Cars

Computers

GeekedAbout

Hardware

Apple

Internet

Spam

Programming

SQL

Security

Software

Entertainment

Books

Movies

Music

Television

Video Games

Odd Things

Technology

Gadgets

Science

Cloudy net stats on your fondleslab

WAN-optimisation-in-the-cloud provider Aryaka has added mobile portal access to its network.…

Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei made a rare public appearance on Thursday to deny allegations that his company’s telecommunications equipment poses a threat to U.S. national security. According to Reuters, it was the first time in more than 25 years that the executive has spoken with the media. It has been alleged that Huawei is in cahoots with the Chinese government, which has left countries such as the U.S., Canada and Australia hesitant to use the company’s equipment. Zhenfei said that Huawei has “no connection to the cyber-security issues the U.S. has encountered in the past, current and future,” noting that his company’s equipment is rarely used on U.S. networks. “We have never sold any key equipment to major

Themed content starting at 99¢ per month

As expected, streaming-media giant YouTube has announced the launch of a new paid service that allows users to subscribe to content channels for a monthly fee.…

By Tim Kenneally LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Justin Bieber is once again airing his thoughts on history-making figures. With about as much success as he did last time. "Boyfriend" singer Bieber, who caught heat last month when he wondered whether Anne Frank would have been a fan of his, has now turned his gaze toward anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela. Bieber's deep thoughts on Mandela? He's "the man. ...

By Jessica Dye, Joseph Ax and Jim Finkle NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - In one of the biggest ever bank heists, a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATMs in 27 countries, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday. The U.S. Justice Department accused eight men of allegedly forming the New York-based cell of the organization, and said seven of them have been arrested. The eighth, allegedly a leader of the cell, was reported to have been murdered in the Dominican Republic on April 27. ...

Prosecutors say global hackers stole $45 million in cash from 27 countries using thousands of ATMs in two separate assaults. In one, on Dec. 22, hackers grabbed $5 million from 20 countries. On Feb. 19, ...

Small publisher claimed it had acquired the trademark before Apple began using it to describe its e-reader platform.

By Karen Jacobs (Reuters) - Online travel agency Priceline.com on Thursday gave a forecast for second-quarter profit that was below analysts' estimates, as it cited the effects of global expansion costs, and its shares slid 3 percent in after-hours trading. Priceline made the comments as it reported a first-quarter profit that topped estimates on improved hotel and car-rental reservations. Chief Executive Jeffery Boyd said the second-quarter outlook reflects an expected decline in operating margins as the company invests in global growth. ...

By Kim Dixon WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The political goal is the same as it was in the mid-1980s: grassroots support for an overhaul of the U.S. tax code. But lawmakers' approach this time is thoroughly modern. The chairmen of Congress's tax-writing committees on Thursday launched a website they hope will boost public support for overhauling the tax code in the same way that a "Write Rosty" letter-writing campaign did a quarter-century ago. TaxReform.gov, created by U.S. ...

(Reuters) - Online travel agency Priceline.com on Thursday forecast second quarter profit would fall below analysts' estimates due to global expansion costs and its shares slid 3 percent in afterhours trading. Priceline made the comments after reporting a rise in first quarter profit on improved hotel and car-rental reservations. Priceline Chief Executive Jeffery Boyd said the second quarter outlook reflects an expected decline in operating margins as the company invests in global growth. ...

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — The Washington state Administrative Office of the Courts was hacked sometime between last fall and February, and up to 160,000 Social Security numbers and 1 million driver's license numbers may have been accessed during the data breach of its public website, officials said Thursday.

