Category: What’s On

Hewlett-Packard offered up a slew of new laptops on Friday, including the Pavilion x2 tablet-notebook hybrid that features a magnetic hinge so it can easily transform from notebook to tent mode to stand mode. The Envy notebooks, meanwhile, promise longer battery life and a new curved profile. “Customers want devices that are portable without sacrificing battery life or power,” said Kevin Frost, vice president and general manager, Consumer Personal Systems, HP. Frost said the company redesigned its notebook product line for

The theme so far this week at the three-day Electronic Entertainment Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center has been video-gaming, with Sony claiming the keynote address slot. Here are nine announcements from the conference so far: New "Doom" on the WayBethesda got E3 under way by showing off the latest installments of first-person shooter "Doom" and post-apocalyptic role-playing saga "Fallout 4." The latter game will be available in November, with the new "Doom" set for spring 2016. Bethesda also unveiled

The online file-sharing service Box on Tuesday announced a "deep integration" with Microsoft Office Online that will let users more easily open, edit and save Office documents. Box users will now be able to manage Office files directly from Box and automatically save any changes in real time without having to open other applications installed on their devices. The new integration eliminates the need for users to upload or download files, or to move files back and forth between different applications

With the debate continuing over how Android security compares to the security of other mobile platforms, Google is getting more proactive. The mobile operating system maker just launched Android Security Rewards, complete with cash incentives to encourage security researchers to keep digging for -- and reporting -- flaws. Google will provide both money and public recognition to security researchers who discover and disclose vulnerabilities to the Android Security Team. The actual rewards are based on the severity of the bug that's

After a federal court rejected attempts by cable and phone companies to stop net neutrality on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission's plan for new Internet rules went into effect. Under the new rules, the FCC can assert extra authority over the Internet to establish equal access to Internet speeds and Web sites. Companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have claimed that the rules are beyond the FCC’s powers, and challenged them in court. A full hearing on the issue is scheduled

Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter (pictured on left), announced on Thursday that he would be stepping down as head of the social media company, effective July 1. Jack Dorsey (pictured on right), the company’s chairman and co-founder, has been named interim CEO while the board of directors begins looking for a permanent replacement. Costolo said he would continue to serve on Twitter’s board of directors, while Dorsey will continue to serve as CEO of Square Inc., the payments and financial services

Businesses that need to handle workloads with a range of different demands have a selection of new cloud-based, general-purpose instances to choose from through Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS on Thursday announced the availability of M4 instances, a next-generation Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) offering. Powered by custom 2.4-GHz Intel Xeon E5-2676 v3 Haswell processors, M4 instances are designed to support a variety of applications, including relational and in-memory databases, gaming servers, caching fleets, batch processing and business applications like SAP and

Big Blue is looking to make its mark on the mobile device and wearables market. No, IBM isn’t pushing out a smart watch or even a smartphone. In partnership with SiCAD, a silicon design platform company, IBM just announced High Performance Services for Electronic Design Automation (EDA). IBM is billing EDA as the electronic industry’s first enterprise-class, secure cloud service that provides on-demand access to electronic design tools.Jai Iyer, founder and CEO of SiCAD, pointed to a clear market need. There’s

Tech giant Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicked off Monday at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco with the headlining keynote address. Among the topics discussed during the address were new capabilities for OS X, updates coming to iOS, native apps for the Apple Watch, a streaming music service, and a new version of the watchOS operating system. At the event, Apple also introduced Swift 2, the next-generation of its programming language, which was first rolled out at

As consumer demand for online data, streaming content and mobile services continue to grow, Apple is reportedly looking to boost its high-speed networkinfrastructure to provide more of those services in-house. Citing "people familiar with the plans," Bloomberg on Monday reported that Apple's new network ambitions are aimed at helping it better compete with rivals like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft. While Apple already operates its own data centers in California, Nevada, North Carolina and Oregon, it wants to boost its internal capacity

Skype for Web Beta Rolled Out to U.S., U.K. UsersAs more and more users gravitate toward mobile versions of their favorite software, Skype is joining the crowd by opening up access to its Skype for Web beta to make it easier to connect to the service. Microsoft's Skype for Web debuted as a closed beta last fall, but it is now available as an open beta to all users in the United States and the United Kingdom. Skype for Web is

Continuing its efforts to increase its appeal to enterprise users, Dropbox announced this week that it is expanding its business-level service with new features in administration, security, and integration. Dropbox has made several moves in recent months to boost Dropbox for Business, including certification with ISO 27018, a new standard for data security and privacy that mandates strict requirements for data handling and employee access control. In March, the company also added a commenting function that allows users to add feedback

