Technology news

Roku is likely to move away from its longtime numerical naming scheme (Roku 1, Roku 2, Roku 3, Roku 4) when the company next updates its product lineup sometime this fall. Instead, according to Zatz Not Funny, the lineup will switch over to names like "Roku Express" and "Roku Premiere" with the next hardware refresh. You can expect to see five models in all, if these new vendor authorizations are accurate.
The Roku 1 will be replaced by the Roku Express and Roku Express Plus, though it

GUEST: The dream of being able to buy a product directly from a TV show dates back to the beginning of the new millennium. At industry conferences around the world, executives spoke longingly of a future in which viewers of the then-popular sitcom Friends could see star actress Jennifer Aniston wearing a fashionable sweater, and then, with the push of a button, purchase that very sweater for themselves.
But despite the many technological breakthroughs over the past 15 years, this holy grail of e

GUEST: Corporate giants are in an all-out race to dominate the widely coveted Internet of Things (IoT) landscape. Today, eight companies with market capitalizations over $150 billion actively promote IoT solutions: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, General Electric, AT&T, Verizon, IBM, and Cisco. When you take away the cloud, computing, and telecommunications players, you’re left with an interesting face off between General Electric and Cisco — both of which are targeting industrial IoT

There are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. That’s a lot. Naturally, the trucking industry was one of the first to adopt things like in-cab nav systems. But One20 thinks it can do better, with a new platform and social network aimed directly at truck drivers.
The company believes it can deliver a superior tablet and phone experience to truck drivers, claiming that most prior mobile devices and apps have been designed more with the fleet in mind — that is, t

Video games are often defined by, well, video — the ability to create beautiful, visually compelling, even photorealistic representations of a digital world. This has become truer than ever with virtual reality, which is supposed to literally make you feel as though you’ve stepped beyond the screen. But in the real world, some of the most important moments of our life happen through nothing more than a few lines of text — on a medical form, a computer screen, or a smartphone. A

Much has been written recently about the rise of chatbots and their potential to change consumer interactions with businesses.
However, all that discussion seems to have missed the radical implications this has for the current mobile ecosystem and the nature of competition in digital services. As an increasing number of companies investigate chatbots to sell their services and automate customer service, the messaging services they integrate into have an opportunity to become the new mobile platf

So you want to explore the Solar System? You’re going to need to clean your spacecraft first. Any missions that NASA sends to other worlds nearby have to adhere to something called planetary protection. It’s the rule of preventing "harmful contamination" of the places we explore in the Solar System. That means making sure exploring spacecraft don’t spread too many harmful Earth’s organisms to all of our planetary neighbors. Continue reading…

FEATURE: In every grand, exploratory adventure, there comes a time where our hero gets stuck in the mud.
By that standard, this episode is my quicksand. But even though I find some of the most cursed treasures of the Samsung app store here today, I dig up some gems along with them.
As with all of my prior app store expeditions, I sally forth with a Samsung-provided kit. A Samsung Galaxy Tab S2, S6, and S6 Edge Plus are all that is in my pack as I frack through the next layer of mobile game sedim

Listening to music in the car is a time-honored tradition. As far back as the 1930s, drivers were listening to AM radio on the first Motorola in-dash units. As the 20th century progressed, so did our in-vehicle technology. We went from AM to FM radio, in-dash record players, cassettes, the 8-track tape, and the compact disc. The iPod came along in 2001, and so did a proliferation of Aux-in jacks for them to connect to. Now we had a thousand songs in our pocket and our car. Of course, like all th

For several years now, the Nike+ Running app has been an essential download and companion for millions of people trying to keep fit and improve their health. It's got between 10 million and 50 million installs on Google Play, and I'd bet on it being even more successful on iOS. But recently (and very randomly), Nike decided to take a gamble and overhaul an immensely popular smartphone app from scratch. It's now called Nike+ Run Club and, well, let's just say that the reception hasn't been very p

Following a permanent suspension from Twitter, conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos has filed a series of data requests with the social networking company demanding that they turn over all of his personal data.
The tech editor of the Breitbert conservative news site says he is entitled to this information under British and Irish law. The move is part of his effort have his access to Twitter restored by demonstrating that his removal was driven by politics rather than violations o

I recently sold my Samsung Galaxy Note 5 and returned to an iPhone 6. With the Note 7, new iPhones, and new Nexus phones on the horizon, it just felt like the right time. I miss a lot about the Note 5 — the incredible screen, the bigger battery — but the thing I miss the most was one tiny feature: when you pull the stylus out of the phone, you can write and save a quick note without having to unlock or even turn on the screen.The “screen off memo,” as Samsung calls it, wa

 August, the weekend of months. This week a zero-day hack rocked Apple, WhatsApp announced a major privacy change and Tesla announced a new model that takes Ludicrous Mode to the next level. Would you rather get the Weekly Roundup in your inbox? Same, TBH.  1. Hackers are honing in on mobile devices. The latest example was an Apple zero-day hack targeting activist Ahmed Mansoor that… Read More