A new report has found that mobile device shipments, including notebooks, tablets and smartphones, exceeded 300 million units in the first quarter of 2013. According to research from Canalys, shipments increased 37.4% year-over-year to reach 308.7 units. Android manufacturers continue to ship more devices than any other vendor, totaling 59.5% of all shipments. Strong demand for the iPhone and iPad gave Apple a 19.3% share, ahead of Microsoft’s 18.1% share from shipments of Windows-powered notebooks, tablets and smartphones. The research firm found that out of all three categories, the tablet market continues to grow the fastest. Worldwide shipments of tablets were found to have increased 106.1% year-over-year to 41.9 million units. Apple continues to lead the market with a 46.4%

The next bank heist movie just got a lot less interesting. Prosecutors in Brooklyn revealed on Thursday afternoon that eight men successfully organized and executed an elaborate heist of $2.4 million on February 19 by hacking into the databases of two payment-processing companies and, after raising the withdrawal limit on several accounts, visited ATMs spread throughout Manhattan to cash out, wielding prefabricated swipe cards coded with the hacked account numbers. ...

By Tom Bergin LONDON (Reuters) - A panel of UK lawmakers will next week grill representatives from Google Inc and its auditor, Ernst & Young, following a Reuters report that highlighted inconsistencies in Google's statements about its UK activities. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said on its website that the representatives would testify on May 16. Google has attracted the ire of British lawmakers for the way it pays almost no income tax on billions of dollars of UK sales each year. ...

Undocumented feature dims the screen between directions to save battery, but it's having unintended consequences.

(Reuters) - Priceline.com, the online travel agency known for its name-your-own-price auction, on Thursday said quarterly profit rose on improved hotel and car-rental reservations. Net income was $244.3 million, or $4.76 a share, in the first quarter, compared with $181.8 million, or $3.54 a share, a year earlier. (Reporting by Karen Jacobs; Editing by Alden Bentley)

A federal judge says Google needs to show the court how it's searching for documents requested by Apple in a legal spat with Samsung.

By Ronald Grover (Reuters) - Google's YouTube video service is dipping its toe into pay television by starting on Thursday a subscription service with 30 content creators, including children's programmers Sesame Street and Muppet creator The Jim Henson Co, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. YouTube, the world's largest video website, allows creators to set subscription fees and accept advertisements, at their discretion, for the channels they create. Prices for the initial 30 content providers start at 99 cents a month, and will average $2.99 monthly, company officials said in a briefing. ...

Apple still needs the other major labels, but this brings it a step closer to launching its Internet radio service.

In the deserts of Tunisia, the Lars Homestead, where young Luke Skywalker was said to live, is still a testament to the filming of one of the most famous films ever.

Alan Nguyen's slick heels double as a carrier for your phone. They're perfect for people who can't stop texting while walking.

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Facebook Inc is in advanced talks to acquire Israeli mobile satellite navigation start-up Waze for $800 million to $1 billion, business daily Calcalist reported on Thursday. The deal, which would be Facebook's largest acquisition, would give the social networking company a mapping service and allow it to better compete with Google Inc and Apple Inc. Maps and navigation services have become a key asset for technology companies as consumers increasingly adopt smartphones and other mobile devices. ...

A German "Auction of Firsts" includes relics and creations from tech luminaries from Pascal to Woz and Jobs.

'A lot of authors would say: Hey, that's great for me!'

A US Appeals Court has suggested that authors suing Google should be pleased that the advertising giant is scanning millions of books and putting them online for all.…

By Jessica Dye and Jim Finkle NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government charged eight individuals with using data obtained by hacking into two credit card processors in a worldwide scheme that netted some $45 million within hours, a crime prosecutors described as one of the biggest bank heists in history. The individuals formed the New York-based cell of a global cyber criminal organization that stole Mastercard Inc debit card data from two Middle Eastern banks, the Justice Department said. ...

By Kim Dixon WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The political goal is the same as it was in the mid-1980s - seed grass-roots support for an overhaul of the U.S. tax code - but the approach launched Thursday relies on email, not snail mail. The chairmen of Congress's tax-writing committees have unveiled a Web site they hope will boost public support for overhauling the tax code in the same way that a "Write Rosty" letter-writing campaign did a quarter-century ago. TaxReform. ...

