Category: What’s On

Google has already brought its Fiber high-speed Internet service to six cities across the U.S., but it may soon add Dallas, the home turf of AT&T, to its list of deployment targets. In a blog post earlier today, Google announced that is "exploring the possibility" of rolling out its Fiber service in Dallas. AT&T, which is headquartered in Dallas, is already offering its high-speed GigaPower Internet service across several major cities in Texas, and has plans to expand the service to

At its Tech World event in San Francisco yesterday, Lenovo unveiled a prototype of a phone that can bend around your wrist, as well as a concept tablet that can fold to act as a regular smartphone. The devices, not yet ready for market but rather "a sign of things to come," add Lenovo to the small but growing list of companies, led by LG and Samsung, that are building new flexible electronic devices for consumers, according to Lenovo CTO Peter

Global IP traffic is expected to triple over the next five years, as a result of more than 1 billion new Internet users coming online before 2020, according to Cisco. As many as 10 billion new devices may join the Internet in that time, bringing the total number of connected devices up to 26.3 billion from the 16.3 billion that were connected in 2015. The study is part of Cisco Visual Network Index, which conducts IP traffic and service production forecasts

Tech giant Google's Maps feature lets users find and view the exterior of virtually any building. Are you ready to look inside? Google’s Tango, previously known as Project Tango, aims to map the indoor world just as Google Maps has charted the outdoor world. Tango is meant to help users find everything inside a building, including hallways and offices. What might interest Google and its advertisers even more could be Tango’s ability to find things like products in stores.This week device

Introduced with the release of Google's Android Marshmallow operating system last year, the Now on Tap feature has just been made a bit smarter. A one-touch tool for accessing information about what's displayed on a device's screen, Now on Tap has just been updated to provide users with even more specific details they might find helpful.While reading an article, for example, a user can now select a specific word or phrase, and then tap and hold the home button to

The tiny Core pocket computer from Pebble Technology will have a very big friend on its side once it reaches the marketplace: Amazon. Pebble announced this week that Pebble Core will be the first standalone wearable device to integrate Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant technology. Alexa is currently used in only a handful of Amazon’s own products, including the Amazon Echo voice-enabled wireless speaker. So far, developers have released more than 1,000 skills for Alexa, according to Amazon. The digital personal assistant

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a new suite of applications and services yesterday to help businesses comprehensively manage, govern and extract actionable insights from enterprise information. The new suite, called HPE Verity, aims to offer companies a set of tools that are both integrated and modular. The objective of HPE Verity is to address the problem enterprises have trying to manage a wide variety of data types, including social media, instant messages, video, and voice, using soloed on-premise solutions. Verity, in

Online abuse, harassment and trolling have proven to be stubborn problems for many social networking sites, but Periscope believes users might find help through a jury of their peers. The Twitter-owned video-streaming app announced yesterday that it was introducing a new and "community-led" tool to let users report comments they find spammy or abusive. Following such reports, a random group of viewers will be asked to vote on what they think about the comment in question. If a majority agrees the

A lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in California has alleged that Apple, Broadcom and Avago Technologies, a Broadcom subsidiary, have infringed on several Wi-Fi-related patents held by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Filed Thursday in the Central District of California, the complaint claimed that the companies are wrongfully using intellectual property protected by four U.S. patents awarded to Caltech between 2006 and 2012. The patents are for a new and simpler type of error correction code that

A new line of chips from Qualcomm aim to be the go-to hardware to power the growing wearables market. Over the weekend, the chipmaker announced a new line of processors called the Snapdragon Wear 1100, containing numerous functions and complex usage capabilities. The new chipsets will be integrated into smart watches, smart headsets and various accessories. The new chips, which are meant to complement Qualcomm’s recently introduced Snapdragon Wear 2100 chip, were announced at the Computex trade show in Taipei.The Snapdragon

A new 10-core processor from Intel debuted at Computex yesterday, one of four new CPUs the company unveiled. While ostensibly designed for the desktop market, the chips might have more in common with their server-level cousins, both in terms of price and computing power. The 10-core model alone will set you back a cool $1,723, more than enough to buy your own system. The company is promoting the four new chips, which come with 10, eight, or six cores, as an