U.S. Government Suffers Massive CyberattackThe U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is reporting a cybersecurity incident that affects its systems and data. The breach may have compromised the personal information of 4 million current and former federal workers. "Within the last year, OPM has undertaken an aggressive effort to update its cybersecurity posture, adding numerous tools and capabilities to its networks," according to a statement on the government site. "As a result, in April 2015, OPM became aware of the incident

Given the lukewarm response received so far to wearable technology, it makes sense that Google would want to expand the definition of the term. So the company has introduced Project Soli, an attempt by its Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division to harness the power of hand and finger manipulation to make it easier to interact with ever-smaller devices and screens. The idea behind the technology, introduced at Google's I/O 2015 developers' conference this week, is that instead of using tools,

Given the lukewarm response received so far to wearable technology, it makes sense that Google would want to expand the definition of the term. So the company has introduced Project Soli, an attempt by its Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) division to harness the power of hand and finger manipulation to make it easier to interact with ever-smaller devices and screens. The idea behind the technology, introduced at Google's I/O 2015 developers' conference this week, is that instead of using tools,

Remedy Service Management 9.0, the new IT service management (ITSM) platform from BMC, is designed to provide both IT managers and end users with a more intuitive, consumer-type experience. BMC announced the release of the new platform, which it claims can boost IT productivity by up to 75 percent, earlier this month. BMC said the Remedy 9 platform provides a Smart Reporting feature for IT professionals that delivers custom reports, dashboards and user-friendly interfaces for "better, faster decisions." For end users

Remedy Service Management 9.0, the new IT service management (ITSM) platform from BMC, is designed to provide both IT managers and end users with a more intuitive, consumer-type experience. BMC announced the release of the new platform, which it claims can boost IT productivity by up to 75 percent, earlier this month. BMC said the Remedy 9 platform provides a Smart Reporting feature for IT professionals that delivers custom reports, dashboards and user-friendly interfaces for "better, faster decisions." For end users

Tech giant Apple has acquired Metaio, a company that creates tools for authoring, rendering and managing augmented-reality applications, for an undisclosed sum, according to legal documents filed in Germany. A notarized registration form filed in a Munich court indicates that 29,121 Euros (around $32,000) in shares held by Metaio were transferred to Apple last week. Based in Munich, Metaio was founded in 2003. The company grew out of an internal project at Volkswagen to provide specifications and instruction manual overlays on

One of the biggest challenges marketers face these days is keeping track of customer behavior across multiple channels and devices. Oracle is hoping to help with that by adding new mobile capabilities to its Oracle Marketing Cloud. Those new capabilities, rolled out earlier this month, include an enhanced mobile Data Management Platform (DMP) that helps to link multiple identities across platforms and devices to a single customer. The update also lets marketers more easily send links, coupons and other notifications to

We all know the Internet has revolutionized civilization, but have you ever stopped to think just how much it has changed your life over the past 15 years -- and what the future may hold? The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) reports unprecedented growth in information and communications technologies (ICTs) since 2000. Here are some mind boggling statistic from the latest ITU report: there are over 7 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide -- up from 738 million in 2000 -- and 3.2 billion

As virtual-reality enthusiasts await the first consumer edition of Oculus Rift next year, Facebook, which owns the game and the firm that makes it, is beefing up its talent roster. Oculus Wednesday said it acquired a trio of 3D reconstruction experts from computer vision firm Surreal Vision. The three founders of the UK-based immersive technology company will be moving over to Oculus: Richard Newcombe, the inventor of KinectFusion, DynamicFusion and DTAM (Dense Tracking and Mapping); Renato Salas-Moreno, the inventor of SLAM++

CRM behemoth Salesforce is rolling out the next iteration of Community Cloud, technology that lets companies combine business data and processes with its customer relationship management (CRM) platform to create personalized, mobile destinations. Specifically, Salesforce is adding Targeted Recommendations, Lightning Community Builder and Templates and Salesforce Files Connect for Google Drive. The goal is to help companies connect with stakeholders in new ways.Community Cloud was already making an impact before the new features. Digital communities result in 48 percent faster case

There's a big problem with the security questions often used to help people log into Web sites, or remember or access lost passwords -- questions with answers that are easy to remember are also easy for hackers to guess. That's the key finding of a study that Google recently presented at the International World Wide Web Conference in Florence, Italy. Google said it analyzed hundreds of millions of secret questions and answers that users had employed to recover access to their