Federal prosecutors in New York say cyber-criminals stole $45 million by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards. Authorities announced Thursday that seven people are under arrest in the ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. charged eight individuals with stealing debit card data from two Middle Eastern banks in a scheme that prosecutors said netted them $45 million in a matter of hours. The New York-based cell hacked into credit card processors to steal Mastercard Inc debit card data, which they used to make approximately 36,000 transactions over a total of 10 hours in 24 countries, the Justice Department said. The cards were issued by National Bank of Ras Al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates and Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said. (Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Gerald ...

Everyone else stuck with working version

A new version of the Android app to watch ITV online is now available - exclusively for Samsung gadgets.…

(Reuters) - Netflix Inc's U.S. streaming video service added five children's shows from Walt Disney Co's Disney Junior and Disney XD cable networks under a multiyear licensing deal announced on Thursday. Netflix will be the exclusive subscription video home in the United States for two of the shows, "Jake and the Never Land Pirates" from Disney Junior and "Tron: Uprising" from Disney XD. The two shows are available starting Thursday, a statement from the companies said. ...

Apple supplier Pegatron will increase its workforce by 40 percent this quarter, triggering speculation that it will produce a cheaper iPhone, according to Reuters.

In the name of "transparency," Apple has asked a judge to force Google to hand over elements of the Android OS source code.

The tiny Android device won't be available to consumers until the end of June, three weeks later than initially announced.

Is the world ready for another microgaming console? A temporarily free console, with a fixed low-cost subscription gaming service? Ready or not, here's GamePop from BlueStacks.

Everyone else stuck with working version

A new version of the Android app to watch ITV online is now available - exclusively for Samsung gadgets.…

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc has cut the price of the HTC First phone, which is preloaded with Facebook Inc applications, to 99 cents from $99.99 less than a month after the phone's launch. AT&T, the No. 2 U.S. mobile service provider, said the price cut took effect on Wednesday. The company is the exclusive U.S. wireless carrier for the phone, made by Taiwan's HTC Corp and launched on April 12. An AT&T spokeswoman said price-cutting promotions are not unusual. But operators typically wait longer than a few weeks after a launch before discounting phones. ...

The Onion has released a detailed account of how it believes the Syrian Electronic Army hacked into its extremely popular Twitter account the other day, providing a rare glimpse at the simple yet devious spear-phishing emails that can crack major media outlets — and probably you. There are easy ways to avoid such open-and-click hacks (even The Onion has "tips"), but it's also pretty easy to see how The Onion, which guards its nearly 5-million follower account tightly despite the occasional mess-up, could have fallen for the infected link. ...

Apple supplier Pegatron will increase its workforce by 40 percent this quarter, triggering speculation that it produce a cheaper iPhone, says Reuters.

Mobile OS? Check. App store? Check. Books? Oops, not yet

Microsoft is poised to offer $1bn for e-book publisher Nook Media, which was spun out from bookshop biz Barnes and Noble, it is believed.…

Mobile OS? Check. App store? Check. Books? Oops, not yet

Microsoft is poised to offer $1bn for e-book publisher Nook Media, which was spun out from bookshop biz Barnes and Noble, it is believed.…

Canada housing starts slip in April, latest sign of cooling TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian housing starts slipped in April from March, led in part by a pullback in Ontario condo-building, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp said on Wednesday, in the latest report to indicate the country's once hot housing market is cooling. The seasonally adjusted annualized rate of housing starts was 174,858 units in April, down from 181,146 in March. The March figure was revised down from the 184,028 units reported a month earlier. ...

By Tim Kelly TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp's bid for revival as a consumer electronics maker this business year will hinge on the fortunes of its latest smartphones, as it struggles with shrinking sales of its TVs, digital cameras and game consoles. With consumer spending converging on Apple Inc's iPads and Samsung Electronics Co's Galaxy phones, Sony on Thursday forecast smartphone sales to rise more than one-fourth to 42 million in the year to next March. It predicted sales of its digital cameras and Playstation consoles would contract at double-digit rates. ...