An ultrathin high-end laptop, a new line of smartphones and a "home robot" named Zenbo helped Taiwan-based Asus grab numerous headlines ahead of today's launch of the Computex 2016 ICT expo and conference in Taipei. During a preview "Zenvolution" press event at Computex yesterday, Asus introduced a new family of ZenFone 3 smartphones, as well as a number of new devices developed in collaboration with Intel. It also took the wraps off its first-ever robotic assistant, which is designed to provide

This summer, Acer will begin releasing a number of new devices aimed at different types of users, including a new series of notebooks for business users and two new 2-in-1s for students and budget-conscious buyers. Taiwan-based Acer plans to showcase its latest releases at next week's Computex expo in Taipei. It also plans to unveil its BeingWare vision for smart city and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.Computex, which highlights IoT, startup, business and gaming technology, has already named Acer as a

Big Blue is teaming up with cloud communication platform Twilio to introduce two new offerings, IBM Watson Message Sentiment and IBM Watson Message Insights. Twilio, which functions as a communication tool for developers and businesses, will make both offerings available as add-ons through its recently announced marketplace, according to IBM. Developers who currently access Watson technology via Bluemix, IBM's cloud platform, can also use the two new Watson offerings.The new add-ons are designed to offer additional message enhancement capabilities through natural

The latest acquisition by Intel could give it a big leg up in the race to develop Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous driving technology. The chipmaker signed an agreement yesterday to acquire computer vision software company Itseez Inc. The 11-year-old San Francisco-based firm will become part of Intel’s IoT Group (IOTG). “Intel is focused on delivering end-to-end IoT solutions addressing devices, wired and wireless networks and the cloud,” Doug Davis, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s IOTG, wrote

Online payment service PayPal is abandoning the apps that it created for Microsoft Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Amazon Fire OS. The company announced the move this week on its blog. The news paves the way for PayPal to steer users toward the latest versions of its app for Apple's IOS and Google's Android. Those two platforms have come to dominate the mobile payment space. The last day of support for the Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Amazon Kindle apps will be June

A new proposal by House Republicans would effectively put an end to net neutrality while slashing funding for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The legislation would reduce the agency’s funding by more than 17 percent, likely leaving the agency crippled and incapable of enforcing its regulations. The proposal would also explicitly prohibit the agency from making any rules regarding either cable set-top boxes or Net neutrality. “The bill contains $315 million for the FCC -- a cut of $69 million below

Having conversations on Twitter will become easier as the microblogging site rolls out some changes to how tweets work over the next few months, the company announced today. The most significant change carves out several new exceptions to what information counts toward Twitter's long-established 140-character tweet limit. Attachments like photos, GIFs, polls, videos and quote tweets will no longer be included within that limit, nor will the @names that appear at the beginning of replies to another person's tweets.Twitter users will

In addition to protecting your iPhone, the new uniVerse Case System from Otterbox also promises to let you expand its battery life, improve its sound quality, and add other functions. The new system, designed for the Apple iPhone 6 and 6s and the iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus, allows a user to attach an additional battery, camera lens, or other peripheral to a phone, while still protecting the device in rugged or hazardous environments. "Innovation in the mobile technology world

Tech giant Microsoft said today that it has awarded grants to entrepreneurs who want to expand Internet access across the world, especially in less prosperous areas that lack affordable access. The company's Affordable Access Initiative awards grants to startup companies that are developing new technologies to improve Internet access to communities. The goal of the initiative is to "democratize access to the Internet through grants, commercial partnerships, connecting new leaders and community engagement," according to Microsoft. The companies that are selected

A long-standing lawsuit that claims Google's Android operating system infringes on Oracle's Java copyright is heading to a jury today for a final decision. Previous court decisions have ruled in Google's favor, but were partially reversed two years ago by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The complaint, which centers on whether Google's use of some Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in Android constitutes "fair use," was returned to U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup after the U.S.