Market research firm Gartner Inc. on Thursday estimated that 7.3 million Chromebooks would be sold this year, fueled mostly by demand from the education industry. Gartner said its sales estimate was an increase of 27 percent from 2014, when the education industry accounted for 72 percent of sales. Chromebooks, the computers powered by Google's Chrome operating system, are designed to be used primarily to access the Internet and run online. Despite an interest in Chromebooks among small and medium-size businesses, demand

The media invitation Apple sent out for a March 9 "special event" doesn't offer details about the reason for the gathering. However, the "Spring Forward" message on the invite is leading many to believe the star of the occasion will be the soon-to-launch Apple Watch."Spring forward," of course, is the saying that helps most of us remember to set our clocks ahead one hour for Daylight Saving Time. This year, Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday, March 8, just

After an extensive and sometimes contentious public and politcal debate, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted February 26, with a 3 to 2 split along party lines, in favor of new regulations intended to preserve Net neutrality. The vote is seen as a win both for the Obama administration and a large Net roots activist campaign that has been pushing for this outcome for several years.Under the new rules, which go into effect in 60 days, the FCC will

Open-source application container project Docker has rolled out three new orchestration tools -- Machine, Swarm and Compose 1.1 -- to enable developers and sysadmins to create and manage a new generation of 100 percent portable distributed applications that were first announced at DockerCon EU in December."Distributed applications are dynamically evolving and in constant motion which is why Docker orchestration uniquely covers application portability at all phases of the application development lifecycle," said Solomon Hykes, chief architect of the Docker Project.

The next generation of Windows is aiming to fix everything that was wrong with the last generation. Can Microsoft reverse its fortunes with Windows 10? Microsoft’s self-stated ambitious goal with Windows 10 is to inspire new scenarios across a broad range of devices, from big screens to small screens to no screens at all. Terry Myerson, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Operating System Group, called Windows 10 the first step to an era of more personal computing. “This vision framed our

Apple is reported to be planning a public beta for iOS, starting with iOS 8.3 next month. According to 9to5Mac, this first-ever beta program is aimed at reducing bugs in new versions of its operating system. Beta testers for iOS 8.3 will be drawn from the company's invitation-only AppleSeed program, 9to5Mac reports. Apple reportedly also plans a public beta release for iOS 9 sometime this summer.By making iOS updates available for beta testing, Apple appears to be building on its experience

As it gets under way at the MGM Grand & Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, IBM’s InterConnect 2015 corporate convention will touch on cloud, mobile, DevOps, security, asset management, Internet of Things, application integration, and smarter processes. But a main area of focus is expected to be hybrid cloud technology, which gives IBM’s individual businesses a chance to discuss and demonstrate how they can better leverage each other’s technologies and capabilities. The convention runs through Thursday. Many of the new services

When it comes to wearables, the headlines often seem dominated by smart watches and fitness-tracking bracelets. However, as the Consumer Electronics Show wraps up in Las Vegas on Friday one thing is clear -- there's a lot more to wearables than just bangles and timepieces. Among the wearable Innovation Award winners at this year's CES were a heart-rate-monitoring strip that sticks to a user's torso; a sensor-embedded "digital shirt" for athletes; and a wireless smart insole for tracking steps, gait and

The Jetsons probably had no idea how soon the average American would see robots become a reality. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, a number of devices showed the futuristic concept is here and now. Robotics exhibits at CES grew 25 percent from last year's show, according to the event's organizers. "It speaks to the category's growth and ability to disrupt and transform the consumer technology industry," said Karen Chupka, senior vice president of CES and corporate

If you don’t visit Facebook at least once a day, you’re in a dwindling minority. Facebook still remains the most popular social media site by far, according to a new survey by Pew Research. While its growth has slowed as other social sites continue to grow in popularity, the level of user engagement on Facebook has increased nonetheless. Facebook membership numbers since 2013 have been mostly static, according to the Pew Research study, which surveyed 2,000 adult Internet users in September.

Reporting about widespread government surveillance of ordinary citizens helped win the Guardian and the Washington Post a Pulitzer Prize in 2014. But many ordinary citizens themselves have offered a "Ho-hum everybody does it" response to the spying revelations made by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The lackadaisical public reaction does not bode well for the future of privacy. And that's the same conclusion that the Pew Research Center came to in December after canvassing thousands of Internet, technology and