Back in May, Hewlett-Packard announced it would bring its game computers under a single brand, the HP Omen, in recognition of its heritage from the acquisition of Voodoo PC, which sold the original Omen computers. It united the Envy, Omen, and Pavilion gaming computers under a single brand and started rolling out more products aimed at gamers.
Now it’s showing off more of those new products. I had a chance to see them up close, including the weird prototype for a laptop backpack that makes

You'd think that streaming and digital distribution in general would mean that basically every movie ever made should be available online. But often enough I find that not to be true, and with some notable titles, too.One movie I've wanted to rewatch for years, Chungking Express, is only available on DVD and Blu-ray, and the Blu-ray discs are out of print and currently selling used on Amazon for over $100. I'd pay to rent or download it, but for whatever reason I can't — not a single

GUEST: Not a day goes by where I don’t wake up to emails begging me for money. Everyone has the next big idea, and they are constantly pitching me this or that. I imagine most investors’ email inboxes look similar.
Out of every thousand pitches I receive, there may be one that gets my attention enough to want to be involved. The vast majority of pitches are generic, clearly would need a lot of hand holding, or paint a picture of a business that has already failed but the entrepr

As we slowly wind our way through the last days of August, it becomes clearer every day: summer is almost gone, and summer movie season with it. But that doesn’t mean the fun has to end! In fact, what your favorite streaming service has coming next month will almost certainly be better than shelling out $17 to see Suicide Squad again!
Don’t believe me? Well just check out Amazon’s line-up below. In September the network will be debuting Crisis in Six Scenes, the first TV series

The National Park System is turning 100, and The Verge is celebrating with Wilderness Week: a look at the natural world, its freaky critters, and its future.I used to think of camping trips as a time to disconnect from society. That is, until I started covering camping gadgets and discovered that a lot of modern campers are gadget mongers, with a serious thirst for battery life. So for Wilderness Week, I talked with Martin Hogue, a professor who teaches landscape architecture at SUNY in Syracuse

Hideo Kojima is one of the few developers in the game industry who carries enough name recognition that his mere presence onstage, barely speaking a word, will send an entire auditorium into a frenzy. I know, because I was there when it happened a few months ago during Sony’s Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 PlayStation press conference.
Late last year, after leaving Konami in spectacular fashion, the Metal Gear Solid creator established a partnership with Sony. Then at E3

(Reuters) – Scientists have discovered a planet that appears to be similar to Earth circling the star closest to the sun, potentially a major step in the quest to find out if life exists elsewhere in the universe, research published on Wednesday showed.
The relative proximity of the planet, known as Proxima b, gives scientists a better chance to eventually capture an image of it, to help them establish whether it has an atmosphere and water, which is believed to be necessary for life.
Futu

REVIEW: Sound Blaster is a name most people associate with soundcards in ancient 486 computers from the late 1990s. These days, the brand has a wider range of gaming-related audio equipment.
Above: The Sound Blaster X H7 headphones.Image Credit: Creative
Creative, the parent company of Sound Blaster, has an entire line of Sound Blaster X products specifically for gaming fans, and the H7 headset and G5 external sound card represent the company’s premiere offerings in the high midrange gamin

 Accusations that Spotify has been punishing artists for signing exclusives with other streaming services hit the internet in full force this morning, originating from a Bloomberg article. 
When confronted by TechCrunch, a Spotify spokesperson gave the same response they have been giving since the story broke — that the accusations about burying search results are “unequivocally… Read More

(Reuters) – The Obama administration proposed a rule on Friday aimed at attracting thousands of immigrant entrepreneurs to start companies in the United States.
The rule, proposed by the Department of Homeland Security, would ease the ability of startup founders to build companies if they have significant funding from U.S. investors.
The administration hopes the rule will be completed before President Barack Obama’s term ends on Jan. 20.
The proposed rule is part of Obama’s com

You’re probably gonna have trouble killing the zombies this evening, and that’s not because they’re already dead.
H1Z1, DC Universe Online, and other games from publisher Daybreak are not working right now as the result of a cyberattack. If you’re getting a “LaunchPad could not establish a connection” error, this is the likely reason. Daybreak, which was formerly Sony Online Entertainment before spinning out from the PlayStation maker as an independent develop

VB LIVE: If you’re a mobile retailer, turning casual users into fans and financial success is your biggest challenge. Join marketing powerhouses from mega-retailer GameStop and top shopping app RetailMeNot as they dig in to how marketing automation strengthens user engagement, boosts conversions, and pumps up LTV.
Access this free VB Live event on demand right here.
“The marketing world is going through a transformation,” says Jason Allen, VP of multi-channel at Game Stop. &ldq

FEATURE: Ian Howe doesn’t have the chops to be a game designer. While he’s had hundreds of ideas, someone always shoots them down.
But that’s not a problem for the 25-year industry veteran. As the cofounder and president of 505 Games, Howe is happy helping other creators bring their games to life. The company has been quietly redefining the traditional role of a video game publisher. In the mid-2000s, it scored a surprise hit when it released the Nintendo DS game Cooking Mama i