I'd like to thank this week's crop of new games for showing us that we don't need guns in our videogames to have a good time.
Famed Italian skipper Giovanni Soldini and his tireless crew of eight sailors obliterated the record for sailing the "Golden Route" from New York to San Francisco, shaving a full 10 days off the previous record around the tip of South America.
Want to force the President Barack Obama administration to enter the mobile-phone-unlocking fray? Sign a whitehouse.gov petition by Saturday and, if the petition reaches 100,000 signatures, the administration must respond publicly about a recent decision by copyright regulators making it illegal to unlock mobile phones purchased after January 26.
The Mini Cooper is a fun car that can do many, many things — including insane backflips in the snow. Just the thing for testing that suspension. And the heated seats.Rally driver and former freestyle skiing champion Guerlain Chicherit went end-over-end off the ramp in a John Cooper Works Mini. The car, so highly modified ...
Sony may have just announced that acclaimed indie game
A large and complex hacker group connected to China's military has been linked to hacks involving more than 100 companies in the U.S. and the theft of several hundreds of terabytes of data, according to a comprehensive report released Tuesday that takes the uncharacteristic tactic of unabashedly blaming China for some of the largest hacks that have occurred in recent years.
As affordable as 3-D printers have become, they are still out of reach for most people. A two-person team is looking to change that with their $75 handheld 3-D "printer" called the 3Doodler.
We all knew it was coming. Once Canonical unveiled the "Unity" interface for Ubuntu -- it's version of the open source Linux operating system -- we could see that the company was taking Ubuntu onto tablets. But now the new is official: a tablet version of Ubuntu will arrive next year. The question is whether developers will actually built applications for it.
Studying satellite imagery and checking radiation levels doesn't always tell you much about today's nuclear weapons. That's why the Pentagon's newest nuke-detection research gets less orthodox.
The Pirate Bay said it has alerted Finnish authorities to what it termed a "suspected crime" over an anti-piracy group allegedly pilfering the "files from which The Pirate Bay is built, to produce a fraudulent parody site."
Barstool ski racing is, essentially, a competition to see who can go the furthest without spiffing it. ?Spiffing it? is, of course, the technical term for tumbling head over heels from your barstool, something far more likely to happen if you?ve knocked a few back beforehand.
HTC launched a new flagship smartphone, dubbed the One, on Tuesday. And in the process, the company made three significant moves forward, offering a top-notch, beautifully designed hardware; a fresh, compelling take on Google?s Android operating system; and, for the first time, its selling the same phone across three major U.S. carriers.
Why HTC's new 4-megapixel smartphone camera is better than its competitors.
United Nations stats show civilian casualties in Afghanistan dropping for the first time since 2007. And it's the Taliban, not the U.S., that's responsible for the vast majority of them.
During the presidential campaign last fall, a single message was repeated endlessly in Appalachian coal country: President Barack Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency, critics said, had declared a ?war on coal? that was shuttering U.S. coal-fired power plants and putting coal miners out of work. Not so, according to a detailed new analysis of coal plant finances and economics.
Imagine ordering something online, but instead of the store telling you when your package will arrive, you tell them. A few million U.S. residents will soon have that option as same-day delivery darling Shutl prepares for its stateside launch within about a month.
If we accept that we as humans are fiscally flawed, then the next-best option is to trick ourselves into doing the right thing.
A couple weeks ago Wired had a robot interview
Despite all the progress and publicity that 3-D printing saw in 2012, there are a batch of active patents that threaten the progress of the industry, especially advancement in consumer-grade products from upstart manufacturers.
Next up: "Under the Street View" as Google Maps gets into the utility business with GE.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has grown his stake in Facebook by 100 million shares.
Just as gun control has made a comeback among politicians after a spate of deadly mass shootings, the rapid advances in 3-D printed guns have threatened to undermine those controls before they even get started. According to a leading 3-D printing researcher, the only way to prevent printed guns from shooting a new loophole in the law may be to control the gunpowder you need to fire them.
On a rainy Monday in August 2011, a 10-million-watt transformer exploded in northern Virginia, sending an enormous voltage spike across the power grid. The surge hit an Amazon data center in Ashburn, Virginia, knocking out the facility's main source of power, and about 15 minutes later, James Hamilton just happened to pull into the parking lot.
Take one look at HP's new Envy x2 and you'll immediately want to call it the MacBook Air Windows 8 Edition.
Chevrolet's new Impala comes with a central display that lifts up to reveal a hiding place for your valuables. Even better, it's only accessible if you enter a PIN, but it's more than just a safe cubby for your stash.
Beck and director Chris Milk turned David Bowie's "Sound and Vision" into an immersive, 360-degree online video experience. Here's how they did it.
Using a JavaScript Library to track faces in a webcam, developer Marko Dugonji? built an app that calculates how close you are to the screen and then adjusts the font size accordingly to make text more legible.
Over the weekend I tweeted that the purpose of the British Empire was to enable Darwin to write Origin of Species. Obviously this statement is not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Like many such provocative statements, however, it has serious underpinnings. It addresses an important question, one that all societies should ask of themselves on a regular basis. Boiled down, it can be stated as, "by what deed(s) will we be remembered?" Walking on the moon? Exploring the Solar System? Or reaching out to another star?
You know they help make pages more accessible for people using assistive technologies, but do you know *how* ARIA's Landmark Roles work? Accessibility consultant Leonie Watson offers a quick demo of exactly how ARIA's Landmark Roles make life easier for people browsing with assistive technologies.
