Spotlight Features

The New Golden Age of TV

Over the top, or OTT, video-streaming service Netflix has been doing something right. Netflix snagged 15 prime-time Emmy nominations for its original series, including best drama for House of Cards and best comedy for Orange Is the New Black. The company, which launched in 1997 as a DVD-by-mail se...

Apple's Big Blue Dilemma

Apple reportedly is gearing up to do what it does best -- introduce a new gadget or two. Word is the company will hold a spellbinding iPhone event come Sept. 9. With the dust not quite settled over Apple's recently announced liaison with IBM, it will be interesting to see whether there are any new c...

Sequoia Capital recently led a US$100 million round of funding for South Korean retailer Coupang, suggesting that the rapidly growing Korean e-commerce market is the hot new scene for investors looking to capitalize on a country full of mobile shoppers. Founded and run by the Korean-born, Harvard-ed...

The Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL has sent just about everyone who uses the Web for fun or profit gibbering madly in search of a solution, creating fertile ground for spammers, scammers and marketing types. Canada is in an uproar following a disclosure by the Canada Revenue Agency that a hacke...

The uproar that erupted over Mozilla Foundation cofounder Brendan Eich's appointment as CEO of its subsidiary Mozilla Corp. and resulted in his stepping down earlier this month perhaps was symptomatic of the troubles the foundation is going through, in that opposition to his taking the post had both...

Cloud service users are becoming more vocal about what they want from cloud providers and how they want to pay for it -- and cloud providers may be listening. Cloud firms are beginning to offer more flexible options and are gradually shifting to utility-style pricing models. There is no single facto...

Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates in the United States rejoiced when U.S. Federal District Court Judge Richard Leon ruled last month that the NSA's collection of bulk telephony metadata is likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, their joy was short-li...

The NSA's surveillance of Americans' emails, Web searches and phone calls has angered the nation, but lawmakers remain divided on the issue. Bipartisan groups have spoken out against the surveillance and a few have introduced legislation to curb it, but some contend it is essential to protect Americ...

Plasma's Fade to Black

As the 2013 International CES approached a year ago, it was clear that a showdown between OLED and 4K -- or UltraHD -- was brewing in the TV display market. A year later, that showdown is fully under way, but with a notable twist. Specifically, Panasonic's announcement in late October that it would ...

Mentioning virtualization technology to typical computer users in a work environment will get you a puzzled look. Despite the apparent obscurity of this IT trend, virtualization is making an increasingly large impact on small to medium-sized businesses. Some type of virtualization was reported in pl...

Red costume, white beard, ruddy cheeks, cheery voice and smiling, twinkly-eyed charm -- all are indispensable tools for any self-respecting Santa Claus. Nowadays, however, there's a lot more than mere lovable magic going on in the business of being Mr. Claus. Modern Santa has gone high-tech, and tod...

Turn-by-turn directions have become a common technological enhancement to the automotive world thanks to a set of satellites dedicated to the task. To date, these radio positioning signals have been supplied to consumers primarily by the U.S. military through a satellite constellation called "GPS," ...

What are the three objects that you're most likely to grab as you leave the house today? They are likely to be your keys, your smartphone and your wallet, complete with cash and plastic bank cards. Well, if some forward-thinkers have their way, within a short time you'll just be grabbing the keys an...

Most of us have a hard enough time keeping track of the security implications of the services we've signed up for, but recently an assertion was made that should send chills down the spine of virtually anyone who ever uses the Web. Namely, Google can scan and use the electronic communications not ju...

Mobile device users' privacy will be safeguarded under a new transparency code of conduct created in an effort involving 40 groups ranging from businesses to advocacy groups and led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling hailed ...

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