Noting that "terrorism is one of the truly urgent issues of our time," Microsoft recently said it is taking several steps to identify and combat extremist content online. Those measures include a change in its terms of use to prohibit the posting of terrorist content on Microsoft consumer services like Xbox Live, OneDrive, Skype and Outlook, according to a blog post on Friday. The company defines such content as material posted by or supporting groups identified as terrorist organizations on the

Big Blue has announced that it is now offering the Nvidia Tesla M60 GPU accelerator to enterprise clients in the cloud. IBM said it is the first company to do so, giving companies of all sizes easier and more affordable access to virtual desktop applications without having to skimp on performance. The Tesla M60 (pictured above) is the latest in a line of Nvidia GPUs available through IBM Cloud. The Tesla K80 and the Tesla K10 are also available to companies

At its WWDC developer conference in San Francisco next month, Apple is reportedly planning to unveil an OS X update that would let iPhone owners unlock their Macs using the Touch ID feature on their phones. While not identifying its sources, an article published yesterday by MacRumors said Apple engineers were working on a Bluetooth-enabled auto unlock feature that might be included in OS X 10.12, the next version of the operating system for Macs. That feature would allow individuals to

A new developer portal and Android SDK (software developer kit) for SoftBank’s robot platform are aimed at convincing developers to build apps for the Pepper humanoid robot. Although the platform was first announced two years ago, the decision to open it up to Android apps should help greatly expand the base of app developers working on Pepper programs. “By making Pepper compatible with Android, Android application developers will be able to utilize their existing knowledge and technologies to develop RoboApps for

To help Skype continue making inroads into the enterprise, Microsoft has launched Skype for Business SDK (software developer kit). The new product is a set of tools that lets iOS and Android developers integrate Skype’s messaging, audio and voice capabilities into their mobile applications. The goal of Microsoft's Skype for Business SDK is to allow Skype to power the communications experience inside applications, so developers can focus on building the unique features of their products. The initial focus of the SDK

In the latest update to its mobile mail app, Yahoo has introduced several new features aimed at making navigation and information-sharing easier on iOS and Android mobile devices. Unveiled Tuesday, the latest version of the Yahoo Mail app for iPhones and other Apple devices (shown above) includes a preview function for links, new support for stationery, and a quick-sharing button for content on mobile devices.For Android, the update brings a new directory that lets users view all people they've communicated with

At its I/O Developers Conference this week, Google announced a new product that had been an open secret for several months. The Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is named after the TensorFlow software it uses for its machine learning programs. In announcing the chip, Google referred to the TPU as an accelerator chip, able to speed up a given task, like data analysis or voice translation. When he introduced the TPU at the I/O conference, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said it provides

Despite the plethora of graphic design tools available to organizations, creating good visual content is often a labor-intensive process requiring many hours of work by highly trained professionals. A new suite of software by Adobe, however, is hoping to change that. The platform, called Adobe Spark, is designed to help non-professional designers create their own visual content. Besides being a fun tool for students and individuals, the Spark platform could also prove to be a huge benefit for entrepreneurs and small

Researchers at IBM say they've achieved a "significant milestone" in an emerging type of memory technology called phase-change memory (PCM). Because it doesn't lose data when power is turned off and can endure millions of read-write cycles, PCM could eventually enable new levels of performance in a wide range of devices. During a demonstration today at the International Memory Workshop in Paris, IBM researchers showed how they can store three bits, rather than one, in every cell of a PCM array

The Firefox Web browser has overtaken both of Microsoft’s browsers put together when it comes to market share, according to a new report. That’s the good news for Mozilla, which develops Firefox. The bad news is that Google’s Chrome browser is leaving both Mozilla and Microsoft in the dust. According to the latest figures from Statcounter, 60.5 percent of worldwide users opted for Chrome as their browser of choice in April, compared with 15.6 percent who selected Firefox, 15.5 percent who

Since shortly after Twitter launched in 2006, users of the microblogging site have generally been limited to tweets of no more than 140 characters each. However, the company is reportedly considering a change to eliminate images and links from that limit. The length restriction on tweets made sense in the pre-smartphone era, when SMS text messages had to abide by similar limits. But today's much more powerful mobile devices, along with the explosion of information in a wide variety of formats,

Among the apps and other innovations Google expects to highlight during its I/O 2016 developer conference in Mountain View, Calif., this week is Project Tango, its technology for bringing "a new kind of spatial perception" to the Android device platform.Google is planning "a big expansion" of the project it first unveiled in 2014, according to a report by Bloomberg last week. Much like Google Maps enables users to visualize streets, buildings and cities around the world, Project Tango aims to

They hog resources, take too long to load and are often embedded with malware. That's why Google is planning to phase out Adobe Flash videos in its Chrome Web browser by the end of this year. Google disclosed its plan to ditch the multimedia player in a proposal that was published on its Chromium-dev Google Groups page last week. Instead, Chrome will transition to HTML5 as its default media player. HTML5 is a markup language that supports multimedia content.The tech giant