(Reuters) - Ren Zhengfei, founder and CEO of Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, defended the Chinese firm's stand on U.S. cyber-security concerns when he spoke to the media for the first time on Thursday, lifting a veil of secrecy surrounding the elusive executive. Ren has avoided the press since he founded Huawei 26 years ago, which has fueled criticism by some foreign officials that the company is not transparent about its activities. The company has also been accused of being too close to the Chinese government. Huawei has denied any improper links. ...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — During 26 years at the helm of Chinese tech giant Huawei, founder Ren Zhengfei has never once agreed to be interviewed by a journalist.

SciFi imprint Tor UK's verdict on a year without copy restrictions

A little over a year ago, Speculative Science Fiction publisher Tor decided to do away with digital rights management (DRM) for its e-books.…

By Alex Dobuzinskis LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland dishwasher who became an overnight sensation for his street-wise poise under the media spotlight after helping save three women from an alleged decade-long kidnapping ordeal, has won a shout-out from McDonald's and legions of fans on social media. Ramsey responded to cries from Amanda Berry and helped get her away from a neighbor's house on Monday. He also got on the phone with emergency responders, actions that police say led to the rescue of two other women and a child from the home and could earn Ramsey reward money. ...

Morgan Stanley offers its latest take on the probability of new iPhones in the fall.

Online lynch mob unlikely to be responsible

Sunil Tripathi, the 22 year-old Brown University philosophy student mistakenly identified as a suspect in the Boston bombings by amateur investigators on Reddit, has been found dead in the Providence River, his family has said.…

'Disastrous' proposals said to violate core web principles

A coalition of organizations led by the Free Software Foundation has petitioned the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) to reject the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), a proposed expansion of the HTML spec that would create a standard digital rights management (DRM) mechanism for the web.…

Hey guys, maybe we could do watches too!

Amazon will be the latest tech biz to release a set-top TV box later this year, according to the rumour mill, incorporating its video-on-demand services.…

Swings to a loss in Q1 as R&D, sales, and marketing costs rise

Mellanox Technologies reported its first quarter financial results today, and Eyal Waldman, chairman and CEO at the networking chip and switch maker, said in a conference call that the company had taped out its first experimental chip that would run at 100Gb/sec and support the future Enhanced Data Rate (or EDR) version of InfiniBand.…

Breakthrough will speed system-to-system data center links

Intel has demoed what it says it "believes" is the world's only silicon photonics module that uses a hybrid silicon laser – a breakthrough that should allow such advances as vastly improved system-to-system interconnects in the data center.…

Two years a long stint in Mozilla time

Mozilla's chief executive is stepping down amid a re-positioning of the managerial brass after barely two years into a mission to take Firefox mobile.…

Automation takes over the data centre

Software-defined networking (SDN) represents a revolutionary tide flowing through the fusty, slow-moving halls of data-centre networking, bringing speed and dynamism to network connectivity management.…

4G broadband in telly bout dann sarf

170,000 London homes will get letters in the next day or two, telling them they're in the next phase of 4G testing and offering telephone support for anyone who sees Freeview disappear on Monday.…

Virtualizing entire data centers, including admins for systems and networks

Having let go of its aspirations to be a player higher up in the systems stack – now that application frameworks, caching software, and other elements of the business have been shuffled off to the new Pivotal group established by parent EMC – VMware is doubling down in the virtualization business, and its top brass were banging the software-defined data center (SDDC) drum pretty loudly down at its analyst meeting on Wall Street this morning. They also talked a bit about what VMware is going to do with network virtualizer Nicira, which it bought last summer for a whopping $1.26bn.…

Provisioning made easy

Software-defined networking (SDN) may not yet be at the top of your data centre to-do list but if you want the benefits of private cloud, it should be soon.…

Ouch! Right in the topology

A NoSQL startup is upping its game with a feature update allowing biz types to share data across multiple data centres.…