Category: What’s On

The numbers of women, African-Americans and Hispanic employees working at Apple over the past year have all increased by double digits, although the company's U.S. workforce remains predominantly white and male -- a trend that holds true across large swaths of the tech sector. "We are proud of the progress we've made . . . But we know there is a lot more work to be done," noted CEO Tim Cook when he revealed Apple's latest diversity figures this week. Apple

Business users already had the option of Chromebooks aimed specifically at them -- in particular, the high-end, $999-and-up Pixel -- but now they have a more affordable option from Dell and Google: the Chromebook 13, which starts at the far more affordable price of $399. Launched yesterday, the Chromebook 13 is being described as the "first premium professional Chromebook." Introduced by Google in 2011, the Chrome OS-based Chromebooks are designed to run primarily on the Internet and the cloud. Thanks to

Big Blue just spent $1 billion to give Watson the ability to see. IBM's supercomputer is getting an upgrade with technology acquired from Merge Healthcare, which will add data and images to Watson’s advanced image analytics and cognitive abilities. Merge Healthcare has made a name for itself providing medical image handling and processing, interoperability and clinical systems that work to advance healthcare quality and efficiency. The company’s goal is to unlock the value of medical images to help physicians make better

A federal judge in California has denied a request to allow a former iPhone user to proceed with her complaint against Apple as a class-action lawsuit. The request by Adrienne Moore centered around her discovery that she was no longer able to receive iMessages from some other Apple device users after switching to an Android phone. Moore filed her suit against Apple in May of last year, alleging that the iMessage system prevented her from obtaining the full benefit of her

Government overreach is the primary culprit that keeps the Internet from being the free and open source of information and ideas that it could be, according to a leading computer crime defense attorney. Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, addressed the subject of Internet freedom yesterday in her keynote address at the annual Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas.Granick said that as long as there’s overregulation, censorship and laws that don’t

A French order to apply the "right to be forgotten" to Google searches not just across European domains but globally would risk "serious chilling effects on the Web," according to the Internet search giant. Rather than comply, Google is asking the French agency that issued the order to withdraw it. France's Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés, or CNIL, issued the global delisting order to Google in June, giving the company 15 days to respond. However, the company "respectfully disagree(s)

Tech company Nvidia has just issued a voluntary recall of about 88,000 of its Shield eight-inch tablets. If you bought your Shield between July 2014 and July 2015, it seems you might need to worry about the tablet catching fire. The good news is Nvidia will replace the one in your hands absolutely free. “Nvidia has determined that the battery in these tablets can overheat, posing a fire hazard,” the company said in a statement. “The recall does not affect any

Tech company Nvidia has just issued a voluntary recall of about 88,000 of its Shield eight-inch tablets. If you bought your Shield between July 2014 and July 2015, it seems you might need to worry about the tablet catching fire. The good news is Nvidia will replace the one in your hands absolutely free. “Nvidia has determined that the battery in these tablets can overheat, posing a fire hazard,” the company said in a statement. “The recall does not affect any

In an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Mozilla CEO Chris Beard (pictured) said it's "disturbing" that the new Windows 10 operating system makes it difficult for users to choose anything but Microsoft's Edge as their default browser. Beard is asking Microsoft to reconsider its approach and make user settings with Windows 10 more obvious and intuitive to manage. Beard, whose organization develops the Firefox Web browser, said Mozilla contacted Microsoft about its concerns after trying out pre-release versions of

United Airlines is the latest to fall victim to a data breach. The hackers stole flight manifests, which disclose information about passengers on the flight and their destinations. News reports are pointing fingers at hackers backed by China. Some are attributing the attacks to the same group that attacked health insurer Anthem and U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). In February, Anthem informed millions of its customers that hackers had gained access to the company's computers, potentially stealing personal information of

Tech giant Google today announced an update to its Google Translate app that expands its instant visual translation capabilities by 20 more languages, for a total of 27. The camera mode of the app now supports 37 languages. The Google Translate app was already known as a handy little device that allows users to instantly translate already printed text in seven languages by clicking on an in-app camera and pointing it at the text they need to translate.The app was developed

Russian Hackers Use Twitter To Hack U.S. TargetsIf your company has been experiencing an unusual amount of traffic from Twitter lately, you may be in for a shock. A hacker group suspected of being supported by the Russian government has been using the micro-blogging platform to hack into U.S. computer networks, according to a new report by computer security firm FireEye. The hacking group is what is known as an advanced persistent threat, and has been classified as APT29. Using a

