Technology news

Though the Web – and particularly social media – can often feel like a sad or angry place and not always welcoming of minorities, a hashtag started by Twitter user @lexi4prez proves that sometimes some good ideas can come out of the crowd. Having failed LGBT campaigning organization GLAAD’s annual Studio Responsibility Index for character representation in Hollywood films, many have taken to Twitter to suggest Disney’s mega-hit Frozen should include a lesbian r

If you’re the sort of person that bought into Apple’s device ecosystem for the simplicity its devices seem to offer, there’s almost no chance you should bother going ahead with the same hack as Nick Li, who got Windows 95 to run on the device. Li says that unlike previous efforts to get the Mini vMac emulator working on the device, he wanted the Windows OS to actually run and be bootable. And it is, but it takes an hour to get there. Obviously, with Windows 95 not built f

The folks at Microsoft Research are working on a new way for you to interact with your smartphone that involves a lot less touching than usual. The idea is that you should be able to control apps, browse through content and adjust settings simply by gliding your fingers over the screen, without actually touching it. That’s not entirely novel in itself – Samsung’s Air View allows some of this functionality in select apps that it’s developed, while Sony had shown off

A few weeks back, French jet ski champion Franky Zapata released a video testing this amazing hoverboard that can (theoretically) propel its riders up to 10,000 feet in the air. The video quickly went viral and despite having impressed its viewers, Zapata’s remarkable invention – that he calls the Flyboard Air – left many people in doubt about the authenticity of what they’ve seen. Last week, however, Zapata put out new footage of him flying the

Amazon’s Echo voice-activated speaker is great for playing music, checking on the day’s weather forecast and ordering items at home without pushing a button. Soon, it might even help you track down your elusive car keys. Reuters reports that the ecommerce giant is investing between $250,000 and $500,000 in TrackR. The company makes a coin-sized Bluetooth-enabled device that lets you find anything it’s attached to, like your keys or wallet, by following its location on the comp

WhatsApp has been blocked across Brazil for the next 72 hours in accordance with a state judge’s order. The service is estimated to have about 100 million users in the country. The ruling came into effect at 1PM ET, with a warning to service providers that failure to comply with the order would invite a fine of $142,000 per day. Today’s blackout comes courtesy of judge Marcel Maia Montalvão, who previously ordered Facebook’s vice president for Latin America to be detain

In an interview with CNBC, Apple CEO Tim Cook excitedly hinted that Apple had more great stuff in the pipeline, and this time we won’t be able to live without it. Here are some of Cook’s comments, courtesy of Tech Insider: We have great innovation in the pipeline, like new iPhones that will incent you and other people that have iPhones today to upgrade to new iPhones. We are going to give you things that you can’t live without, that you just don’t even know you need toda

SoundCloud is expanding its music subscription service, Go, to the UK and Ireland. Launched just last month, the service debuted in the US at a familiar $9.99 per month. That kept it in-line with services like Google Play Music, Spotify and Apple Music. Go will cost £9.99 per month in the UK, and €9.99 monthly in Ireland. While an option, SoundCloud’s streaming selection of popular music is definitely lacking. It pales in comparison to equally priced offerings, and is probably

If you use a Nexus device or otherwise use Google Keyboard on Android, there a bunch of nifty new updates in store for you. Perhaps most notable, the keyboard now comes with a one-handed mode. That’s particularly useful for Nexus devices, which don’t come with one-handed accessibility features in phones like Samsung’s S7 or LG’s G5. You can access one handed mode from Google’s Keyboard settings, or adjust it on the fly by long pressing on the comma a