Chalk yet another fossil find up to roadcut science. Thanks to a highway-widening project in California?s Laguna Canyon, scientists have identified several new species of early toothed baleen whales.
Canonical introduces the Ubuntu tablet interface, which will compete with Android, iOS, and Windows with its own take on multitasking and advanced security features. The launch is the next step in Canonical's quest to unify phones, tablets, PCs, and TVs. Following Canonical's launch of Ubuntu for phones in January, the company now adds a new tablet user interface tailored for devices with screen sizes from 6 inches to 20 inches and resolutions from 100 to 450 ppi (pixels per inch), the company said on Tuesday. The resolution leaves room to grow compared to today's tablets. For example, the Nexus 10's 10-inch screen packs in 300 pixels per inch. Users can start testing the interface on Feb. 21, when the Touch Developer Preview of Ubuntu will be published with installation instructions for the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, as well as smartphones such as the Nexus 4 and Galaxy Nexus. Like any cautious company, it notes that the Touch Developer Preview is a developer build and not a consumer-ready release.
Your phone isn't the only piece of equipment able to share an internet connection with other devices. Windows has been able to do this for years; the problem is getting it accomplished quickly, easily and wirelessly, especially on the go with a laptop system. Connectify Hotspot (two editions, various pricing) provides the tools to do precisely this, acting as a software router between whatever internet connection you provide and the other computers connected to your laptop. The free Lite version is robust enough for most personal use and includes a simple firewall program to boot. The Pro version lets you use your laptop as a repeater and permits sharing of 3g/4g connections as well as Ethernet and Wifi, plus other benefits outlined in the vendor's . Connectify Hotspot Pro isn't cheap however, running anywhere from $30 for an annual license to $45 for a lifetime license. The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the desired edition of the software.
Handy Backup is utilitarian in the best sense; it's a backup program with a no-nonsense interface and a boatload of features. Despite its plain countenance, one of its iterations is sure to appeal to IT types and smart consumers. I looked at Handy Backup Free, which is... free. Handy Backup Free is easy to use and lets you selects files as well as repositories for backing up. Repositories are folders or accounts such as My Documents, an FTP, WebDav, Amazon S3, etc. It's a little odd to see the latter items listed under a backup list, but it's also nice. You can back up to and restore data from local drives, CD/DVD/BD, FTP, and across a network. You create a backup, restore, or synch task in Handy Backup Home using step-by-step wizards. These are easy to use, and once a task has been defined you can edit all the options directly from a multiple-paned dialog. To skip the wizard, you can simply duplicate a task and edit the pertinent options. Said options include full, incremental, differential backups; compressing the backup to encrypted zip files; scheduling; and running tasks before or after a job. Handy Backup also comes in a $39 Home, $99 Professional, $199 Small Server, and $599 Server editions. Home is the latest 7.x version, while Pro adds disk imaging, backing up to SFTP servers, and ODBC database backup. The Small Server edition backs up numerous business and enterprise-level databases such as Microsoft Exchange data, Oracle, and more. The full Server version has all that plus the ability to back up multiple PCs to a central location.
's first Lync conference to attack the Microsoft unified communications platform as incomplete when compared to Cisco's enterprise UC offerings. Cisco has launched what it calls a frank and direct conversation and a weeks-long debate about what's important when IT executives decide which platforms to choose, and in its initial salvo finds Microsoft lacking in three areas: . Cisco claims it has deployed its UC and collaboration gear for mobile workers, international calling, confidential voice and video, and contact centers that blend voice, video, chat and social media. "By comparison, a solution optimized for only the desktop office worker may not be able to serve other users' specific needs adequately, and thus may provide less value to the business," Trollope writes.
, but on Tuesday the company followed up by taking the wraps off the software's tablet counterpart.
Hewlett-Packard is set to deliver a new blade that will quadruple the virtual desktops that can be deployed from one server compared to the company's previous offerings. The blade server uses graphics processors to deliver virtual desktops, but adds a layer of virtualization on top of the GPUs to expand the number of virtual clients deployed from servers to client devices, said John Gromala, director of product marketing for Industry Standard Servers and Software at HP. Virtual desktops are typically delivered to remote devices so that they can access centralized data and applications residing on the servers. An increasing number of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are being used for work, and there is more desire for workers to access enterprise data and applications beyond calendars, Gromala said. Deploying more virtual desktops helps reduce the cost per virtual client by 60 percent while boosting work efficiency, Gromala said. The company is working with Nvidia in order to deliver more virtual clients, but did not talk about the technology being deployed.
Microsoft will demonstrate on Tuesday for the first time an integration between its Lync enterprise IM, audio and video conferencing server and its Skype consumer counterpart, the latest Microsoft response to the consumerization of IT trend. At its Lync Conference in San Diego, Microsoft officials will show the ability for Lync and Skype users to contact each other, launch IM text sessions and communicate via audio calls. Microsoft plans to deliver that capability to Lync and Skype users in June, with a similar video-conferencing integration feature coming later.
from Cisco Systems. The Internet of everything, a phrase coined by Cisco to describe the networking of people, processes, data and objects, will encompass multiple industries, enabling customized online education, smart factories and the smart energy grid, Cisco officials said. Over the next decade, that connection of new objects and people to the Internet puts $14.4 trillion at stake, with the opportunity including new profits and cost savings, the company predicted in the white paper, released late Monday. More than 99 percent of physical objects are not now connected to the Internet, but Cisco expects 50 billion objects to be connected by 2020, officials said. New objects and people coming online creates a big investment incentive for companies, said Cisco Chief Marketing Officer Blair Christie. .