After much hype and an abundance of testing, Windows 10 -- the latest version of the Microsoft Windows operating system -- begins this week, with release starting July 29. The new OS is scheduled to roll out in phases, going first to Windows Insiders and then being released in waves to users who have made reservations online. Enterprise users will begin seeing Windows 10 on August 1. Windows 10 will be the "last" version of the operating system. Rather than releasing

Tech giant Google said it has reduced transcription errors by 49 percent with the latest improvements it's rolled out to Google Voice and Project Fi. The search giant's researchers and engineers achieved the performance upgrade using something called a "long short-term memory deep recurrent neural network." Combined with content provided by Google Voice users, that network enabled researchers to find a way to improve the accuracy of voicemail-to-text transcriptions, which in the past could prove either unintelligible or "humorously intelligible." A

A redesign of YouTube’s mobile platform was one of a number of key announcements made by Susan Wojcicki (pictured), the company's CEO, yesterday. Wojcicki gave the keynote address at VidCon in Anaheim, Calif., for the second straight year. She was greeted as a hero at the annual online video conference, receiving numerous rounds of applause during her talk. She said mobile video is the top priority for YouTube, which is observing its 10th anniversary this year. That focus is borne out

Have you ever received an e-mail that sounds snarky and overreact because you're reading the undertones between the lines? Or has anyone ever snapped at you for an offensive e-mail that you sent with the best of intentions? IBM is working to eliminate that problem with Watson Tone Analyzer. Big Blue is convinced a computer can accurately and automatically detect the tones conveyed in a message and has taken on the challenge of helping you assess and refine your tone in

Redmond is acquiring field service management solutions provider FieldOne Systems to beef up its CRM business. Here’s the pitch in a nutshell: Consumers expect companies to engage with them in new, more convenient ways. That includes field service capabilities. Once it integrates FieldOne's technology into Dynamics CRM, Microsoft is convinced that its clients can better manage and deliver service to customers in the field. “Field service management is a specific but critically important area of customer service, providing companies with the

Microsoft is touting the latest update to its operating system, due for release starting July 29, with the line, "It's the Windows you know, only better." Underscoring the distance that Microsoft wants to put between the new OS and the previous version is the fact that it's named Windows 10 -- there will be no "9" to succeed the less-than-beloved Windows 8. Windows 10 will also be the "last" version of the operating system, according to Redmond. Rather than releasing future

An updated version of Microsoft’s Power BI service will be released July 24, the company announced Friday. The goal of the updated service is to enable business users to benefit from business intelligence and analytics without requiring sophisticated help from analysts, data scientists, or other tech staff. The new set of business-intelligence tools will replace Microsoft's current Power BI for Office 365 service. Also available on July 24 will be Power BI Desktop -- formerly known as Power BI Designer.Enhancements to

The newest version of Apple's mobile operating system is set for release this fall, but the company is -- for the first time -- offering the public a chance to take iOS 9 for a test drive. The public beta is now available for anyone to download, although Apple recommends that users first back up their devices and/or use secondary devices in case the preview OS has errors or functional problems. When it announced the coming release of iOS 9 earlier

Electronics giant Samsung is bleeding on the smartphone side, with seven straight quarters of decline. The company hopes to correct that in the quarter ahead by beating Apple to the punch. Samsung is set to roll out its next Galaxy Note phablet device in mid-August. That breaks the company’s release cycle, which usually sees new Note devices hit the market in September. The electronics giant needed to do something different because the Galaxy S6 didn’t drive the revenues it had hoped.In

Mobile application developers will be able to test the quality of their apps through a new service -- AWS Device Farm -- unveiled by Amazon Web Services. The announcement was one of several made during the AWS Cloud Summit taking place Thursday at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. Other new developments announced during the event included Amazon API Gateway, a managed service designed to help customers create and manage application programming interfaces at any scale; an expanded SaaS

On Thursday Microsoft released Office 2016 for Mac, the long-awaited productivity suite that integrates with Office 365, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, and SharePoint so that users have access documents across personal and work accounts from their devices just by signing in with their Office accounts. A preview of Office 2016 was made available in March and elicited some 100,000 pieces of feedback from testers. The final version came after seven updates in the intervening four months. Unlike the test version, the

