Technology news

GUEST: Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology has been proving its merits in one field test after another for nearly 10 years, but recently the technology has really started to take off. What was the pivotal moment for V2X? Some experts might say it was when Tesla launched its innovative Autopilot feature in 2014, signaling that autonomous driving was on the horizon. Others might say the seminal moment came last year when the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued its Federal Automated V

GUEST: I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I’ve broken the terms of use for SaaS software and shared a license before.
Surprised? My guess would be no … because you’ve probably done it too.
In general, per-seat licensing has been a great way for SaaS companies to charge a subscription and collect reliable revenue. It’s helped companies like Salesforce, Zoom, and Box grow into large, successful organizations. But there’s also no question that this succ

I process meeting requests all day, especially on Fridays (when I typically hold a few phone briefings and meet with volunteers at a local college). You’d think someone would have figured out how to improve this process in the time since my corporate career ended around 2001.
Back then, I sat through countless meetings every day…all day long. You can feel sorry for me now. My “other” full-time job at the time was adjusting my schedule. It was often difficult to know who

Following the revelation that hundreds of Marines were under investigation for sharing naked pictures of female service members, Marine Commandant General Robert Neller issued a new guidance for social media usage earlier this week.The All Marine (ALMAR) message went out on March 14th, and serves as a guidance for how Marines should be representing themselves when posting Marines-related content online in an unofficial capacity. The message follows a report from The Center for Investigative Repo

GUEST: Events have taken a dramatic turn since I published an article last September on how WebVR, the JavaScript API that allows immersive VR experiences to be played straight from your web browser, will make virtual reality massively available.
Back then the only big player that was generating some appreciable degree of buzz was the pioneer itself, Mozilla, with their WebVR open source library, A-Frame. But in the past several months news began to roll out from the likes of Google, Samsung, Mi

Two Bit Circus showed off a demo that conveyed just how real you could make virtual reality feel. Staged at the Experiential Technology Conference, the demo consisted of a motion platform that could shake under your feet and an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset.
The demo made you feel like you were going up the side of a skyscraper in a window-washing platform. You stepped on the platform and put on the headset. There was a rail behind you that you could hold onto, and a gate in front of you.

Leave it to Zach Gage to create yet another interesting experience in the well-trod field of word games. The game designer, who most recently crafted fascinating new spins on chess and solitaire, just released a word game called TypeShift on iOS. He describes it as “the modern anagram puzzle.” Like most addictive games, it’s seemingly simple, challenging you to create a number of five-letter words out of a jumble of letters. It’s like a literary version of a combination l

The SXSW conference has a history of being home to some of the most elaborate marketing events imaginable. Whether it’s a chance to stay over at the Bates Motel, visit the restaurant from Breaking Bad, or see Kanye and Jay Z perform (courtesy of Samsung), it’s as much a part of the show as technology talks and movies. But this year a new style of tie-in swept the festival: the escape room.
Disney launched a pop-up escape experience tied to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Fox took over

GUEST: During the recent U.S. Presidential election, it became clear that both the left and right were using the Internet and social media to disseminate false information using a new form of insidious propaganda: “fake news.” Nearly in real-time and at little cost to the campaigns, organizations and individuals were able to post fake news stories on news sites, social media, and blogs that looked and felt legitimate. Millions of people saw these stories and may have been influenced

Paolo Fragomeni can play half a dozen instruments and owned around 4,500 LP records and a thousand 45s at the peak of his vinyl collection. When wanderlust took over, he digitized his entire library into about 50,000 portable MP3s that he could take wherever he traveled. The music industry has become increasingly populated by streaming services that offer a similar ability to listen to music anywhere, but the lack of ownership concerns Fragomeni. In the age of Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, and

Tonight, the United Launch Alliance is set to launch one of its Delta IV rockets from Cape Canaveral, Florida, sending a communications satellite into space for the US military. It’ll mark the first Delta IV launch of 2017, and the seventh launch of a certain configuration of the rocket known as the Medium+ (5,4). This version of the vehicle is equipped with four additional strap-on rocket motors at its base, to provide extra thrust during launch.Providing high-capacity communication capab

Virtual reality is in its infancy, and we’re still trying to figure out what kind of experience it can deliver for the masses, at an affordable price. So we assembled some people who are thinking about this every day, as they try to figure out the next few decades of this new medium.
I moderated a panel on “Virtual Reality Entertainment Experiences” at the close of the Experiential Technology Conference this week in San Francisco. The event, organized by Zack Lynch, was all abo

A couple of weeks ago, I was eating lunch at a virtual reality event when a fellow attendee asked me a question. He wasn’t sure, he said, what app and game genres really felt VR-only, rather than existing media on a different kind of screen. This is something most VR enthusiasts have probably asked themselves at some point, and given how niche the medium still is, it’s an open question. But if anything can give us a sense of where things might be going, it’s the Game Developers

A couple of years ago, Popslate developed a case for an iPhone that added an E Ink display to the back of the phone, designed as a way for users who check their phones often to conserve their batteries. We found the first version to be a bit limited, but an intriguing idea. The company later announced a followup device, the Popslate 2, which would act as a battery charger and came with a better screen.The company raised money to manufacture the Popslate 2 through Indiegogo and raised over $1.1 m

