Technology

Sony announced Tuesday that its SmartWatch 2 and its Xperia Z1 and Z Ultra smartphones, introduced in Europe and Asia earlier this year, are now available in the U.S. Sony beat rivals Apple and Samsung to market with its SmartWatch, and is now selling an updated model. At a price point of $200, the ...

CROWDFUNDING SPOTLIGHT

castAR Makes the World Your 3D Playground

Do you remember the scene in an early Star Wars movie where R2-D2 and Chewbacca played a holographically generated, Jedi 3D board game while killing time in their light freighter? Full-color, three-dimensional game pieces were projected onto the board. Chewbacca wasn't a particularly good loser, and...

British retailer WH Smith has shuttered its UK site and will keep it offline until all particularly objectionable sexual content is removed from its offerings. Last week, technology news site The Kernel reported that WH Smith -- along with Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other retailers -- was sellin...

The Internet is actualizing the vision of a global village today. Cars are becoming infotainment centers with online connections; printers, home appliances and even door locks are being connected to the Internet; and some cities have begun putting in hundreds of sensors to help them better manage th...

The Russian government plans to produce a patriotic video game to offset the legions of games in which Russian soldiers are the villains. Russia is also mulling a ban on foreign video games that it claims "distort historical facts." Russia's culture ministry cited Company of Heroes as particularly p...

OPINION

The Technology Wave You Never Saw Coming

Here in Silicon Valley we are currently worried about a major transportation strike, and I doubt many on either side yet realize that this is likely to accelerate the move to automate most of the related jobs. There is little doubt the problem we are currently seeing here will be virtually gone in a...

The Android gaming market is becoming increasingly crowded, but on Thursday Sunflex announced a fresh contender: the Unu, a combination console, tablet and home entertainment device that will arrive at retail next month. The Unu offers the promise of bringing virtually any game from Google Play to t...

TECH TREK

Russia Nabs 'Blackhole' Hacking Suspect

Police in Russia have arrested a man suspected of masterminding a pair of famous hacking tools -- the Blackhole and Cool exploit kits, favorites among cybercriminals looking to install malware. Russian authorities have been mum on the situation, but security firms have reported a decline in the prog...

TECH TREK

Foxconn in Trouble Again Over PS4

Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, one of the world's most vilified workers-rights violators, confirmed reports that it is manufacturing Sony's upcoming PlayStation 4 on the backs of university interns. Chinese media broke the story, asserting that thousands of students from an engineering program at t...

Disney Research has developed an algorithm that will render 3D textures and tactile features on a touchscreen, it announced earlier this week, enabling users to "feel" the on-screen images they touch and see. The technology works on still images as well as streaming videos, and it achieves its effec...

Early upgrade plans are tips of the hat to phone-as-fashion-statement. Who wants a graying two-year-old phone? Such plans do come at a cost, however. What if you don't actually need a new phone and the innards and battery are still good? If you're not a hard-core phone geek, aren't they all just abo...

TECH TREK

110 Arrested in China for Online Rumors

China continues to crack down on online rumors, as 110 people were detained in the northwest China province of Xinjiang. Those arrested are accused of creating and spreading rumors, instigating violence and disseminating religious extremism. Xinjiang, which until the 1940s was not part of China, is ...

Hard on the heels of LG's announcement earlier this week that it is planning flexible-display handsets of its own, Samsung Electronics on Wednesday announced the release of the Galaxy Round, which it says is the world's first smartphone featuring a curved screen. Both Samsung and LG also offer curve...

The company that brought Apple-style elegance to the lowly home thermostat is attempting to do the same for the common smoke detector. Nest Labs, founded by Apple emigres Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, on Tuesday announced Nest Protect, a $129 combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector with more s...

Russia's Pirate Party wrote a letter to NASA offering to host the agency's website, which is currently out of commission because of the government shutdown. The Pirate Party -- a minority political movement in many European countries predicated on privacy and transparency -- informed NASA that it co...

Technewsworld Channels