry to come up with tech...

Social media websites including Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr have all adopted the "clickable hashtag" widely popularized by Twitter, and on Wednesday Facebook joined the proverbial club "To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what's happening or what people are talking about," explained Greg Lindley, a product manager...

Former Palm CEO and webOS creator Jon Rubinstein is apparently still brooding over Palm's acquisition by HP. Two years later, he looks back at what HP did with webOS -- or rather what it didn't do -- and he is very disappointed, according to an interview Rubinstein gave to FierceWireless. In retrospect, he probably would have done things different...

Google announced it has been tracking and disrupting "multiple email-based phishing campaigns" in Iran The campaigns, which have been going on for nearly three weeks, are targeting the accounts of tens of thousands of Iranian users. Google posits that the phishing is related to the Iranian presidential elections, which will be held Friday....

In an effort to manage acquisition fees, Pandora Radio has acquired a terrestrial radio station based in Rapid City, S.D. The move enables Pandora to be subject to licensing fees and royalties for broadcast radio stations rather than streaming stations Internet radio companies such as Pandora, Spotify, Rhapsody, Last.fm and others have struggled ...

Comcast this week announced new software for its set-top boxes, opening a window into how cable TV companies hope to retain customers tempted to move their eyeballs to online-only alternatives Comcast X2, which debuted at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association's Cable Show under way in Washington, D.C., blends cable offerings like on...

Pegasystems held PegaWorld in "PegOrlando" this week, and a good show it was. I have always wondered about the difference between CRM (social and otherwise) and BPM, or business process management, so I was happy to attend Both CRM and BPM deal with the interaction between the vendor and customer, and each is involved in doing the things that make...

Samsung on Wednesday announced the Galaxy S4 Zoom, a smartphone whose camera offers 10x optical zoom. ...

After initially denying involvement in the U.S. National Security Agency's highly controversial PRISM program revealed last week, Google and other tech giants that were named as participants now admit their involvement and are calling for greater transparency Google, for instance, on Tuesday sent a letter to the offices of the U.S. Attorney General...

Google has finalized its acquisition of Waze, developer of a crowdsourced mapping app, with the goal of expanding its location-based and social maps offerings while providing users with a way to outsmart traffic Israel-based Waze has a worldwide user base of about 50 million people who log in to access or submit real-time navigational data, using t...

As far as Iceland goes, Edward Snowden may be left out in the cold Snowden, the whistleblower who made international headlines after leaking secrets about the U.S. National Security Agency's PRISM program, is believed to currently be in Hong Kong. Given Hong Kong's history of extraditing people to the United States -- and Snowden, to be sure, will ...

Major information technology companies are hoping to seize the moment in an effort to restrain what they consider to be an abuse of intellectual property rights by so-called patent trolls. In a recent flurry of activity, lawmakers and the Obama administration have taken steps to support large IT companies seeking patent claim reforms The big IT co...

Overdraft costs on consumer checking accounts vary widely across financial institutions and often result in more costs and more involuntary account closures for consumers who opt into such coverage, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reported on Tuesday "Consumers need to be able to anticipate and avoid unnecessary fees on their checking acco...