Facebook opened up a new gaming platform with Instant Games for Messenger in November. And Blackstorm Labs seized the chance to launch its own HTML5-based title called EverWing.
The creators of Instant Games hope that it will bring virality back to the social-mobile games business and offer a chance for breakout hits on messenger platforms. Those hits can spread on social, bypassing the app stores.
“We call ourselves the post-app-store company,” said Ernestine Fu, the cofounder

There are few things I enjoy more than finding a good deal, and each week I’m going to help you find the best tech deals on the internet. Why? Because it’s been a long week and you deserve it. Also why: who doesn’t like a good deal? Name one person who doesn’t. I’ll wait.
Whether you’re in the market for a new computer, camera, drone, or perhaps a 3D illusion lamp of BB-8 Droid — we’ve got you covered. This week there are lots of good ones; the mos

Back in January, we learned that Super Mario Run was coming to Android phones in March. Yesterday, Nintendo America has revealed when non-iPhone users will be able to play the game: March 23rd.Nintendo launched the game in December exclusively on the iPhone, where it’s been downloaded 78 million times. Android users will get version 2.0.0 upon release, while iPhone users will get an update to the version on the same day. The update will add some new playable characters to the game.Android

I rewatched Alien recently after being simultaneously excited by and disappointed with the latest trailers for Alien: Covenant, Ridley Scott’s first proper sequel to the series. The original is, of course, fantastic, but I forgot just how much of a pure horror film it is — so much is designed just to make situations tense and freak you out.
I love the subtlety of its world building, too, the way you’re able to grasp the backstory of the crashed ship and the malevolent corporati

For the last few years, ColorWare has been gracing Apple’s products with gorgeous special edition paint jobs reminiscent of vintage Macintosh products. And earlier this week, the custom painting company showed off its latest retro makeover for the iPhone 7 Plus.Like the earlier custom ColorWare designs, the iPhone 7 Plus Retro Edition is repainted in a 1980’s beige, complete with darker stripes meant to resemble the vents on older computers. And of course, the monochrome Apple logo o

Samsung’s reach stretches across nearly every part of the home, from appliances to televisions, computers, tablets, light bulbs, and smartphones. And the company isn’t stopping there — it’s also extending itself into third-party connected devices through its SmartThings offering. And as it builds out an ecosystem for the home, the next step is to offer a way for consumers to communicate with the devices in a way that feels normal.
“At a greater level, you have

Making the Web work for you and your projects or products doesn’t have to be all trial and error. There’s a wealth of data available to tell you how potential customers are finding you online and how they’re interacting with your pages. Google Analytics pulls all that information together, and with the Google Analytics Mastery Course ($29 from TNW Deals), you’ll learn how to understand your audience, and how to give them what they want to drive up sales and interaction w

(Reuters) — Airbnb expects to maintain its rapid growth in Africa this year and double its customer numbers to 1.5 million, its Chief Executive Brian Chesky and regional head told Reuters on Friday.
The number of people using the online room rental service on the continent rose by 143 percent to about 765,000 guests in 2016 from the year before, said Nicola D’Elia, the firm’s Africa and Middle East chief.
“If you just look at 2017, it’s going to double, you wil

(Reuters) – Federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, have expanded a long-running grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks to include the leak of Central Intelligence Agency documents to the website, a source familiar with the inquiry said.
The source, who is familiar with the investigation and requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, said the probe is focused on who leaked descriptions and technical information on techniques and tools the CIA has used to eavesdrop on intel

Walmart may use drones like in-store messenger pigeons.
The retail giant was granted a patent this week for a system in which drones would shuttle products between different departments inside its stores. The idea is to free customers from having to walk across its super-sized emporiums to find what they want and from having to wait while employees return from far-away storerooms.
Ultimately, Walmart believes that drones “can greatly improve the customer experience without overburdening th

Square Enix’s latest Hitman debuted one year ago, and now the publisher and developer IO Interactive are looking back on 12 months of the live assassination-as-a-service simulator.
Since launch, IO updated the game weekly with new content and then on a regularly basis with full episodes that introduced new locations, but it’s what the players did in those spaces that is the most interesting and why so many people are looking forward to the second season.
In an infographic, IO reveale

Apple quietly pushed an update to its AppleCare+ smartphone insurance program today that extends the purchase window for iPhones from 60 days to one year. The change, reported first by MacRumors and confirmed with a support rep, is not yet showing up on Apple’s official product page for AppleCare+. But if you go to Apple’s eligibility tool and input your serial number from the iPhone’s settings panel, you should be able to see a new purchase option so long as you purchased the

(Reuters) — French advertising group Havas denied on Friday that it would pull advertising from Google platforms, contradicting comments attributed to the head of its British business after Britain raised concerns over government advertising on the U.S. company’s YouTube website.
The British government had been expected to question Google executives on Friday over why advertisements marketing the government’s services were appearing alongside videos carrying hate speech an

Good news if you are having trouble locating a Nintendo Switch at a reasonable price (which is basically every gamer who didn’t pre-order): Nintendo is planning on doubling production of the console for the year, according to report by the Wall Street Journal. The report suggests Nintendo is ramping up production from an initial 8 million, all the way up to 16 million. That means the Switch will almost certainly out-sell the Wii U, which only sold about 13.5 million units over the course