Technology news

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have just detailed a proof-of-concept feat that represents a significant leap in the world of prosthesis. In the experiment a young man who wasn’t missing any limbs but required brain mapping to pinpoint the origin of his seizures underwent a procedure that aimed to chart specific areas of the brain that “lit up” when he moved his fingers on command. The procedure pinpointed the exact location of his brain that controlled finger movement befor

A set of leaked images suggest Sling TV is set to debut on the Apple TV. One lucky Mac Rumors reader saw Sling TV pop up in the tvOS App Store this morning, and quickly downloaded it. He reports he was able to use it successfully for some time, but the app disappeared a short time later. The arrival of Sling TV for Apple TV would be interesting for two reasons. First, it suggests Apple’s anticipated streaming TV offering is dead, or at least on hold. Typically, Apple prefers not to direct

Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigs, have resided in a sort of grey area that was very dependent on the the rules of each individual airline. Today, the Department of Transportation (DOT) put that to rest by explicitly banning vaping on commercial flights. Previously, the department claimed that its “ban on smoking of tobacco” to be sufficiently broad enough to cover the use of e-cigs, but the word “smoking” may have actually provided the loophole. Any e-cig user will

Adobe Lightroom just got an update on iOS, and it brings along a couple of features that should make it a fair bit more useful for photographers on the go. Most notably, the app can now export photos at full resolution. The old limit was 2560 pixels on the long edge, which is good enough for mobile displays but quite lackluster if you want to view the photos on a 4K display or make a large, sharp print. It should make folks importing photos from high resolution cameras happy, as more people tur

Last year hackers stole sensitive records from over 100,000 350,000 700,000 people after a security breach of the IRS website. Hackers found a vulnerability in the ‘Get Transcript’ verification process and used this to amass some 700,000 names, Social Security numbers, addresses and filing statuses. This year, the IRS wants to prove it’s righted its earlier wrongs and stepped up security by giving taxpayers internet protection (IP) personal identification number

Part of the big update to Google Docs back in September was the introduction of new and useful templates to help users of the service start up common types of documents quickly. The company has now taken that one step further, announcing today that it has created new templates ‘designed by experts’ to cover new use cases. The new templates — which can be found in Docs as well as Sheets and Slides both in browser and for mobile on iOS and Android — offer a few specif

The world is awash with productivity apps, from well-known, multi-use tools like Evernote, Slack and Trello, to niche tools like the Hemingway App and RescueTime. Yet, we all still struggle with maximizing productivity, particularly in larger organizational teams. Why? With so many different apps functioning in unique ways, we actually end up spending more time operating our applications than getting work done. Employee happiness plays a crucial role in terms of employee productivity, and of so

The former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, now executive chairman of its parent company Alphabet, is about to start helping the military improve what it does by borrowing concepts and ideas straight from Silicon Valley. Schmidt will chair the new 12-person Defense Innovation Advisory Board, which is being brought in to help the organization use tools like “rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis… mobile and cloud applications.” &ldq

Everyone hates voicemail. The idea of checking a message to see what someone wants is such an antiquated notion that it might has well have been sent as a fax. ‘No More Voicemail’ for Android and iOS aims to change consumer behavior by using your phone’s call forwarding feature to send callers to a virtual number that will ring forever without actually sending the call to voicemail. Everything operates as normal when you feel like taking a call. If you ignore, mute or sen

In a SXSW first, the sitting president of the United States will be delivering a keynote address at the conference in Austin, TX later this month. President Barack Obama will be joined by the First Lady, Michelle, each giving separate addresses on March 11 and March 16, respectively. Barack Obama has small tie-ins to SXSW as an interactive and music festival – the current POTUS is a two-time Grammy award recipient for Best Spoken World Album of 2006 and 2008. POTUS’s speec

In today’s hacker-heavy world, one can hardly be accused of privacy paranoia when the headlines are drawing attention to new security issues and threats every day. Life throws enough curveballs your way without the hassle of worrying about your phone conversations being monitored, and that’s where Guardlock comes in. Guardlock is a premium app that will keep your communications secure, protecting your voice calls with military-grade AES-256 encryption. You can conduct private, secur

Google’s Web Font library is an impressive collection of free fonts that anyone can use on their websites to help avoid the horror that are included system fonts. The company has a tiny analytics page hidden on the site that provides some interesting statistics about the Web font usage, including a live counter that says the fonts have been viewed more than seven trillion times since it was launched. That number, written out, is 7,651,092,547,048 which is a staggering statistic

How many projects have you been involved in that have ended up exactly as you’d expected? 80 percent? 90 percent? Well, according to research it’s not even close. Stephen Carver, a lecturer in Project Management of Cranfield School of Management stated that up to 68 percent projects are failing. Gartner, a tech research and advisory firm, said that most of tech project failures are attributed to organizational skills rather than technical skills. Chance is, yours is among them. So w

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Harmonix, the creators of Rock Band, might be one of the biggest independent game studios in the world but they still need a little help getting their game onto PC for the first time. The company has launched a crowdfunding campaign seeking to raise $1.5 million by April 5 to create a suped-up version of its Rock Band 4 game for PC. The company promises that the PC version will offer more than the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One editions and will support a mouse and keyboard, rather than a plastic gu

‘Rocket League’ is deviously simple — flippin’ soccer played by cars — but since its launch (and its position as one of my favorite games of 2015), its exceeded expectations of how rich and entertaining the indie game can be. Developer Psyonix and streaming platform Twitch have partnered to capitalize on the love for all things ‘Rocket League,’ announcing today the first ever Rocket League Championship Series. Nick Allen, Director of esports o

DxO One, which made a name for itself as a better alternative to the stock iPhone or iPad camera, can now operate independently, and is dropping its price. A new standalone mode lets you quickly take photos without attaching the DxO One to your mobile device, which are then saved to a micro SD Card in the unit. The small OLED screen on the DxO One acts as a ‘framing assistant,’ which means it tells you when the sensor is ready and shutter snaps. Settings like ISO and white balance a

Discover Weekly, Spotify’s runaway hit that digs up music you’re likely to love, is inspiring what it’s building next: a bunch of new playlists that find the best new music on the service that nobody’s listening to yet. A set of five new playlists under the ‘Fresh Finds’ moniker dig up undiscovered music in hip-hop, electronic, vocal pop, guitar driven and experimental genres. The overall playlist, Fresh Finds, combines every genre to create a

Facebook has a very uneasy relationship with regulators in Germany and now the company is being investigated for abusing its power over user data, which may mean it’s breaking local data protection or monopoly laws. The Bundeskartellamt (Federal Cartel Office) says it is working closely with relevant bodies within the European Union, which means the consequences could reach right across the region if it is found to be abusing its position. “For advertising-financed interne

The number of requests for coverage we receive at The Next Web is, unsurprisingly, enormous. As a result, many, if not most, go completely overlooked due to overflowing inboxes and crowded Twitter feeds. Anyone who runs a company can attest to how often their attempts to gain coverage at media outlets unfortunately go unnoticed. There is, however, a far more effective way to get your young startup in front of the world’s tech community. Our Boost program at TNW Conference Europe