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Reading Rainbow's Kickstarter campaign hit a significant milestone last week: It not only raised the $1 million it originally sought to create a Web version of the popular children's television show within the first 24 hours of the campaign, but also wrapped the 35-day effort with an additional $4.4...

OPINION

The Social Media Fraud

I spent much of last week talking about Facebook's infamous study of nearly a million customers and the company's attempts to make half of those customers happier and the other half more depressed. Setting aside how insanely stupid it was for Facebook to do this is the fact that with social media, i...

Microsoft is said to be preparing the launch of a wearable fitness device that will be compatible with the iOS and Android platforms, as well as Windows Phone. While the device likely will display the time, along with notifications from the user's smartphone, the form factor is expected to be a wris...

The U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has come under fire for its latest report on NSA surveillance. The report essentially says collection of information under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "has been valuable and effective in protecting the nation's securit...

There's a lot riding on Apple's new Photos for Mac OS X app. At WWDC, Apple briefly showed off an early version of its upcoming Photos app, which will integrate with iCloud and the iOS 8-based Photos app with the iCloud Photo Library service. Naturally, this plan raised some questions about Apple's ...

As the anticipated April 2015 launch of Threshold, the next major version of Windows OS, draws closer, Microsoft is tightening up its features. One of the OS Group's main goals in the design and development of Threshold is to make it more palatable to Windows 7 users, it seems. New features aimed at...

Fans of the sitcom Community have cause to celebrate after Yahoo renewed the show for a sixth season. Creator and showrunner Dan Harmon has signed on, along with seven core cast members. The season will have at least 13 episodes and will air weekly starting this fall. NBC ran the show, which centers...

Roughly three months after the launch of its flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone, Samsung on Tuesday debuted the device's smaller sibling: the widely anticipated Galaxy S5 mini. Featuring a 4.5-inch HD 720 x 1280 Super AMOLED display, the Galaxy S5 mini comes equipped with a Quad Core 1.4-GHz processor an...

The energy industry in the United States and Europe is being targeted by a cybercriminal gang that's suspected of being state-sponsored and has links to Russia. Known variously as "Dragonfly" and "Energetic Bear," the group has been operating at least since 2011. Its focus appears to be espionage an...

As any Android user knows, the version of the operating system you're using can vary widely because it depends on parties other than Google. That's why nearly two-thirds of users are running a version of Android introduced in 2012 or earlier. With Android making the leap to wearables and the Interne...

Salesforce and Philips last week announced they had teamed up on a cloud computing initiative designed to transform existing healthcare platforms. The companies plan to create an open cloud-based healthcare platform that will allow everyone from software developers to health insurance companies to c...

Once again, Facebook is embroiled in a controversy over privacy. This time, hackles have been raised by publication of a study for which the company manipulated the News Feeds of nearly 700,000 subscribers. The study concluded that, yes, negative messages on social networks make people sad, and posi...

OPINION

The Big Winners at Google I/O 2014

At last week's Google I/O, Nvidia was the big winner. It was showcased in TVs, mobile devices and automotive as the supplier of a key technology. Other brands were mentioned in the keynote, but it was Nvidia that was mentioned most consistently -- and its technology apparently was connected to most...

The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz, a documentary directed and produced by Brian Knappenberger, is opening at theaters and online this weekend -- and re-opening wounds about the subject and his suicide. It is also serving as a reminder that often the good guy doesn't win, said tech an...

Facebook, not known for respecting users' privacy, is battling a New York County district attorney's demand for all information pertaining to the accounts of several hundred of its subscribers. DA Cyrus Vance's office issued 381 secret warrants for the information in July of 2013 in a hunt for retir...


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