If you read the news regularly, you read about data breaches and massive hacks just about every week. That can make you a little nervous about safeguarding your financial information. A new MasterCard survey reveals you are not alone. Seventy-seven percent of consumers are anxious about their personal and financial information being hacked. In fact, the fear of a hack is higher than the fear of compromised e-mail (62 percent) or a home robbery (59 percent).And get this: 55 percent of

Privacy Group Asks FTC To Push Google on U.S. 'Right To Be Forgotten'The failure of Google to offer users in the U.S. the same "right to be forgotten" protection available in Europe violates U.S. law on unfair and deceptive trade practices, according to the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. The organization on Tuesday submitted a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to "investigate and act." Prompted by a 2014 ruling by Europe's Court of Justice, the right to

Redmond is cleaning house. Microsoft just announced plans to restructure its phone hardware business to better focus and align resources. Part of that alignment translates to layoffs. Microsoft will cut up to 7,800 positions, primarily in the phone business. The result: an impairment charge of about $7.6 billion related to assets connected to its Nokia Devices and Services business acquisition. That’s on top of a restructuring charge of between $750 million and $850 million.“We are moving from a strategy to grow

Google's new image-recognition program misfired badly this week by identifying two black people as gorillas, delivering a mortifying reminder that even the most intelligent machines still have lot to learn about human sensitivity. The blunder surfaced in a smartphone screen shot posted online Sunday by a New York man on his Twitter account, @jackyalcine. The images showed the recently released Google Photos app had sorted a picture of two black people into a category labeled as "gorillas."The accountholder used a profanity

According to a recently published white paper, cable boxes have the potential to become protocol-agnostic Internet-of-Things (IoT) hubs and in the process begin to address the competing protocols and closed systems that continue to hold back the IoT industry. The paper was written by Susan Crouse, director of product management for Alticast, which sells products and software for multi-screen viewing and TV interactivity. In the white paper, Crouse suggested tying the many IoT hubs from makers including Belkin, Lowe's, Quirky and

In another sign of the ongoing changes in online search, Yahoo is testing a search partnership with Google. The search giant confirmed in a statement that "Yahoo is currently testing search results and ads from a number of partners, including Google as one of their options." A Yahoo spokesperson told us, "As we work to create the absolute best experiences for Yahoo users, from time to time, we run small tests with a variety of partners including search providers. There is

With an up-to-date Android or iOS device, YouTube users can now play back videos at 60 frames per second. Google-owned YouTube rolled out the HFR (high-frame-rate) option for desktop devices last fall, and expanded that to live streaming in May. For now, though, HFR live streaming remains available only on desktops, not on mobile devices.YouTube said 60 fps videos provide "silky smooth playback," especially for video games and other fast-action videos. The video site also supports HFR for 4K videos, although

Wireless carrier Sprint is backpedaling on the video streaming limits on its new All-In program. The company apparently underestimated the customer backlash that would haunt it for putting a 600 kbps maximum on the new plan. Here’s the backstory: On Tuesday, Sprint announced the All-In wireless plan for $80 a month. The plan includes a wireless device with unlimited talk, text and high-speed data.“If you went to a restaurant that advertised a cheeseburger for 99-cents, but when you show up, they

If you’re sick of your smartphone’s shaky Web capabilities and its tendency to lose power after just a few hours, Apple is feeling your pain. According to reports, the company’s next iPhone might offer faster Web connectivity and better battery life, all thanks to a single component. The handset, which by most indications will be called the iPhone 6S, will launch with a chip called the MDM9635M. The chip, which was introduced by Qualcomm in 2013 but didn't go into production

Under a new 10-year agreement that starts in 2016, AOL will be taking over a large part of Microsoft's display ad sales for numerous sites and services, including MSN, Xbox, Outlook.com and Skype. As part of the partnership, announced Monday, AOL will adopt Microsoft's Bing as its exclusive provider of search and search advertising services across all of its properties. In a separate deal, first reported Monday by TechCrunch, Microsoft will also sell some of its mapping-focused Bing assets -- including

It looks like 2015 will be the remembered as the summer of dueling mobile offerings. Only days after T-Mobile said it would begin allowing users to upgrade their smartphones up to three times a year, Sprint promised to go “All-In” with a new pricing structure that offers unlimited talk, text, and data for $80 a month. The company, which is the third-largest wireless carrier in the country behind Verizon and AT&T, said that the new offering will make it easier for