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This story was originally published on July 26, 2012, and is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. WORX, a power tool company, has a unique Pinterest board: one devoted entirely to tools that aid in zombie defense. The WORX JawSaw, for instance, has a pin that tells consumers to "accessorize before they rise, and protect you...

As I look back on 2012, a number of products stand out as memorable. I figured I'd use my last column of the year to take a moment to recall each one and what made it special. This is also the time I look back and pick my product of the year -- the one product that I just can't live without. ...

The decentralization of software and services has greatly changed the way businesses need to approach and appeal to their customers' whims. Before, software vendors could work with distributors to get their boxes onto shelves and into customers' hands -- but when was the last time you went to Fry's or Best Buy and purchased a physical disc to install? Today's software and software buyer simply don't need or want to interact that way, opening new ways for vendors to put their wares in front of and ultimately in the hands of their audience...

The gaming revolution has begun Ouya, a startup that launched with the outsized goal of challenging the big three gaming platforms of Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, reported on Friday that it had shipped 1,200 consoles to developers. The Android-based product is a deceptively simple-looking cube the size of a coffee mug, which is meant to hook up to...

So you thought those photos and videos you sent using Snapchat or Poke -- you know, the embarrassing ones -- were supposed to self-destruct after being viewed by the intended recipient? Not so fast It turns out that there's a way to save them that doesn't require a lot of skill or expense....

The Chinese government issued a set of new Internet rules on Friday. Internet users must now provide their real names to service providers, and ISPs are required to delete forbidden posts and report such activities to authorities. In other words, the so-called "Great Firewall of China" has been further fortified "This is just another indication t...

Some Netflix customers found themselves without service on Christmas Eve -- an unpardonable lapse on a day when many are snuggled in their homes and eager for entertainment The streaming video provider has caught its fair share of flak for the outage -- but it was not solely to blame for its service being down in this particular instance. There wer...

More bibliophiles are turning to e-books rather than their paper forebears for their reading consumption The percentage of people who read e-books in the past year jumped from 16 percent to 23 percent, according to a study by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project....

A Chinese court fined Apple 1 million yuan, or roughly US$160,000, because its App Store hosted third-party applications that were peddling pirated e-books Bloomberg reports that the ruling stems from a suit brought by a group of Chinese authors earlier this year. The group originally was seeking 10 million yuan....

A revised version of Video Privacy Protection Act that would allow services such as Netflix to facilitate "frictionless sharing" of a user's viewing history via Facebook or other online services is awaiting President Obama's signature. The U.S. Senate passed the update to the 1988 law late last week; the same legislation cleared the House days ear...

One of the features of Amazon Prime, in addition to free two-day shipping, is access to free video content. To sweeten the deal, Amazon is using its Amazon Studios division to produce original content: The company revealed last week that it has ordered six pilots for original series, which will become available on Prime Instant Video Amazon plans t...

How much do federal agencies need to spend on data center consolidation investments now, in order to save money later? It could be quite a lot....

Falcon Pro (for Twitter), an app from Joaquim Vergs, is available for US$0.99 at Google Play.Falcon Pro (for Twitter) pitches itself as "the ultimate Twitter experience on Android," and whileone can usually take these app-store hyperbole laden statements with an idiom-ladenstatement -- in this case a grain of salt -- there is one thing that I'm lo...

The world cheered -- well, at least the nerds cheered -- when Google's autonomous cars drove 1,000 miles with no human intervention and another 140,000 miles with occasional human intervention in 2010 ...

An unavoidable part of the holidays is finding oneself in a less than flattering photo, but in the era of social media those seemingly "private" photos can become "public" all too easily. Often this can prompt a person unwittingly displayed to start beating the privacy drum. This week the cry for privacy came from a Zuckerberg -- namely Randi Zuck...

For the eighth straight year, Amazon achieved the top position in ForeSee's survey of customer satisfaction during the holiday shopping season Amazon maintained its No. 1 score of 88 out of 100 in the annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index....

Google is heading into the new year with a new set of enterprise customers, the result of moves made this year to revamp its cloud-based productivity applications. For years, Google has been infiltrating areas beyond its core search business. This was the first year it was able to make real headway with large-scale customer adoption for its collab...

Instagram's recent changes to its terms of service have led one user to file a proposed class action lawsuit against the company, alleging breach of contract and other violations The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last week by California user Lucy Funes, claims that Instagram's "unilateral" changes to its terms of use transfer ...

Online advertising spending hit a record US$9.26 billion in the third quarter of 2012, an 18 percent increase over the same period last year The IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report for the third quarter of 2012, released last week by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, shows a 6 percent increase from the previous quar...

Lonely Planet, the travel guide and guidebook giant, has temporarily closed Thorn Tree, a popular online travel forum, because of pedophilia-related posts, according to The Age The BBC, which bought out Lonely Planet in 2011, made the decision to take Thorn Tree offline. BBC executives, who were reportedly tipped off by a user who pointed out "swe...