Articles by Kris Holt

Google on Monday announced a number of new features to the Google Play Games platform that are intended to boost discoverability and cross-platform multiplayer gaming while providing developers with deeper analytics Three out of every four people who use the Android operating system play games, according to Google. Given that there are more than 1 ...

It appears Amazon is ready to take its brand of gaming to television screens, based on leaked photos of a game controller the company purportedly is working on The images, which blogger Dave Zatz on Fridayreported finding on the website of a Brazilian regulatory authority, show a controller with typical game controls alongside media playback button...

Amazon is hiking the price of the Amazon Prime subscription service for the first time since it launched nine years ago. Members will have to pay US$99 for their subscription instead of $79. Amazon Student members will pay $49 for the service....

Apple has released a major update for iOS that takes its mobile firmware beyond the confines of smartphones and tablets and onto car dashboards ...

Intel is set to speed up data transmission by providing MXC cables for use in data centers and with supercomputers. The company plans to start selling the high-speed cables later this year. The cables are take advantage of silicon photonics technology, which uses light to move large volumes of data at high speeds through thin optical fibers.

Titanfall -- a video game for several Microsoft platforms -- is about to be released, and the company apparently sees it as a hugely important title for its Xbox One console Titanfall is a multiplayer shooter that pits two teams of up to six players against each other in open combat. Players control "pilots," who can either engage with each other d...

The use of commercial drones in U.S. airspace is essentially legal, at least for the time being National Transportation Safety Board Judge Patrick Geraghty this week nixed the Federal Aviation Administration's attempt to levy a US$10,000 against Raphael Pirker for using a remote-controlled glider to capture video footage for an ad....

Kraft wants you to wake up and smell the Oscar Mayer bacon, and its latest marketing campaign could point to smell-related technology finally getting a whiff of success ...

Roku has announced a new HDMI dongle for televisions ...

Facebook reportedly is in talks to buy drone maker Titan Aerospace to bolster Internet.org, the project that aims to provide Internet connectivity everywhere in the world Facebook, which is one of the main backers of Internet.org, intends to buy Titan for US$60 million, according to TechCrunch.

Several members of Hollywood's elite walked out of the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles clutching golden statues on Sunday, but it might have been Samsung that landed the largest victory at the event Partway through the show, host Ellen DeGeneres stopped to capture the moment by using a Samsung phone to take a selfie while on stage. She repeated the gi...

Google has added hands-free voice search to the latest beta version of the Chrome Web browser Users need not have to interrupt messy housework and first wash their hands in order to search for a recipe for homemade glass cleaner, for example. All they need to do is open a new tab or go to the Google homepage, say the words "OK Google," and dictate ...

Google is ramping up its plans to bring the Project Ara modular smartphone to market by scheduling the first developer conference for the device The company will hold the conference on April 15-16 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. A limited number of developers will be able to attend the conference in person, but anyone can pa...

Target reported financial results for the quarter during which it suffered a high-profile data breach, revealing how badly the company was stung by the security lapses In the three months ending Feb. 1, net earnings dropped by 46 percent compared with the year-ago fourth quarter, from US$961 million to $520 million. Profit dropped by more than 40 p...

BlackBerry has announced new handsets and services aimed at moving the company forward as it tries to recover from a lackluster 2013 At the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, CEO John Chen debuted two new phones -- the Q20 and the low-cost Z3. ...

Netflix users who subscribe to Comcast Internet services soon may enjoy much smoother streaming video The companies have agreed to a "mutually beneficial interconnection agreement" with the goal of giving Comcast's U.S. broadband customers a high-quality experience when using Netflix's streaming video service....

Google is making an increased push into the 3D imaging sphere with the announcement of its Project Tango technology The project is aimed at helping mobile devices fully map a 3D space to give them the same type of understanding of space and motion that humans have through a blend of robotics and computer vision tools....

Google has revealed plans to expand its Google Fiber Internet service to as many as 34 new cities Google Fiber offers connection speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps -- around 100 times faster than the average U.S. speeds of 9.8 Mb/sec, according to Akamai -- by providing service through fiber-optic cables instead of copper wiring.

LinkedIn is making a fresh push into the original content market by opening up its publishing platform The company until now allowed only selected "influencers" to use the service's long-form publishing tools to craft posts offering professional advice, insights and inspiration to other users. Such influencers have tended to be well-known figures, ...

King Digital Entertainment, creator of the blockbuster social game Candy Crush Saga, is planning to go public The company filed its initial public offering paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week.